I thought I’d share a fail at outdoor Z2 a few weeks ago. I found a route on Komoot that looked like a nice distance but was unfamiliar to me. My downfall was essentially enjoying myself too much on the gravel sections.
The points that derailed Z2:
A flooded road to start (didn’t look deep until my feet started getting wet)
Loads of blind descents on narrow roads
A sawtooth elevation profile
11km of gravel that I somehow thought my 28c tyred road bike was perfect for
You can see the section at around 02:10:00 to 02:30:00 where I remember that I was planning on doing a Z2 ride .
I am new to trying to stay in zone outside and i was pleased with this effort. We stopped for wardrobe changes a few times. My ftp isn’t high, so my zone is smaller than others in this thread and i sometimes need to go into tempo to get up some hills, but this route isn’t steep.
Ride I did today, not my best effort but not bad and had to add some power in a few traffic situations and take it easy a few times. This is basically one of the flattest routes I can take where I don’t have to ride through a lot of traffic.
Peaks in middle section are due out-of-saddle slow cadence stomps to relax leg muscles little.
According to intervals.icu, VI (variability index) was 1.04, which is usual (1.03 - 1.05 range)
I’m pretty fortunate that I bought a house in a development that is about 8 minutes from a 7 mile Lake Loop with only 2 stop signs and rolling hills. Great Steady State Training Grounds! Pretty easy to keep my AP and NP very close. My High Z2 is 200
This is the usual business park loop that is of course on a hill. The elevation is annoying but I’m on the inside of the loop so I rarely have to brake or slow for cars and there are no lights or stop signs at all
This ride was 58% Z2. The last few minutes of the ride involve going up hill in traffic so I tend to push it pretty hard.
I don’t think some of my erg rides look as good as other peoples outdoor rides. I also don’t know for sure what my zone 2 is, but I think both of these are intended to be in that range overall.
This is the best ride I have had as far as consistent power outside.
I think I need to stop using erg and start practicing keeping a steady power. My original thought was if I keep using erg my pedaling will eventually adjust to being smoother, but I think since erg adjusts for me I am enforcing a bad habit. That’s a bummer. I think that is were riding on zwift (non-erg) is good training for outdoors rather than an indoor workout solely riding for fitness advantages. Or I guess at least mixing TR and zwift/rouvy etc. Well that’s the opinion of someone new to cycling and ok physical condition at best.
Here’s last night’s Pettit attempt. Aside from stopping at an intersection twice and turning around on the out and back route, this turned out really really well. Better than expected actually.
This was my endurance ride, its not 100% Z2 as it drifts into tempo. I recreated the indoors TR workout in TP so I had something more interesting to follow for circa 75mins. I tend to train on a circular road course that is fairly flat but I wanted back so I started it early in the park foot/cyclepath and you can see a lot of coasting there and a few bursts at the temporary traffic lights and roundabouts (traffic circles). But on the whole I think I stuck to the workout well, helped by the fact that the only real descents were mostly into a strong headwind. I’ve no idea if the left side power meter makes it more jerky or its just me thats unsmooth.
I don’t think the Z2 attempts are an accurate representation for those who didn’t post TIZ.
Below was a ride I did a year ago specifically focusing on trying to stay in Z2 power, looking at my head unit every 5-10 seconds, spinning out on descents and going super slow on climbs for almost 4 hours.
The first and last 25 min are through the city. The middle 3+ hours in on a relatively flat highway. I did succeed at keeping Z2 Hr for ~95% of the ride (which I’d consider a victory) the power however, not so much. I think nothing can beat Z2 erg mode for 2 hours or less on the trainer, but anything over that, for me personally, you just have to cut your losses and stick to the road.
I wanted to make sure I kept it easy today after a big ride yesterday, so here’s my latest Z2 attempt. Average of 200W and NP 202W…but looks like I only spent 60.5% of the ride in Z2 per TR.
So I found the flattest possible nearby route and tried a proper Zone 2 ride yesterday morning, focusing on HR, but keeping an eye on power. HR was very comfortably in Zone 2, with almost half the time spent in Zone 1, but power was a bit all over the place, averaging into tempo/Zone 3.
I’m curious what that means: I wonder if my max HR is set too high, maybe, but the number itself feels pretty accurate, and lines up with both history and Garmin. Is my FTP maybe set too low? Just individual performance vs. aggregate averages?
For short z2 rides, I just try to pick routes without too many stops or steep descents that require coasting. Here is a typical z2 ride near my house. Other than a few descents where I have to coast, it’s pretty easy to stay in Z2 without much thought. I’m not a guy who likes to crush it up hills, so keeping Z2 on steep-ish climbs isn’t typically a problem. This route still has about 2k feet of climbing in 30 miles and some steep pitches, you just have to have the right gearing and discipline. I’ll nudge into a little tempo at times, but almost never hit threshold or higher.
Here’s a longer training ride. My focus on the day was mainly just to enjoy the ride, but I still consider it solid Z2 work and I try to stay in that zone most of the day.
fwiw I don’t really stress about staying PRECISELY in Z2 on my endurance rides. iirc, most of the studies done on polarized training use the 3-zone model and “endurance rides” are in Zone 1 (of 3) which is Z1 + Z2. Riding outside you’re gonna get some Z3+ mixed in there. I focus on getting an X hour/mile long ride in the saddle at a pace that doesn’t destroy the upcoming week’s Z4/Z5 interval sessions. The key (imo) is making sure the Z4/Z5 interval sessions are not suffering. I can spare a decent amount of Z3+ in my endurance rides without interfering with high intensity work. It helps that I dump all my endurance work onto a single day and then can have a day or two off completely the bike before threshold sessions.
I went out this morning with the aim of a z1/2 recovery ride out and back to a local cafe (circa 36miles round) but the sun came out and I ended up taking the long way back (another 26miles). It was surprisingly easy to stay in Z2 after the cafe. I only use a single sided pm so I had to ignore when the PM was saying 26w (10%) when I was leaning to the other side
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