I don’t really agree with this… slow and steady are both not correct, but steady might be worse…
Riding steady @90% for 3 hours does not really get the job done, not ever
Riding slow for 3 hours will do the trick in most cases, except you are going 3 hours uphill or with a headwind, but it’s more easy to put in perspective.
Steady without a percentage or power / HR zone, doesn’t say -anything- at all
My N=1. I did a cross-country ride and averaged 5 hrs/day 6 days/week. I had excellent aerobic endurance, but was quickly spit out the back of the group rides that I used to be able to hang on. I think there’s a limit to how much endurance is helpful, you have to do some VO2 and threshold work to go faster.
The answer is… Yes lol
There are some adaptations that one will provide you that the other won’t.
So do both over your year of training. If you do polarized you can get some endurance with some threshold work which will work the areas that you mentioned you seem to want to improve.
In the end it depends on your end goal; is it an event? a race? Just trying to stay fit?
Try to do what helps you get better at what you wanna do.
When in doubt, go with endurance.
Maybe he is struggling with threshold because he is carrying fatigue from so much sweet spot. There are so many reasons you can struggle with threshold that aren’t because the top end is lacking.
If you want to do quality high intensity workouts then being relatively rested helps a lot.
What kind of riding / events are you targeting?
Even the Big Cat (and one of the originators of the SST training concept) says you need both in a proper formulated plan.
Why do we always seem to default to an ‘either/or’ way of thinking with this stuff?
Indeed. These this vs that stuff is usually funny to me. Especially the case when posed with so little background info and/or context.
“It depends…” needs to be the default start to answer any of these questions, and likely followed by a range of mixing things at different times, volumes, intensity. Simple, but not so simple. I know some people want a single answer to what’s “best”, but I am not so sure that really exists in the grand scheme.
There may be “Best for X person, at Y moment, for Z reasons” and the like, but even the general guidelines that make good sense are worth discarding a fair bit of the time based on a person’s situation. All steps in learning, so there’s that to be a takeaway from any of these types of posts.
This always gets more contentious than it needs to be it seems, due to the different circumstances and people’s ideas about how to apply SS to their number of hours.
It’d be interesting to know for certain (which I’m not sure is doable) whether for a rider with a max of 7hours a week and max ride length of say 90minites. Are they better doing solely SS type workouts (i.e. including SS in every ride). VS riding only Z2.
They don’t have to be mutually exclusive concepts as suggested above. From what I understand, TR would mix it just the same as FasCat or any other, except users used to opt for the shorter SS session instead or skip the LSD ride.
Maybe in the not too distant future you’ll see when you can choose the length of time available per day/session, an option to tick “endurance” ride and find AT prescribing you the appropriately productive LSD session. Those who don’t have the time, climate, or inclination to ride long either indoors or out can still choose SS 
.
To the OP, one isn’t better than the other. They’re both paths to the same goal. You can do SS within your Endurance work to great effect.
In a general sense, it depends on how much time you have. If you only have five hours or less a week, you’ll get more out of a sweet spot ride than a short endurance ride to go with a couple of threshold/V02 interval days. If you have lots of hours left after 2-3 good interval days (which can also include sweet spot, btw), then long endurance rides can take you to the next level.
I’m kind of surprised that for most plans, TR heaps on more intensity days as the training volume goes up, rather than just taking the low volume plans and adding large doses of endurance. This is probably because that for most plans, they have an arbitrary two hour time limit for workouts.
no, that’s NOT effective training, not even IF you can do it, not even IF you are elite / pro. (it would be nice to be able to do it in a race though ;))
the discussion started about the term slow or steady for endurance / low intensity training, I’m simply giving an example why the term steady is just as wrong as slow (or even more) to discribe an endurance training.
But doesn’t this thread already give context?
I get that slow and steady are relative terms. Threshold or even VO2Max intervals can be steady in their nature too. But when we’re talking LSD, may it be “long slow distance” or “long steady distance”, I’m on the perception that everybody’s on the same page. Meaning we’re talking about rides at an steady endurance pace.
If they’re slow is going to largely depend on your FTP 
Absolutely - I was looking at the Base plans the other day. For my PLs right now this was a typical week (3) of a HV Base 2 plan…
Thats 7hrs of sweetspot work and 2hrs of z2 endurance!! Who in their right minds thinks thats the best use of an 9hr training week? (and EVERY week of the 6 is the samw structure except for the ramp test in 1 and the final recovery week…and nothing like the FasCat plan FYI)
It’s arguable that a steady 2 hour Z2 ride on Sunday (0.7-0.75 IF) would give a bigger aerobic stimulus (assuming rides must be capped at 2 hours). Those SST workouts look incredibly easy to me.
possibly influenced by my current fairly low PL for SST. TR seems to think lots of tempo and lots of threshold means you can’t do sweetspot work 
Ah sorry - I forgot about AT! I’m probably in the same boat actually as I haven’t done any SST for a month. I am going to use some SST as intensity on the covid comeback trail.
You can actually push pretty hard in Z2 when you get good at it. And it does increase your FTP, that’s why pros do so much of it. It does also increase everything above it too, right the way up, because anything over around 20 seconds is aerobic and Z2 is all about aerobic ability.
That would DESTROY you long term. And also be ineffective base. If you have 9 hours and want base, simple, 1 hour intensity, somewhere under FTP and 8 hours with as much Z2 as you can handle (the rest being Z1) and still be able to do it the next day. Include 2 rest days.
This is one thing I’m never quite sure on whether it’s beneficial, or how beneficial vs the cost of doing it. There is a pretty big difference between ticking along at bottom end of Z2 vs pushing the boundary at top of Z2, especially over a ride of several hours or more. Pretty sure I’ve heard them say on the podcast that there’s no additional benefit to riding high Z2 vs low Z2. Or more likely that there’s no additional benefit in terms of the primary training adaptations you’re looking to get from Z2 riding. Which is great if true, but very hard to convince my brain of that!
I’d be surprised if you get the same adaptations from bottom end of Z2 vs top end. I mean, try it and see, top end is way harder than bottom end. I think all of it is so complicated and so individual and changes all the time, I think a general 80% endurance and 20% intensity is as close to a rule as you can get. Does endurance mean Tempo or level 1, does intensity mean SS or V02 Max 1 min intervals. You have to decide based on your physiology, how you feel that day, what you did last week, last month, how close to racing (whatever that means to you) you are. It’s not hard defined data that I think a lot of people wish it was. It’s way more subjective and not conducive to an off the shelf plan unless you are an absolute beginner. It’s really really complicated (and I’ve been scratching my head about how to train right for 30 years on and off now) and I still barely feel like I know what I’m doing but if there was anything I was fairly sure about I’d say spend around 80% of your time working on that aerobic engine at somewhere lower than Tempo.
