first 2years: TR Sweetspot HV plans (9-12h/w) but over summer burned out / lost motivation twice, in May and August
3rd year: switched to TR Traditional HV plan (10-14h/w, occasionally up to 18h/w) that had less intensity but still lot of higher side of Z2. It was much better but I still lost motivation in August
last 2 years using HR cap with volume based progression. Haven’t lost motivation since then. Also, during peak hours/week periods (summer), I am doing only single high intensity workout
Learning this individual HR cap number is pretty time consuming. Typically every single high intensity Z2 ride is easy, it takes months to lose motivation or burn out and when I start seeing signs, it is already too late.
As you see, I keep repeating about “losing motivation”. This is really about disturbing nervous system / hormonal balance too frequently. Your post with link describes it pretty well.
EDIT: I am still taking recovery weeks, but I am riding every day. Recovery day is something like 2h at IF 0.4. But those really high volume days are only during summer. Over winter I am still following mostly TR General Base + VO2max/anaerobic block.
Your 80% of LTHR cap lines up very well with my own numbers, the majority of my time being safely below the cap by 5-10%. I’m experimenting with heavy volume (at least compared to my normal volume) so 18 hours is still fatiguing with 2 vo2 sessions mixed in, but I think I’m coming around. I would love to hit 24 hours…
Your experience with burnout even with lower volume resonates. Too much intensity, not enough easy endurance. I think many if not most are stuck in this pattern…
One good way to increase consistent volume is using volume-based block periodization:
1st week push volume as much as can (even double if possible)
2nd week go below your usual volume but not too much
3rd week go high again, not necessarily as high as during 1st week
4th is recovery week
Repeating this couple times pushes fatigue resistance really far, plus increases TTE.
Once you get your initial adaptations from this, it remains with you very long time i.e. you can return to lower volume / higher intensity relatively easily and still be able to do very long rides from time to time.
For me, an average week will have maybe 2x2-3hr endurance rides and 1x4-6hour ride. But the IF for both are the same (~.6-.65). I could definitely do more on the shorter rides but they’re usually before or after an intense day so I’m either tired or don’t want to mess up my workout the next day.
I watch both Heart Rate and Power Numbers but would say most of the time around .65-.70 IF.
Monday I felt really good and road for 3 hours with 55% of ride in Tempo and rest in zone 2 resulting in .77 IF. However, my heart rate stayed in zone 1 and 2, with my average heart rate on the low end of zone 2. My HR started to drift up the last 30-40 minutes to mid zone 2 and I believe my decoupling was just over 2%.
When I had more free time to ride and rode longer, I used to keep it right at around 0.6. I also used to live where it was mostly flat, so that was pretty easy to do. I’m not in dad mode and in a hilly area, so more like 0.65 for my hour of freedom
Problem is that IF depends on your FTP being set correctly and doing a bunch of z2 rides in the base season without any testing efforts is not going to let AI FTP detection set your ftp correctly.
You could be rolling around after taking xmas off with the freshness + form to be able to do PR power in a 40 mins effort and have the recent actual form that suggests your FTP is 30-50w lower than your summer peak.
That is why the most important thing is to treat z2 as a lactate zone and use RPE of lactate as the measure.
You ask “for those of you doing a lot of Zone 2” - well, this is me. I pretty much only ride Z2, as that aligns with my goals. I have been pretty consistent over the last ~3 years, building from 8h per week to ~16h. At the start, my endurance IF was ~65% FTP; now Z2 is a wide band between 65% and 90% FTP. To put some numbers on it, my FTP is around 300, and LT1 is about 270W. I tend to hit the upper end of Z2 twice per week, and the middle/lower end for the rest of the time.
I think the sessions at LT1 have helped me push up LT1 (unsurprisingly) from ~240 to ~270 over the last 18-24 months. My standard days, 2h at 210-220W (or 70-75% IF) feel easy, but there is pressure on the pedals. I really don’t subscribe to Z1 or easy-days-are-easy. But that’s just me.
I wouldn’t call LT1 at .9IF “unsurprising”, it’s pretty damn impressive. That’s rare air and not typical even for folks who do a lot of high volume aerobic work. Is that LT1 being determined in a lab/blood test or based on something else? The best I’ve tested is low/mid 80’s and I consider it a strength for me. My ride today was ~4 hours at .85IF, was definitely riding on the edge.
I went to the lab 3 times per year for a few years, and tested gas exchange, lactate, breathing rate, etc. We set LT1 based on first rise in lactate; for me that was about 1.8mmol/l, but for me, it also corresponds with the simple talk-test. My day-to-day measure of whether I’m still in Z2 is to record a short video and try to talk; I find it surprisingly effective.
I didn’t manage to get to the lab in 2024, so I’m thinking about getting a lactate meter so I can check, but tbh, after enough lab visits, I think I feel pretty confident about LT1 now.
That’s also really impressive. 4h at 260W (0.85IF) would be hard for me too. I think that when you have invested a lot of time in developing Z2, and it becomes a higher IF, riding at Z2 becomes hard. 5 years ago, when my Z2 was 180-200W, holding that wasn’t too bad. But if I tried to ride at 220W, it was clearly tempo, and I didn’t last long! As my power at LT1 increases, so does energy demand and heat output, and these put a challenge on how long I can ride at LT1. I think the max I could hold onto LT1 is 3.5-4h, and that would be race-type effort.
+1 on this, particularly the heat. Pretty easy for me to chug along in the heat around .7IF, but cooling becomes a bottleneck at ~.8 or higher (even with good heat training). And I can fuel better in in cool temps well, so heat can be a double whammy.
My max HR is around 182, threshold at 162 & 300W, LT1 at maybe 140 & 270W, but (as mentioned by @grwoolf above) there’s heat and calorie burn which drive HR drift a bit. So I’d typically start a 2-3h ride at 138-140, but gradually drift up. I really try to keep cardiac drift to less than 5%, often its between 1% and 3.5%. I used to have a firm HR cap at 145, but over time/as I got fitter at Z2, I sneaked my HR cap up to 149.
I have to say, though, that I don’t really subscribe to using % of FTP to set training zones - for me, at least, its complete rubbish. I have concentrated on getting my Z2 upper and lower limits right, and understanding how I think it should feel. I see HR as a guide to how hard my body found a particular session, and I try to work out what might be driving it (stress, fatigue, temperature, fuelling & hydration, etc). Hope that helps.
Interesting, my HR can tend toward drifting down over a long ride. I think it’s because I am normally stressed I might die/get lost/be tired/fail to execute my overly zealous plans at the start and then by the end I’m like, meh, that was fine.
Last weekends zone 2 ride was 3.5 hrs at .77 IF. Today’s zone 2 ride was .66 IF for 5.5 hrs. Todays ride felt much harder, but likely due to me not doing many rides past 4 hrs and it also being 70 degrees vs 35 degrees.
I have my first 100 mile gravel race this month (2, actually) so mostly just looking to pace properly and not blow up at the end.