My first outdoor test was actualy rather promising, I got less than 1% of artifacts and the overall HR + RPM was nicely in line with Alpha 1 values… but I think a really steady tempo is key there…
Hi all, yesterday during my long ride, as I was checking my HR constantly, I was thinking about manualy correct the Garmin zones - as I tried to stay on closely, but below LT1… and it got me thinking that HR zones on my Garmin doens´t correlate much… it is set up like:
Z1: 88-104 (grey)
Z2: 105-122 (blue)
Z3: 123-139 (green)
Z4: 140-157 (orange)
Z5: over 157 (red)
I am rather visual and I like those colours (that are showed on my Garmin), so I would like to set them up according to my 131 LT1 - what would be your advise hot to set it?
I am thinking about intensity up to LT1 as “green” so lowest values grey, blue 90-? green ?-130, orange 130-156 (supposedly my LTHR) and orange above?
Any thoughts?
Thanks…
Just as an aside, how do you get your HR zones to show up as coloured? Ive got an Edge 1030.
Incidentally i’ve set my power and HR zone so that the top of my Tempo zone is it my HR & Power at LT1 as shown by DFA/Alpha1 and my Zone 2 finishes at 10 beats and 30W below it.
Thanks I’ll have a look at that on The IQ thing
And why your Z2 finishes 10bpm below Alpha1? For me the difference between 130bpm (LT1) and 120bpm can be huge in watts - if I have coffee and all, I can easily have heart rate around 120 when doing as low as 120W… and stay slightly below 130 when I move around 200W…so that would make no sense in my case 
One of the problems I think is that we all seem to strive for precision in the numbers, but after reading things on here and elsewhere I’m not sure that things are actually that precise. So many things can effect HR & Power at any given time. To me the San Millan training model offers, simplicity, common sense and makes riding & training fun. Sryke put it very well,“happy hard” or something. The other thing is that we are all different. My threshold is around 230W but as I spend very little time constantly there I don’t really know what my LTHR is. My all day pace is 140-170W at a HR of 125-135W, so I’ve got that as my Z2. DFA/alpha1 testing give me between 190-200W and about 142bpm HR so I’ve set my “Millan Z2” at 170-200 and 135-145bpm. After a 4 hour ride its all a bit in the air due to decoupling, hydration, general fatigue etc. When the weather gets bette I’m going to a 45 min Alpha1 test on the Trainer then go out and do a 2000 or so kJ endurance ride then hop back on the trainer and do the test again just to see what happens. I’ll have to be quite motivated though to get back on the trainer when I’ve got home. My conclusion is that it’s all a bit finger in the air stuff but we do the best we can and try to never stop learning.
Yeah, this is a very interesting idea to do the Alpha 1 testing after return from a longer ride outside, I will definitely plan it…
You have put it quite well, but my problem is that I really need some kind of “speed limiter” like in the car, otherwise I get too easily too excited and the result is “many hours in a non-sense mix of zones” - IF howering around .90 with one result - constatly thrashed body and no gains over seasons…
My traditional style was easy on the flats (with exception of headwind, tailwind, Strava segment, “friendly recovery rides”, car behind… and full gas on each and every hill until oblivion…
So my focus is to chage it - constant high pressure on the flats (but sustainable, hence why I need some metric to guide myself) and force myself to ride easily on the hills…
Isn’t this basically focusing on the two lactate turn-points?
No, ISM doesn’t believe in a single LT2. See his TrainingPeaks blog post on lactate threshold.
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In the context of the article I don’t believe it matters. The point of that table is that years of high volume zone2 training results in greatly improved lactate clearance.
Agree. But he waffles on that a bit. I listened to multiple podcasts to see if he made a firm statement. Seems he is clear that 3 min steps is not good. But sometimes indicates 5 is OK. Then maybe 7 would be better. 10 does seem to be what he would prefer.
I have pretty good data using 5 min steps. Am going to try 10 next go around and see if it is any better. For lactate step testing to define LT1
Lt2, MLSS, etc are another kettle of fishes. I’ve come to think LT2 is not worth talking about as its so hard to define from data.
The take home is the important part and also agree with Brian - a lot of riding in and around LT1, without even worrying about the precise number, is very valuable. It just works. But it’s not exciting and not amenable to 45-60 min workouts. But if you want to really get good at riding a bike for longer durations at higher wattages, just do it.
Absolutely Mark, slow rolling in zone2 is not exciting and the results come slowly but definitely worth it.
Good article. Thank you.
I would say its more so that LT2 is just so hard to define that it’s not something that he’s going to really focus on. His main key, seems to be that the best athletes have high fat burning capabilities AND high lactate consuming capabilities and that this is optimized through training right at LT1, or high Z2 in a 5 zone model.
I thought his other point is that attempting to define LT2 is pointless, you are better off identifying key efforts (like a decisive climb) and using lactate to measure progress on efforts at those target durations. Along the lines of critical power terminology, he suggest an 8 minute decisive climb has a CP-8 power (or PDC-8) and LT-8 lactate. And using LT-8 as another measure of progress.
I’ve never really paid much attention to this chart in i.icu. Really describes it pretty well. With the pandemic full into “happy hard” no man’s land. And after the TdF more refined with plenty of time at LT1 (which is full in tempo power zone for me).
138bpm is my LT1 heart rate. Training volume was pretty much constant in all the years (18-20h).
However, 2017 was a very strong racing season. Across the board in 3 to 12h events. My high end (5min power) was much higher. Interestingly, I never did any vo2max work in 2017. This started in 2018 when I tried polarized. In 2017 I did plenty of threshold (sst & actual threshold).
I guess the main reason for the successfull 2017 season was weight. I was not much lighter but sufficient to make a difference when there is a lot of vertical. And in my races there is always a lot of vertical. Haven’t gotten to that race weight again since then. I tried but failed.
Only had one true race in 2020. A 5h race. Data showed that I had collected so much time at threshold as never before. This was interesting to note because I only rode tempo/no man’s land for most of the season (of course, taking into account how I felt). Almost no threshold or above.
The length of stages has not been clearly specified in any of the interviews.
I think the preferred length is 10 minutes per stage.
In the Scientific Triathlon podcast, San Millan was asked about lactate production vs.
lactate utilization in his test protocol, but the question was not answered.
You can have “low” lactate value because either
a) you produce little lactate
b) you have high clearing ability (ie, you produce more, but you also utilize more)
The question about how lactate clearance / production is measured using his protocol
was never answered.
Similar testing protocol has been used by the Norwegian triathlon team.
Arild Tveiten has explained the protocol in some of his interviews.
One of the consequences of longer stages (in a testing protocol) is that
the “anaerobic threshold” will be at much lower lactate values than you would
have at shorter stages. The threshold can obviously be determined in tens of
different ways. But, it would not be uncommon to see “anaerobic threshold” occurring
at values of around 2.5mmol/L when measured using long stages. This implies that
if you measure your threshold using short stages, your threshold is probably too high
and that you train too hard.