Take your outdoor ride, check coasting time and you have the conversion. It depends on the terrain and how many stop lights you have. But yes, this constant pressure for couple of hours is quite demanding.
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It’s so hard to read all the posts. Sorry. However, I think there is sth wrong with the sweetspot based training plans with at least medium volume. Medium volume for me it’s not a medium volume plan in TR but plans with 8-10/12h a week. Higher than 10/12h there are high volume plans. I don’t have any science evidences and I don’t want to discuss it but I want to share my experience. I’m TR user for a long time. Firstly I worked with LV plans and it worked great for me. Then I added some volume just adding a few z2 hrs to the LV plan and I noticed constant progression. I have built a lot of watts that time. Then, after 2-3 seasons I switched to MV TR plans and - again - it worked great. The same scenario: to build volume for my long events I added a few z2 hrs to the plan to reach 8-12h a week. On that level I had to add extra recovery weeks according to schema: 2 weeks on/ 1 recovery week. But I was be able to absorb the training load. Next season (in 2018) I tried HV for the first time. I was just crushed after a few weeks! I had to get back to MV. After 2020 of unstructured high volume riding (at least for me: 550h in a year but because of injury in 2018, surgeries and rehailitation I got back at the bike in the April’19) I tried HV again I again I failed. I’m now in the point where I have to get back for a few weeks (2-3 weeks) to recover and then I will continue with different approach: mid volume or different plan. To be precise I can easly finish every workout in HV plan and I don’t feel bad at all. But after a few weeks of the plan I feel worst and I notice significat drop in my numbers. Even after some recovery. I have worked with a few coaches in my life (actually I work with the coach now just to do a proper recovery after HV plan :)) and all of them say the same: 4-5 times a week of treshold/sweetspot intervals is just too much to handle in a long term. I beleve there are some people who can handle it but most of us just can’t. So, at least for me, If I want to increase the volume (and I need it to my 100-160miles events) you have to adjust the intensity and do more than 2-3 hard seasions (incl. a lot of sweetspot training) a week is a bad idea.
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I took a look back on intervals.icu at my riding distribution for 2020. Pretty much pyramidal (not sure what it’s titled threshold - as it’s not what I’d call threshold).
I think it would be interesting to see others distribution - and see breakdown between polarized, SS and pyramidal.
As a note, my Z2 upper boundary is 77% of max HR; Z4 upper boundary is 91% max HR.
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I’m not on intervals (cuz not strava active) but my 2020 wko breakdown:
3-zone model:
Z1: ~83%
Z2: ~10%
Z3: ~7%
5-zone model:
Z1+2: ~77%
Z3+4: ~20%
Z5+: ~3%
So…mostly kinda POL but also a tad bit PYR.
I only averaged ~30min of SS/wk.
Maybe that’s why I had my best power season ever. 
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that 3-zone looks pyramidal to my eyes…
2020 saw 342 hours cycling, my 2nd highest after 383 hours in 2016. Hoping to hit 400 hours in 2021.
3-zone model:
- 74% in Z1 (z1+z2)
- 22% in Z2 (z3+z4)
- 4% in Z3 (z5+z6+z7)
Definitely pyramidal. Started approaching all the power PRs of 2016 and 2017, so I think my training is on the right track.
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Following strictly TR mid volume plans all of 2020 until November, then high volume to finish off the year. Puts me at Pyramidal:
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@bbarrera @Captain_Doughnutman
What’s the upper end of your Z2 - either HR as % of max or power as % of FTP?
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From EVOQ:
Seiler finds that elite athletes are training…pure time…90% in zone 1, very little in zone 2, and 10% in zone 3
90 vs 83
?? vs 10
10 vs 7
It’s a POL cake with a PYR icing.
Definitely Threshold, well if you agree with how .icu groups Z3+Z4
To be Pyramidal that Z3+Z4 would need to be nearly half what it is (somewhere around 20 - 35%)
Mine for ALL 2020
657 hours total (not counting walking, body weights and a few free weights sessions)
Note there is 115 hours of running in there.
Running - 115 hours
A lot of which is Zone 1 & 2, and some Z3.
If fact its 79:21 with
The 79% is mainly Z1, half the duration of Z1 is Z2.
The 21% is made up of 20% Z3 and 1% Zone 4/5
Cycling - 542 hours
All activities in Intervals.icu
Here’s my contribution. A total of 540h this year, incl. some running and strength training.
My power zone pic will unfortunately not provide any valuable data since my FTP, and hence all zones, increased so much during the year (and intervals.icu only use most recent)…
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I really need to use intervals more, there’s a lot of great info available here. Knew my distribution was not 80/20 but it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought, although TB I - III helped even things out a bit the last couple months.
When it comes to TID, there is no bad or good, there just is.
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My first year of cycling is done so these are my values. I have pushed my FTP by 112W since the start and have 60 min tte so it served its purpoise.:
Now almost every week is pyramidal as ctl is 85 and this distribution is not possible to mantain not to mention I see a lot of benefits from Z2 rides.
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I guess “threshold” in intervals.icu is the closest definition to Sweet Spot. Makes sense, since I do a decent amount of tempo/sweet spot.
Sweetspot isn’t a TID.
The only defined TIDs are polarized, threshold, and pyramidal.
Training that includes more than a modicum of sweetspot can’t be polarized, but it could be either threshold or pyramidal.
IOW, intervals.icu is forging their own path here (and clearly just confusing people in the process).
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Wrong.
Seiler finds that elite athletes are training…pure time…90% in zone 1, very little in zone 2, and 10% in zone 3
POL can include every intensity.
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Do you know the meaning of the word “modicum”? (It doesn’t appear that you do.)
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