How long? Longer than your other rides, and increasing in duration over stacking training blocks. Is your current longest ride 2 hours? Then do 3 hours for your long ride. Do you train 20 hours per week? Then your long ride should probably be between 4-6 hours.
How much to eat? At least 90g of carbohydrate per hour. There is no point in “fat burning” on these rides. You will feel much better if you eat. You will perform better if you eat. You will recover better if you eat. How many times do people have to get this wrong? All current research suggests that fuelling appropriately leads to better performance and faster improvements. There is no award for burning a higher percentage of fat to carbohydrate at a given intensity. Unless you race in the imaginary “keto-category” where no calories are allowed during the race, you should train with plenty of carbohydrate. Mechanistic observations have little to do with performance improvements. “Oh look this guy barely ate to he burned more fat during his long ride” - sure, but long term, this doesn’t lead to a performance improvement. I don’t care if you burn 100% fat at FTP or 10%, if my FTP is higher, I’m going to drop you. Likewise, if your FTP is higher, you’re gonna drop me, regardless of how much fat you burned in the process. (Obviously there are other factors to racing, just wanted a crude example)
No, sorry. I meant within the week, I do two interval sessions (‘workout’) and one 3hr long ride, the rest of the week being easy endurance. I’d say I average 8-9hours per week more often than doing either 7 or 10.
For example, interval workout on Wednesday and Saturday, long ride on Sunday, the rest as easy riding. Something like that
In a round about way, yes. But you don’t get fit at an accelerated rate by eating during rides. You should eat during rides, but it’s not direct like this suggestion. Eat more = more adaptations or faster adaptations. That is what it sounds like you’re saying. Doesn’t work that directly.
Yeah, this is the part that is either misstated or simply not correct. There is VERY MUCH an award for burning a higher percentage of fat to carbohydrate at a given intensity. How you might train that is debated, misunderstood, etc. And the fact that carb and fat burn happens at pretty much every intensity has also been demonstrated. But make no mistake: the goal is to burn as high a % of fat as possible across any intensity.
(@Bbt67 mistakingly responded directly to you. meant to simply agree LOL)
Directionally, I don’t think COuzens is too far off the mark. Where it falls apart, IMO, is that he doesn’t start to scale it down as you hit higher weekly volume. Suggesting someone do a 9 hour ride if they are doing 21 hours is kinda silly.
If you are doing that kind of volume, you are almost certainly getting a lot of Z2 work in, so advocating a 9 hour ride doesn’t make much sense. OTOH, at the lower volumes, it makes a lot of sense. If you average 7 hours a week, then a 3 hour long ride seems reasonable. It might be a little longer than necessary, but a good goal to shoot for.
For running, many advocate a 3:2:1 approach…Couzen’s recommendation is essentially the “3” portion of that strategy. (For those unfamiliar with a 3:2:1 running strategy, google the “BarryP Running plan”)
Very similar situation for me. I’m about 7hrs per week in the winter, 10/week in the summer. I’ve recently (3 weeks ago), started doing a longer zone 2 ride on Sundays…3-4hrs. I’ll probably push this to 5 tops by the end of summer. Any more than that and it would definitely cease to be enjoyable.
I’m at 3.5watt/kg, but pretty big at 185lbs. I’ve been at the very pointy end of cat 4 cx races - I aspire to be cat 3 fodder this year with a more sustainable training load and the addition of some longer endurance rides.
Suppose I eat 90g carbs per hour on every bike ride. My ftp is 400, w/kg is 4. I burn primarily carbs at sweet spot +. You are keto, your ftp is 280, w/kg is 4. You burn primarily fat (or 100% fat, if that is possible under keto?) at all zones.
How is burning a hypothetical 100% fat at FTP going to help you when 280 watts is my endurance pace?
This is a key distinction to the original post you are responding to, which said at a given intensity.
OP’s point - in my view - is that eating carbs will lead to faster improvement. So if you burn more fat at FTP than I do, it won’t lead to a better race outcome if I have a significantly higher FTP.
4 hour ride every week for me except rest week, volume somewhere around 12-16hrs. I think I read somewhere 4-5hrs is the sweet spot and you’re getting less gains after that. @brendanhousler mentioned in a video he’s now doing less mega rides and more frequent 4ish hour rides if I remember right.
Given that you called me out for having a fundamental misunderstanding to the point being discussed - I would like to do the same for this quote.
@Calle is clearly talking about race performance and awards. There are no races that measure % of fat burned at FTP to make up the podium. Which is what I was referencing in the comment you called me out on.