I think that every zone or intensity has his place. You have to look for the right adaptations for your goals. Not?
About Z2 and riding upper zone or not or more @LT1… Personally…When I do a 4hr ride I ride at 65%. Why should I go harder? Extra fatigue for the same gains? I try to add volume in my weeks with 2 more intensive rides. So for me I just stay at that range.
If I had less time I would ride at 70-75%.
I track this with TSS weekly. But would always try to Bé good at my intensive rides (FTP or SST) and build my endurance around that with as many hours at Z2 I can.
But maybe I should focus also at long rides at LT1 or tempo because my goal this year is a very long Gran Fondo with 4 major climbs (5hr climbing Total). So my fat burning endurance kind of tempo sweet spot strength should be as best as possible
They don’t have to be mutally exclusive of course Why not add 2x30m top z2 efforts into a weekly longer ride? See what happens with fatigue over time or if you see any benefits?
FWIW, the coach that wrote my plan (doesn’t actually coach me but wrote a bespoke plan for LBL and a 200+ mile GF) is a uber experienced and successful ultra athlete of many years. He puts regular ‘top of z2’ endurance rides in my plan.
@Bigpikle, that seems a good point. But my idea was when doing 14-15 hours a week, one longer Z2 ride of 4-5hours normal Z2. and the shorter Z2 rides more upper Z2 or fatmax zone.
Ask your coach if it is not better to do 2x30m SST or tempo is better in such a ride?
FWIW, my best legs ever was in a LBL ride (without structured training before, just coming back from 6 days mallorca). 277km at 28/u. For me as not a real climber profile, was awesome. I felt like VDB on the last climb on Saint-Nicolas
I didnt have any SST in my plan at all - big block of z2 and z3 tempo base Nov to Feb, and then switched to threshold and vo2 work to Apr. Thats not to say he isn’t a fan of SST but when he explained it his approach was to give me a plan that included a lot of work I hadn’t done before - I did a very heavy SST focused winter in 2020/21 and the upper end work is something I tend to wuss out on SST comes easy to me…
My plan ends at LBL end of April and I plan to switch to a outdoor high volume approach with 1 structured interval day per week and 15-20hrs of ‘stuff’ that will include a lot of z2 and more z3 again. I should get another 6-7 weeks of that as final prep. I’ll retire end April so time is not an issue and we have 2 weeks in the Dordogne planned in May with beautiful roads and lovely 5-30 min climbs all over the place
The 205 miler is Chase the Sun North in the UK, from Whitley Bay to Ayr. 3000m climbing on the way so its going to be a big day out for sure! Got me scared to death! If this goes well then I fancy M312 as I’ve had a hankering for a few years. I did get a group of mates together to attempt an informal run at the original circumference route but then C19…
LBL sounds fantastic and the experience on those climbs will no doubt be epic. Hopefully the legs will be there for me!
Yeah, you really will enjoy Le Stockeu, La Redoute and the Roche aux Faucons . After 200km in the legs, those gonna hurt ;-). But that is why we do it, not?
Outside magazine has a blurb on the Moxy sensor and some comments on how the Norwegian Triathlon team and others are using the technology. It’s fun stuff.
These rides are the exact examples in the new book by Phil Skiba. 3-5 hour ride with a 2x20, 3x20, working up to a 4x30 tempo in the middle of the ride. Depending on the training phase, it will switch to threshold* instead of tempo. *One could call it sweet spot as well.
I tell you. We are being mined for content. First Coggan and now TTS.
He also mentioned the controversy about it not existing.
Assuming it exists, what is the benefit of riding under (where lactate is still at baseline) versus riding right over where lactate has risen (but is steadily being utilized as a fuel)?
If you’ve struggled to find a method via respiration (be it breath count or “perceived changes” in breathing) to find AeT/LT1/LT (lower) magic, Mark Burnley has good (and bad) news for you.
But: One should train below or above LT1 but not at LT1? Sounds a little bit silly but I guess there is some nuance to it. And as a ISM disciple I don’t care anyway.
