Is there an Ideal ratio for time spent in different power zones on an outdoor ride?
Looking at the power zones for a recent ride, it looks like I spent 20% of my time in the Anaerobic zone, 25% in active recovery and 13% in endurance. Does that ratio look off in terms of the Anaerobic zone vs. the other zones?
This was a relatively flat course, it was an event where you tried to complete the most number of laps over 3 hours.
Pretty typical in a crit.
Was this event sort of like a crit?
That would depend on the ride.
Short climbs you hammered up and coasted down? 0.97 IF over 3 hrs, ouch
Looks like you hammered up every climb, coasted down, then hammered again at the bottom to get back into position. It’s totally possible. I’d be dead if I road like that but many hard core racers do it regularly. 
0.97 over 3 hours just means FTP is set too low - which means the zones are off too.
Very good point; given the apparent FTP and NP
It was a challenge ride. Fairly flat. 6.5 mile loop. You tried to complete as many laps as possible over 3 hours. You could draft off other riders. There were fairly large packs sort of racing crit style. I wasn’t with a group so I either rode solo or joined a pace line.
It was semi-flat. I basically hammered down the long straights and cruised through the start/finish line area and the turn around at the other end.
That’s what I was thinking… guess it’s time for another FTP test.
I put a power meter on the bike for a couple of cx races. One flat, one hilly.
Both had similar zone distribution with around 25% of time listed as anaerobic.
I would think CX would have a lot of bursts/sprints and less of an even pace.
Interesting though.
For a 3-hour event, you probably don’t want more than 10-12% of your time to be Anaerobic. I agree with the above posts that, before you can determine your anaerobic threshold you need a correct HTP. If you can ride with a .97 IF for 3 hours, your FTP is almost certainly wrong. IF should be the effort to ride your hardest (ie bending over gasping for breath at the end) for an hour.
Not with stochastic efforts. IF is based on normalized power and you can bump it up with many short efforts over FTP. For the steady state type work, where avg power is close to NP you are right but with many bursts over FTP NP can be very high (check some sprints workouts - couple of sprints during 1h can give you the IF over 1)
If you changed your FTP by a couple of watts, would that really change the distribution much? A lot of those efforts would still be anaerobic. Think on intervals.icu you can set your ride ftp, so you could try it out.
How did your heart rate compare? Was there lots of time in HR anaerobic zone too?
