TR endurance rides too intense?

[genefish]

^^ imo you should be able to do that with no problem

I wonder if 3 intense days is too much and that’s wearing you out?

personally I wouldn’t care what my heart does. I’d just go off RPE. it should be like 3 or 4. maybe 5. my heart rate will go up 10bpm if I ride at 90 cadence vs 80 cadence with the same exact power.

ETA: do you have a good fan going? are you drinking enough?

[Pbase]

I think it’s as simple as the conversation we’ve had so many times around here. Some people believe easy rides should be easy and some people want to know how hard they can make their easy rides.

Personally, I like easy rides easy and hard rides hard. When I start making easy rides moderate, I notice that I have less in the tank on hard days. We’re all different though, so what works for me isn’t going to be what works for everyone else. That’s why you get so many different opinions every time the “how hard should an easy ride be” question pops up.

[grwoolf]

@Pbase

We’re all different though, so what works for me isn’t going to be what works for everyone else. That’s why you get so many different opinions every time the “how hard should an easy ride be” question pops up.

I think it also depends on what type of events/goals an individual focuses on. I prioritize the long stuff, so being about to do .7 - .75IF for 9-12 hours is what these events require. And I find that time to exhaustion for these high endurance efforts isn’t just a function of FTP, it has to be trained. I honestly don’t know how much that training is driving mental vs. physical vs. nutrition/fueling improvements (likely all of them), but I can’t ride at those power ranges for long durations unless I load up on it in my training.

[Joe]

@genefish

I wonder if 3 intense days is too much and that’s wearing you out?

My money is on this.

Joe

[ChrisDe]

You can scrap the 160w reading. 5.5 mmol/L would be above threshold. The readings at 150w and 170w are consistent and probably good. You can probably find 5 different ways to estimate your LT1 from them (first rise from baseline, first inflection point, rise 1 mmol above baseline, 2 mmol…)

Personally, I go with the talk test, so 140bpm would be your zone 2 HR, not 130bpm. It probably doesn’t make a huge difference in term of adaptations, and can probably vary depending on which phase you are (after sweetspot vs after vo2max).

Then it also depends on how hard are the hard days. You need to recover between them, so don’t overdo endurance if it wears you out.

Just my $0.02

[barney76]

@genefish

I wonder if 3 intense days is too much and that’s wearing you out?

Not at all, I’m coping well in the three hard days. The question is not whether I’m overdoing it but rather how hard the endurance days should be and whether TR is allocating me too hard an endurance workout on occasions.

This discussion has been really helpful. The take home for me is probably to keep things easy and change the allocated workout if IF is too high or reduce the intensity, aiming for around 0.6 and don’t get too hung up on heart rate, think RPE and recovery. Any more than intense and I suspect the fatigue might start to build.

[barney76]

@ChrisDe

You can scrap the 160w reading. 5.5 mmol/L would be above threshold. The readings at 150w and 170w are consistent and probably good. You can probably find 5 different ways to estimate your LT1 from them (first rise from baseline, first inflection point, rise 1 mmol above baseline, 2 mmol…)

Personally, I go with the talk test, so 140bpm would be your zone 2 HR, not 130bpm. It probably doesn’t make a huge difference in term of adaptations, and can probably vary depending on which phase you are (after sweetspot vs after vo2max).

Then it also depends on how hard are the hard days. You need to recover between them, so don’t overdo endurance if it wears you out.

Just my $0.02

Helpful thanks. 0.6 IF should keep me mostly below 140 and that passes the talk test so I’ll shoot for that.

[OreoCookie]

@barney76

So before I started using TR and was using zwift I borrowed a lactate meter and did a ramp test and tested myself. I didn’t have enough strips to do a full lactate ramp test but I did find that at 150 watts with a heart rate of 128-132 lactate was 1.6 mmol/l but at 160 (HR 132-136) it was 5.5 mmol/l. So I have made the assumption that I don’t really want to drift over mid 130s in terms of heart rate. The caveat is that testing conditions were poor (on my own in my shed!) and my fitness has probably changed.

Given your description of how you tested, admitting that “testing conditions were poor”, I’d put zero stock in the results. Most importantly, you skipped the heart rate range that is relevant and all you know for sure is that 132 bpm is below your max Z2 heart rate. That’s not saying much and you need not do any lactate tests for that.

A much simpler way is to do it in reverse: do workouts by power and look at typical heart rates in Z2. The numbers you have given sound very similar to mine, and my Z2 heart rate tops out at 138–142 bpm (i. e. heart rate during long stretches at 75 % FTP, after the heart rate has stabilized). On mellow rides, it typically is between 128 bpm and 135 bpm.

Note that your heart rate will drift, i. e. it’ll start out lower and then creep up a little. The amount of creep is also determined by your fitness and your fatigue. E. g. if you add a Z2 workout right after a hard interval workout, your heart rate in Z2 will be higher. In my case it tends to be 10 bpm higher.

@barney76

Helpful thanks. 0.6 IF should keep me mostly below 140 and that passes the talk test so I’ll shoot for that.

I don’t think this is good advice, because that puts you very close to Z1 (recovery). Mellow endurance rides should be 0.62–0.65 IF. If you go a little harder, then 0.65–0.70 IF. Very hard ones get close to 0.75 IF.

If you do a lot of endurance training, your heart rate will decrease at the same IF (on average), so it isn’t necessarily a good barometer on its own, heart rate data needs context.

To get back to your original question: TR tends to keep workout duration constant and thus, needs to ramp intensity to achieve progressive overload. You can compensate for that and replace a shorter, more intense endurance ride with a longer one at lower IF. In terms of RPE, I incur the same fatigue from a 2-hour indoor endurance ride at 0.70+ IF than a 3-hour outdoor ride at 0.63–0.65 IF. You coast quite a bit outdoors (e. g. when navigating traffic and intersections).

[barney76]

@OreoCookie

A much simpler way is to do it in reverse: do workouts by power and look at typical heart rates in Z2. The numbers you have given sound very similar to mine, and my Z2 heart rate tops out at 138–142 bpm (i. e. heart rate during long stretches at 75 % FTP, after the heart rate has stabilized). On mellow rides, it typically is between 128 bpm and 135 bpm.

75% FTP would take me over 190 watts. I’ve not checked to be honest but I’d be surprised if a constant effort at that power would be under 150. It would be a good test though.