I was pretty certain it was LT(1), he refered didn’t really refer to LT2 (much) to him that was a proxi for CP and he kept referring to CP when relevant. I might be wrong though.
And I thought he was saying it is wrong that there is no LT1… because there is somewhere… he was just mentioning that there is that debate that there is no such thing.
Well there is certainly more debate on if the second LT exsists (LT2).
Thinking about it… it probably doesnt, it doesnt actually make much sense as a threshold, but it is handy in various ways.
It is not surprising that CP, MLSS are used in studies.
Exactly. And this is the crux of the argument about there “not being LT-whatevers” because the curve is smooth and continuous. There are quasi-steady states (yes, that’s an actual term it refers to the fact that physiologically there can never be a true steady state…why? fatigue…or eventually…sleep…or death). Just pick a point on the curve below CP (which is higher than FTP), and voila, that’s a steady state that has a finite duration.
The only special characteristic about LT1 is a deviation from baseline, whether that is an inflection point that is visual or just an “Ed Coyle” quantitative definition. Science barely agrees on this and the internet most definitely never will LOL.
Moreover, there is not a clear line of demarcation between “I can hold this for long long time and oh my I’m about to pop”. It’s fuzzy. It’s human.
The reason guys like Burnley acknowledge the existence of LT1 is, as he states, “well, you have to get from baseline to NOT baseline”. It can occur suddenly (as in the classic lactate curve in textbooks, an inflection point), gradually (curves of untrained athletes), or something in between. When I participated in an online coaching forum where ppl posted a bunch of lactate curves, the “something in between” was overwhelmingly the most common.
CP is genius (as is FTP) because it eliminates the practice of having to use lactate to determine some medium-to-high intensity demarcation. Because LT2 (whatever that might be for you) is not different than LT2 +/- .5mmol, +/- 1mmol, +/- whatever. It’s up there on the curve, and physiologically the same stuff is happening…until it isn’t. The “until it isn’t” part cannot be determined using lactate.
Why is FTP also genius (even though there may not be anything physiological happening there)? Because it’s close enough. And it’s easy in the field.
Love that he acknowledged the debate (“I would be remiss…”) around LT1 but actually took a side. Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Not this “science via reality show twitter” crap, where the audience takes a side like a football game or Real Housewives dinner argument.
I’m not sure the two are the same question, as i was wondering if hr drifted upwards at your threshold when improving fractional utilization.
I think real world data agrees with mader and heck’s model, in that the higher percent Cp is of vo2max, it brings lt1 along for the ride and as burnley suggests, becomes more compressed. Its basically a flatter pd curve.
Some have suggested either we all have the same gap between lt1 and Cp, or that they can move independently. There’s anecdotal evidence of improving lt1 without Cp, but only for individuals who don’t have a flat baseline so they really dont have a first threshold.
This makes a statement that a coach said once make a bit more sense now. He said (to someone else): “we don’t really have a threshold for you [meaning lower one], we need to establish it” (emphasis mine). I thought “what the heck does establish it mean? Don’t we just have it”.
Seems like it was his way of saying do some training and then hopefully see a place where it inflects. Make it easier to spot.
Part 2 of Scientific Triathlon’s Mark Burnley podcast is coming next week:
Next week we have part 2 of the interview with Dr Burnley, and topics covered include VLaMax, Polarised training and whether it is or isn’t optimal for endurance athletes, and fatigue and novel ways of measuring it.
Why not add 2x30m top z2 efforts into a weekly longer ride? See what happens with fatigue over time or if you see any benefits?
SST comes easy to me…
. After 200km in the legs, those gonna hurt ;-). But that is why we do it, not? 
.
It can occur suddenly (as in the classic lactate curve in textbooks, an inflection point), gradually (curves of untrained athletes), or something in between. When I participated in an online coaching forum where ppl posted a bunch of lactate curves, the “something in between” was overwhelmingly the most common.
This makes a statement that a coach said once make a bit more sense now. He said (to someone else): “we don’t really have a threshold for you [meaning lower one], we need to establish it” (emphasis mine). I thought “what the heck does establish it mean? Don’t we just have it”.