Trainerroad seems to constantly be pushing me to do endurance workouts that are level 5 or above, when I really just want to keep my heart rate above zone 1 but below LT1, which a workout of 90 mins at 70% of FTP would push me easily at or over for the majority and at the volume that I’m training, make my intensity rides and recovery efforts significantly more difficult. I have no problem manually changing back to Andrews/Mcdonald etc., but would like the adaptive training to stop recommending this
Have you tried changing your training approach? You can now customise it by zone, so could set your endurance training approach to moderate or conservative and see if that backs things off sufficiently for you.
I’d also be curious as to how you calculated your HR zones.
For me riding at 75% of FTP usually puts me right at the top of my Z2 HR.
Obviously this fluctuates a little from time to time and we’re all different, but how far above LT1 are you talking?
LT 1 and the top of the Zone 2 are two different things. Dude wants to ride below LT1. To me, it is around. 0.68 IF
I assume that most people’s LT1 is at the very top of their Z2 power and HR zones.
If you’re not measuring lactate, it’s obviously hard to confirm that, though, and every individual can be slightly different.
You have to take HR drift into account.
For me IF 0.68-0.70+ for 1:00-1:30 hour ride is right in mid HR Z2, probably hitting top Z2 at the very end of the ride.
But for rides 2:00+ I usually choose something closer to 0.65-0.67 just to stay in mid Z2 (even if TR schedules something with higher intensity).
For a 4 hour indoor ride with IF 0.55 I had HR Z1 in the beginning and Z3 in the end which was result of poor electrolytes/carbo consumption during that ride.
Yeah, the recommendations aren’t really helpful though. For example the ‘easier’ recommendations for me it goes from a 4.8 or whatever difficulty down to like 1.2 without anything in between. Just wondering if I’m missing something
Don’t make me say it, Eddie! ![]()
In the CTS podcast, it was once mentioned that, in general, based on their experiences, LT1 is somewhere around 0.65 IF for most of the athletes.. My endurance workouts are in the 0.56-0.65 zone, although the LT1 threshold measured in the lab is a bit higher (around 0.66-0.68). When doing a 4h workout indoors on the trainer, at the end, we are still facing HR drift, and there is no point in letting it go above 0.7, let alone 0.75, to be “at the end of the zone but in the zone2”
Change your Training Approach Endurance Zone. Worked like a charm for me. The duration’s stayed the same but the intensity dropped.
That’s a good idea. ![]()
It’s tough to make these calls without lab testing. It’s a lot l like FTP and VO2 Max. How do you know exactly where they lie for each athlete? We’re good at estimating, but there are, of course, cases where.75 IF doesn’t work for endurance riding. A 4-hour ride is a good example for most people. ![]()
