Many thanks guys. It’s made it a lot clearer. Looks like I might have wasted 3 years or so a few years back doing a lot of fasted rides.
This isn’t seasonal. It is a noticeable change in my upper legs over 8 months of consistent zone2 training. I’m tall and don’t have particularly large legs, not like guys that built leg size via squatting. Mine are on the right side of this pic from last week:
Back in 16-17 my weekly cycling was 6.75 hours/week vs 7.75 hours/week now, but much higher intensity training back then (avoided zone2 in 16-17). FTP peaked back then at 280 vs ~260 now without having done many intervals to raise FTP. Legs are larger, gained over 2" between then and now, and gained almost 1" after I stopped heavy lifting for hypertrophy in August 2020. Those are the numbers, biggest difference between then and now is more z2 (and tradeoff is more time per week). And I’m four years older at fifty nine now, not exactly an age known for peaking athletically 
Elevated signals for endurance adaptions seem to be the result of how low you end a session, not how low you are during the session
In that case it would seem that starting with reduced glycogen levels would indeed be beneficial. You would only need to ride for (say) 2 hours instead of (say) 4 hours to end the session equally “low”
Hey folks, I too have been doing a lot of zone 2 work, I’m a distance runner and I try to get in two zone 2 sessions + one interval session every eight days or so. My max heart rate is around 193bpm, and I tend to do my zone 2 sessions between 160-163bpm, which puts me right at 1.8mmol, as measured by my Lactate Plus monitor.
My question is more around easy running though: I’ve found through measurement that if I’m averaging 145bpm on a run, my lactate levels are consistently at 1.5mmol. This seems way too high, despite 75% of max heart rate being considered in the “easy” zone by most coaches. For people who train by lactate, what do you do your easy runs at? Should your lactate levels be higher than baseline (say ~0.9mmol) on/after an easy run?
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Starting low requires withholding carbs from the previous session. I see this critical, too many indications for a negative impact on bone health. May be an option for a 2-a-days (which I do often myself) but everything longer may lead to underfuelling and its associated negative consequences. This seems like chasing the last 0.5% but missing out the other 99.5%. If time limited I’d rather up the the intensity and recover well after each session. And do this more frequently. In the end there is no substitute for volume. Empty your tank frequently, reload it frequently. And this is just one mechanism for why volume works. You have the mechanical aspect as well. It’s simply the number of contractions and the associated shear stress in vascular system that contributes as well.
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One can’t stress this enough!
Of course we are all motivated and we are interested in training principles and what kind of training / stimulus may be optimal for us / for our situation / for our current status and aim. And - a week has so much more hours than we train (and work) and so in our recovery time we read and write in forums like this one here.
That’s all fine as long one doesn’t lose him or herself in trying out all these things on a repeated basis every two days and to chase some gospel. No - it should purely be used for entertaining ourselves and get information and new impulses all the while we trust the process and just ride quite a lot. And do it consistently. Don’t chase fads… ^^
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Just seen this on Twitter that seems to indicate that in certain circumstances, training fasted may give the same or slightly better results than carbing up. The study was in active but untrained individuals so would be of more interest to anyone starting training for the first time.
Hummm, interesting…
I recently started to play with HRV Logger (plus Polar H10) and measured my LT1 at roughly 212-215W (sigh, much much lower than you…) at 131bpm and it felt like work at the higher end, just like you, quite a job for the lungs!
I wanted to verify it on the road a bit and I did a 4h ride on a rolling terrain with aim to shoot at just below 200W and at least 100rpm, the higher the better. And maybe that was the combination of both at the same time, constant watts close to the LT1 ceiling and higher cadence than usual, but after 3h, it started to feel labourus and I was rather fatigued.
I don´t have a lactate testing (besides, what do you use please?) so I was checking Alpha 1 levels on my phone in the HRV Logger - it stayed nicely above 0.75 for most of the time, except some steeper climbs in the end of the ride…
All in all, I think this model is really usable as a very high Z2 training and I will try to gradualy add time… hoping I am not going to dig a bit too deep 
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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.
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On Forerunner 945 there is directly section of Graphical - and there you can choose HR…which is pretty nice…
And on my Edge 520 I have “Heart rate zones chart” field from Connect IQ…
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.
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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…
Okey, so after using HRV4Training since 27/4 and a small bump my HRV nosedives… so if my prognostic trajectory is well placed, I should be dead by the 18/5… okey guys, it was a pleasure, see you on the other side 
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Isn’t this basically focusing on the two lactate turn-points?
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No, ISM doesn’t believe in a single LT2. See his TrainingPeaks blog post on lactate threshold.
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