You didn’t ruin things (doing absolutely nothing IMO ruins things) but by pushing into tempo you won’t have maximised the benefits of the Z2 stuff.
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This. The benefits of Z2 come from prolonged time of burning mostly fat. My understanding is that as intensity goes further up, lactate is also produced and lactate then gets used for fuel rather than fat.
It is not a problem for Z2 benefits if you get all the Z2 time at the start of the ride and do some higher intensity stuff at the end.
But if you mix up the higher intensity throughout the workout, the Z2 benefits will be less, even if you could be the same amount of time in zone.
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I’m going to be slightly controversial here but I think people will agree.
Working harder in a short space does not ruin a workout. It changes it. Sometimes for the better.
There is no Z2 effect. There are aerobic adaptations.
If you were looking for aerobic adaptations, a tempo ride also does this. Wether an hour in the endurance zone, or 30 endurance plus 30mins in tempo, was the optimal choice is more about you and your training than it is about the workout.
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As @JoeX notes…it depends.
Again, for most of us here, doing a 1 hour z2 ride is not really an “endurance” ride by itself. As I noted, Pettit is rated as an endurance ride, but is regularly scheduled as a recovery ride on most plans.
Now, as part of a way to increase volume overall for a training plan, there are benefits to adding such rides to your schedule….but it is from the cumulative effect of the volume, not that the 1 hour rates as “endurance”.
Endurance in the way we are talking about here is describing the intensity not the length of the ride.
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I would argue that you can’t separate the two…they are linked. At least from a training benefit perspective.
My understanding is that the Z2 benefits are achieved over many weeks or months by consistently riding in that zone every week for a large part of the rides. Each ride however does not need to be to exhaustion at the limit of your endurance capabilities.
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Yes. At some point many of us hit a time limit. And endurance work becomes more about maintenance and conditioning - as opposed to recovery.
Correct and I have addressed this above in my comments re: added volume.
I think you are missing my overall point while focusing on details.
WKO Aerobic impact scoring:
My 2 hour endurance rides earn me aerobic 5s or 6s, depending on the specifics. For example 100 minutes average .71 - .75 IF and entire workout with 10-min warmup and 10-min cooldown at .68 - .71 IF.
On the other hand, 1 hour workouts at z2/z3 border with 3 sprints (Bays+1 I think it TR equiv) will garner a 3 aerobic score.
This one is .75 IF for 100 minutes and .71 overall, with a few bursts to increase anaerobic score from 1 to 2.
A quality maintenance session using WKO’s TIS scoring chart.
Garmin gave that one a 3.9 out of 5:
based on HRV, HR, and power, which rates it Impacting:
FWIW.
Pushing it to 2.5 hours with 130 minutes at .71 - .73 IF? Bumps WKO aerobic to a 6 / 10 and Garmin to 4.3 / 5.0.
Personally I find 2 hour workouts at upper end of z2 to be challenging but recoverable. And I find them absolutely essential in order to do the harder workouts.
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Small caveat here: what ISM calls Z2 is not exactly the same as Coggan/TR Z2.
Dr. San-Millan defines his Z2 as 1.3-1.8 mmol/l of lactate in the blood, and the closest approximation (without measuring lactate) I could find is 65-80% FTP. So Pettit at IF 0.63 undershoots by a bit…
Both Z2 zones overlap a bit, but ISM’s skews more towards Tempo. For me personally the effect of consistent 1.5h outdoors rides at a metronomic 0.70-0.75 IF are much more noticeable than the 0.60-0.65 stuff…
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i agree. i did 3hrs yesterday and thats a solid effort @ 0.75
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Thought he defined it as a rise over baseline? Something like 0.3 or 0.5 mmol/l over baseline. Because specific ranges and absolute numbers don’t work for everyone.
It might be even wider than that? My personal experience is similar to yours on pushing at the upper third of zone2.
Yep, I am similar for endurance work. 1:30 of 65% mlss gets me a 3 on the aerobic tis but if I push that to 3 hours I can get a 7.
Those change throughout the year but I find I need ~2-2:30 to build accordingly to those metrics.
What I got from a different source is that you cant use an absolute mmol threshold to define things, since people have different base values.
It should be the point when lactate levels start to rise.
For me 60% would indeed be the lowest side of the range. In the low intensity endurance workouts I get in Join (4 out of 5 days), 60%-70% is the base intensity used, with some times intervals of up to 30 min at 70-80 and also shorter 5 min intervals at 85-95. The 55-65 range is used as recovery from the shorter tempo intervals.
How about 2 a day, thus a 1.5 hour trainer session early morning, then a 1.5 hour training session in the evening?
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Interseting comment from Tim ‚El Tractor’ Wellens about adjusting to training at his new team UAE:
„The way of training is very diffent at UAE. I train much harder: at UAE every ride is in zone two. That means I have to ride an irritatting tempo the whole time in training, but without really hurting myself. So every training is like a time trial. I can‘t ride with other people anymore, they say I ride too fast.“
„I’ve already asked Pogacar: ‚How can you traing like that and still be so fast in a sprint? ‚Without training sprints specifically, apparently.“
Original source
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