Apologies if I missed a thread on this in the forum (I did search!) but I’m looking for z2 workouts in the endurance library which aren’t too high IF to take me outside of z2. I’m looking for a workout of 1.5 to 2 hours with a consistent IF around 60%. Many of the workouts I look at go up to IF of 70% or 75% which I think is too high for z2 long workouts
The best I have found so far is Andrews -1 which is 90 mins and Takazuma (120 mins) however don’t like the periods in these workouts which dip down to c.55% IF because they are lower progression level and (perhaps wrongly) I feel like I’m missing out on adaptations and benefits from sitting at 60-65 during these periods. So I usually manually up the power to 110% during these lower IF periods.
Are there any workouts out there I’m missing? Or should I just try to chill and embrace the lower IF periods?
You’re not missing out on anything. Just imagine you’ve come to a bit of road or trail with a beautiful view and you’re taking your foot off the gas for a while to enjoy it.
TR has a huge library with tons of workouts like the one you are looking for. But that is different from what will be recommended — and for good reason.
Long Z2 rides are not meant to be easy workouts, and there is benefit to pushing your IF towards the top of Z2. If you want an endurance workout, you should definitely avoid anything below 60 % FTP, then you’d be in Z1 meant for recovery.
What you can do to some degree is trade intensity for duration. When I had more opportunity to ride outdoors, I’d go for a mellower 3-hour endurance ride at roughly 0.62–0.65 IF instead of a more intense indoor workout. If you stay indoors, my feeling is that this trade-off isn’t worth it as most people find long indoor workouts mentally fatiguing.
Madness??
Fitness gains are fitness gains and your body doesn’t care whether you rode outdoors or indoors. The fact that you don’t coast indoors, but coast (depending on the terrain, traffic, roads, etc.) a significant amount means you are more efficient indoors.
However, most of us prefer riding outdoors if they can, but that’s quite different from calling it madness. If you are more consistent, because you are looking forward to an outdoor ride, then it’ll be a net benefit. Moreover, outdoors you can practice things that you can’t learn indoors, cornering, pacing and the like.
When I am outdoors, I pace by heart rate, because heart rate changes more slowly while due to changing wind conditions and the like, power can (where I live) fluctuate wildly (think +/- 30 W) when I ride a road lined with trees and such.
TrainerRoad’s library includes many endurance workouts that fit this range, though some include lower-intensity segments (~55% FTP) to help manage fatigue and extend duration. These dips aren’t a problem as they’re part of the design to keep the ride sustainable, especially indoors. However, if they feel too easy for you, it’s totally fine to manually bump those sections up to maintain a more consistent aerobic stimulus.
That said, as @OreoCookie mentioned, there is a benefit to riding at the upper end of Z2 (~65–70% FTP) and may be recommended by your training plan as needed. Not every endurance workout is meant to be easy; some are meant to push you. However, I do see you’re on a 3-day training plan (all intervals), so if you are adding in endurance workouts, staying at 60% IF will be wise for fatigue. The idea is to recover between interval sessions so you can hit them with high quality.
I’ll admit that I’m not sure I totally understand this post.
The post could potentially be read to imply that they shouldn’t do endurance rides inside at all and that they should just go and ride outside - but I dont think thats the point you were making?
If it’s just that the OP shouldn’t worry too much about staying at an exact power target for the entire workout then I can totally buy into that
Yeah, I’d agree with that, too, although that’s clearly not how I read @Bbt67’s post. However, outdoor workouts (including TR’s) give power ranges to adhere to not fixed power targets for obvious reasons.
Yep - only thing i’d add is that it can be benificial to get the average power and NP for outside rides to be as equal as possible by limiting coasting and surges so that the original aims of the workout are met and it stays an endurance ride throughout.
I think the “don’t worry too much about a few watts here and there”’message is clear. A few watts/ calories missed if at 55% not 60% aren’t going to move the needle or the adaptations.
I agree that the benefits of endurance work inside (no traffic lights and downhills or cars) make it worthwhile. Also it gives a chance to catch up on YouTube or watch sport which is time efficient too!
One other thought - has anyone seen research cited around the best % of FtP to perform z2 rides at? Ie is my original thinking of 60% being good and 70-75% verging on being too intense correct?
Thanks for the reply. I would use the z2 as replacements for a hard workout when I feel the body is not up to a hard session.
You’re right that I am doing 3 days per week on the bike but I also do 3 days of full body weight sessions (90 mins and usually 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps on horizontal push, horizontal pull, vertical push, vertical pull, squat and dead lift followed by one set of Hypertrophy on the aforementioned movement patterns) so I sometimes need to scale back the intensity and swap z2 in for an interval session.
If you have a Garmin headunit, you can download a Variability Index (NP/AP) field so you don’t have to do math, look at multiple fields at once, or use up multiple fields on your screen:
I guess a good start point would be, an intensity at which, at your current volume, you can do your endurance rides at an RPE of 4 or 5, recover well, and still absolutely nail your interval sessions.
This probably is very individual. You can think of two concepts: minimum effective dose versus maximal recoverable dose. It’s a balancing act and sometimes you need one and other times you need the other and most of the times you may not even know the exact point from which a stimulating dose begins.
And you need to think both of those concepts in combination with your interval sessions. Overall, with dedicated training you want to give your body a stimulus, recover, progress and repeat. So in combination with harder interval sessions I would keep the z2 sessions more on the easy side and concentrate on nailing the interval days (as @Helvellyn said). And there are other times where I do those upper end, longish z2 sessions, which feel hard and exhausting in the end, but then I think of those sessions as hard days (and would not put hard interval days on top before being recovered again).
And sometimes there are those young or genetically gifted that can do week after a week, combining hard days and upper z2 days without burning out but I would be very cautious with that approach.
That’s very sensible advice: prioritize your interval workouts and remember that long endurance rides are meant to be hard workouts. Hence, they need to be factored into the effort/recovery equation.
Another good point
IMHO the question becomes relevant for longer durations (at least 2–3 hours, depending on intensity). For shorter endurance workouts (<= 2 hours), especially indoors, I’d probably err on the side of intensity and ramp with intensity as opposed to workout duration. In my experience, a 2-hour indoor workout at 0.70–0.75 IF feels equivalent to a 3ish-hour outdoor ride at 0.63–0.65 IF. I wouldn’t go below 0.60 IF, unless it is meant to be a recovery ride (which is capped to 60 minutes).
Plus, you may want to train for long Z2 efforts if that is what you need (= specificity). If you are a pro cyclist and spend a lot of time during long races doing Z2, you want to be good at high Z2, low tempo.
Quick update to this. I continue to use Andrews-1 as my go to z2 workout. Sometimes I’ll boost the lower intensity “rest” intervals up to around 60% ftp as this gets me in the area I want to be. I created a custom two hour 60% workout but haven’t tried it out yet.
