I think not. Look at pros on Strava. Their long rides are low Z2 at most. Sometimes I see them do 7 hour rides with like a 180 watt average and these people have a 400+ watt ftp. Endurance training is basically “if you ride long enough the tank will be empty no matter the intensity”.
From what I understand they aim to stay under their first ventalory threshold(this is where the talking pase statement comes from). This is where the body burns mostly fat. And they eat next to nothing on the bike. 4 hours no breakfast and only a piece of pie or pancakes halfway (as stated by Lauren’s ten Dam). Maybe a bar is they feel a bonk coming.
Getting back to the original purpose of this post.
After a few weeks of training with tempo rides I can say that now Z2 feels much easier then tempo.
Here is what I think to be the reason.
When looking at the adaptation chart tempo has the best ability to increase glycogen storage over time.
This is basically what allows you to ride longer with the same power output.
My first long rides of the year was about 2100 KJ’s and I was spend.
My tempo rides were 1500 KJ’s to start with and over the course of a few weeks went up 2000 KJ’s with less and less food. Even no food or mix at the end.
When pros train base they do not empty the tank al the way but they do almost empty the tank 4-5 times a week. This is what my Tempo block did. I almost emptied tank 4-5 times week. Off course tempo does all the other good stuff you want to. For a 12 hour training protocol to build base I really like it!
Padabing padaboom BIG base building with tempo rides. Or at least that is my hypotheses.
but how do you know that at least some of those rides do not also include sections where the power is higher but the HR stills tays lowish. With a 400 watt FTP a person would probably also have a pretty high vt1. Think of a marathoner as an extreme example. Their VT1 would be pretty high, max speed not that high. In a three zone model they would have a tiny zone 2 because of how big zone 1 is.
That is true, that is why vt1 can only be reliably measured in a lab. But I still find in interesting that a pro like Cees Bol does endurance rides with a lower average power then me. So they train on completely different training matrix then us with our Coggan training zones.
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Not quite. Pros rides do not adhere 100% to any single zone.
This has been discussed and illustrated ad nauseum here:
