Looking for advice on how to deal with inability to increase endurance/ride time. I have a weird issue where I cannot seem to increase how far I can go, whether riding really easy or very hard, my limit is about 3 hours.
I have no issue at all increasing how much power I can make in efforts (IE 1 min, 5 min, 20 min, 30 min power). I deal with the stress of interval sessions pretty well, I’m tired right after a 2-2.5 hour hard ride/interval session but sleep well and feel fine the next day. I feel the complete opposite with ‘easy’ rides IE long slow endurance rides. I feel like I’m suffocating/not getting enough oxygen at Z2 power where my breath is hardly elevated but I feel terrible, achy legs, numbness in parts of my body after 2.5-3 hours of this slower pace. This feels drastically different to interval/hard rides where there is heavy breathing, fast HR, strain on legs, but that feels much better. I feel absolutely destroyed after the ride and the next day of an endurance ride. How much I’m eating during the ride seems to make no difference at all, I can do 3 hours on 100g total carb and I’ll feel the same as 3 hours on 210g carb. My weight is consistent and haven’t lost any from under eating (I’m about 130-132 lbs). I typically take in at least 750ml water per hour. Where I’m at right now I’m doing 3x20 intervals at 250w, Vo2 at 300w, riding Z2 at about 150w, although I’ve done 3 hour rides where I average 190w and actually feel a little bit better. I don’t typically use HR, but could start if that could help structure these endurance rides to be more effective/manageable. Any ideas? Before an answer of ‘ride more’ comes, this is primarily what I’ve been focusing on for the past 3 months and made no headwind to increasing ability to ride farther, I still feel exactly the same now as I did 3 months ago with these rides and have been primarily doing a 3 hour ride every other day. I attempted to add distance yesterday and did 4 hours with a 5 min break every hour and got down 70-90g carb per hour at 145w, but that completely destroyed me and I’ve been sick and nauseous all day today with not much ability to even eat much.
Since you have a lot of bases covered…nutrition etc. I am going to suggest it might be bike fit or just something like tires. I feel really good on my gravel bike after long rides. Road bike with 28mm tires beats me up .
I’d expect to see some improvement over 3 months, but I wouldn’t expect anything dramatic in that time. Building base endurance generally happens much slower compared to more intense zones like threshold or v02max (where you’d expect to see noticeable results after a couple months of focus). The other thing to consider is overall training load and intensity mix. If you are doing all your normal intensity (sounds like a strength maybe?) and then quickly adding a bunch of ~3 hour rides that you didn’t do previously, you may be adding too much stress too quickly to properly adapt. Z2 work should be easy in small doses, but you can build a lot of training stress with long steady rides. If you want to get better at riding Z2, I’d suggest trying a more dedicated block (with minimal intensity in the mix) and see if you respond better. Many riders will start their season with 2-3 months with a heavy focus on Z2 work before introducing any significant intensity. You basically want to build the foundation before you start adding walls. It sounds like you might be trying to add foundation while trying to keep the walls in place at the same time (and probably not optimizing either).
Hmm, nothing stands out as obvious to me. If you can do a 2-2.5 hour ride with intervals then 3-4 at low Z2 should be easy. Your symptoms kinda sound like dehydration. How hot is it where you are? But 750ml per hour should be fine for most people (even if it’s on the low side for heavy sweaters). Hows your sodium intake? Both on rides and normally?
HR might help point in a certain direction?
The only other thing I can think of is how tall are you and how lean are you? Just to put the weight in perspective. 130 at 5’4” might not be bad but if you’re approaching 6’ then that could be an issue. But increasing power from 1-30m points to you likely not being super under nourished.
Let me ask a seemingly obvious question (at least to me).
Unless I missed it in your post, you didn’t mention WHEN you are doing these 3 hour z2 rides. Are you doing them the next day after you go out for those hard, 2+ hour interval sessions or are you allowing your body to rest a bit between them? In those interval sessions, how much of those 2+ hours are spent at a higher intensity?
Maybe you are cooking yourself more than you realize with those extra long interval sessions and your z2 rides suffer as a result? Even if you feel ok the following day, maybe you simply aren’t recovered enough to get right back into it… z2 or otherwise.
I can only speak from personal experience, but I know I have had days where I go out and really give it all and will feel fine immediately after the ride and even ok going into the next day, but it sometimes then sneaks up on me the day after that.
Just my 2 cents of course… 
What is your protein intake? The beta-oxydation of fat requires carnitine. That’s the main vitamin/mineral that I can think of that is used for fat and not for glucose usage.
Is this difficulty with zone2 a new thing or has it always been like that?
Have the fueling before the ride been sufficient? The carbs you take on during the ride are sort of topping off.
when do you do those long z2 riders? it does matter a lot.
f.e I did a long (4h30) z2 ride sunday, flat easy terrain, and was absolutely spent, but thats because I had done 3 intense TR sessions that week + 2 intense runs on the “rest” days, wasn’t smart. Earlier this year I did a 150km hilly ride after a week of taper, entirely different and much fresher at the end. What I do earlier in the week matters a lot for the z2 rides. It’s accumulated fatigue..
Post your TSS or CTL chart for the last 6 months. That will rule in or out a lot. I suspect a huge increase in CTL starting a few months ago
Im 5’8”-5’9” ish. I use electrolyte packs in a bottle.
I usually do 4-5 rides a week, mostly just doing these 3 hour rides, sometimes I’ll do 2 hour tempo, or some intervals just to see how they feel, pretty much every other day, if I do back to back days it’s usually something like 1 hour Z2 followed by a 3-4 hour Z2, or endurance ride followed by a 1 hr recovery spin (120w) to see if that helps.
Probably getting around 70-100g protein per day, I could up that see if that helps.
Yes, I’ve always had issue with distance, basically stuck around 40-60 miles (90% of my riding is gravel/dirt)…been riding on and off for about 15 years and its pretty much always been like this. When I first started riding I was quickly up to this limit and can’t progress any more. As in, when I very first started riding, after about 3 months I’d worked up to this 40-50 mile ride time then hit a wall. I progress quickly to this 20 min power of 275w-ish then plateau and I’ve basically been like this since year 1.
It’s just extremely bizarre to me that I can start doing say 20 min intervals and watch my numbers go from something like 220w to 275w over the course of a couple months, but I make zero progress on easy rides and how much riding I can do even when highly focusing on trying to get in more volume.
I don’t have reliable data right now, missing about 4 months of training. I basically do 300-400 TSS week one, 400-500 TSS week 2, 500-600 TSS week 3, then 200-300 TSS week 4 (usually 1 recovery ride 1 hr 100-120w, one hour tempo 200w-210w, one 3 hour easy 140w-155w with 1-2 days rest in between each ride).
My only guess is that maybe you have a mismatch with what you think is your “zone 2” and what it really is.
Try doing a long ride at 50-60% of FTP and see what happens.
If you don’t have a reliable FTP measurement, just keep it super chill (2 or 3 out of 10 effort) for the whole ride.
This is the zone calc I’m using-
Was able to do 261w for 20 min recently. 261 x 0.93 = FTP 242.7
Z2 133.10 - 169.40 (so I aim for 150w)
So, if you struggle at 150w on a long ride then try 125-130 and see what happens.
The only other thing I can think of is some kind of fit issue, saddle pressure, nerve pressure, etc. Or you are doing some kind of low carb diet and not telling us.
During Covid in 2020, I got good at doing all day 5+ hour rides. We would just go out and ride with no pace in mind. The first few 4 hour rides were tough but eventually 5+ was easily doable.
Again, I’m surprised it’s “zero progress” after a few months of focus, but things like threshold and v02max will build much, much quicker than base endurance. Nothing bizzare about that, those base gains are a long game (built through years of training).
It sounds to me like you have probably been more focused on intervals/intensity without a lot of focus on longer endurance over the last 15 years. You aren’t going to significantly change your physiology in 3 months, particularly if you are still doing intervals/intensity while trying to build your base. Some of it might just be your predisposition for shorter duration efforts, but I’d bet there is a lot of meat on the bone if you really focused on endurance (just endurance) for an extended period. But even then, I wouldn’t expect dramatic changes in 3 months. Think in terms of progress over an entire year (or multiple years) rather than short terms results. There is a reason it can take some pros more than a decade (with a ton of base work) to get near their aerobic potential. Some people adapt quicker but have lower ceilings, some have higher ceilings but adapt much slower.
yeah, i agree with this. My FTP is 250 and when I have to do a long ride longer than 3h+ I aim for 50-55% ftp which is between 125-135w. Don’t try to aim for high/middle Z2 for those super long rides. Even if it feels ridiculously easy.
I’m going to state the obvious, but have you checked with your physician? make sure you aren’t missing something important.
The vibrations from riding offroad cause additional fatigue. 1hr at Z2 on road is going to leave you much less fatigued that 1hr at the same power offroad. When riding at higher power, you are pushing harder on the pedals so there is less weight on your saddle and bars, you get “beat up” less.
This means that although you would expect to be less fatigued on a Z2 ride it is possible that the increase in fatigue from trail buzz is offsetting the reduction in fatigue from riding at a higher power.
Yeah this could be something. But if they do a ton of dirt riding already then that shouldn’t be a huge issue
But maybe try to find a road or paved path route that you can try and see if that makes any difference.
The only other thing I can think of is hydration. Are you taking in any sodium or just water and then whatever comes in your food? And are you a particularly heavy sweater or find yourself dehydrated after rides?
Dehydration could definitely cause the body ache, nausea, etc symptoms you’ve mentioned.
Endurance adaptations are kind of a different beast.
Same thought here. You might have just heavily optimized the left side of the power-duration curve.
However, the feeling of suffocation, muscle pain, numbness, and lack of any progression over 15 years seems rather unusual.
Few questions:
- Are you on any medications?
- Do you have any diagnosed medical conditions?
- Do you get similar symptoms from prolonged fasting?
If we’re hunting for zebras, there are a few rare metabolic disorders that would fit this presentation. When you’re riding for a longer period of time, regardless of feeding, your body will try to get more energy from fatty acid oxidation. Most metabolic disorders present pretty early, but the myopathic form of Carnitine Palmitoyltransferase II (CPT II) deficiency can present later in adulthood (usually second or third decade) under very specific stressors like prolonged exercise or fasting. If this were the case, you’d basically be getting rhabdo from prolonged exercise because your muscles aren’t getting enough energy (glycogen is getting depleted and long-chain fatty acid metabolism is blocked). It’s a true zebra, 1-9 per 100,000 people. There are some other fatty acid metabolism disorders on the table (like VLCAD deficiency), also rare. Throw some mitochondrial myopathies on the differential as well.