Endurance Workouts

Chad, Jonathan and Nate,

Thanks for podcasts and great content. I have been a member since your inception and have used the plans and app to great extent starting with Kanza in 2014 which Chad gave great advice on back then. I have found that by looking at my fitness for the season changes greatly based on how I start my season. 2017 I prepped my season by riding mostly base for first 12-16 weeks. Then entered summer and still rode mostly Z2 rides but added 2X20’s or 30’s with some 6 Min VO2 work. And now at 48 years old but, had my highest FTP of 349 at 77kgs last year at 47.

Last year I tried SST workouts/plans exclusively with one day long Z2 ride. I had a lower FTP and found my HR ran higher and longer.

The prior year 2017, my HR would stay low by about 10 beats PPM lower for same efforts. This year I am going back to 2017 style training 1 I like riding Z2 and not purely focused on crushing it every ride but, found I can handle bigger stress days and some hard rides and I recover much better.

But my question is on Endurance rides: I like to use or ride stuff like West Vidette, Aniacchak, Shatsa, Haku, North Twin, etc with the short sprints in them. Is there anything wrong with having more of the short bursts in the rides and can or should you put them in each ride?

I have added them to Baxter and others similar as well. Just seems to wake up the legs and re-envigorate them. Is there any harm to adding them on the Z2 rides? I see many have them but only a few and they are normally really close to each other.

Thanks

Like you said here, they serve to wake up the legs and just change up the monotony of some of the longer rides. There’s certainly no harm in having them in a ride, and they may more closely match an outdoor ride where you may have to exert a bit of power to climb a steep pitch or get around a blind corner on the road.

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