I definitely have seen my heart rate change based on position, eating, drinking, etc. during rides and runs. I guess I figured I needed a proxy for LT1 and dfa alpha 1 seemed as good as any other estimate. It put me in the “I can have a conversation, but the other person knows I am exercising” zone ISM has talked about. Plus, playing around with new technologies and data is just fun, which is what this should be about anyway. I am pretty confident that the heart rate I have been using is below LT1 because I can hold it for a couple hours without any drift.
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Guess I need new reading glasses.
Initially thought topic said Why Riding Mower Make You Faster.
After paging through various opinions, I think I will go mow the lawn now.
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Time to sell the push mower and buy a riding mower!
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That was an interesting thread, and video.
I’m wondering if one important part of the question is how quickly you need to be your fastest self.
“A lot of people think, ‘I only have one hour and a half to train, so I’m gonna go 100% at it’. You might see a fast but not super high improvement, but you gonna plateau. And eventually you’re going to deteriorate because you developed the glycolitic fibers very well, so that turbo looks really good, but eventually you’re not developing the other fibers”
So let’s say, you want to be as fast as possible in the next few months (2 to 6 maybe ?), then a Sweespot base training is best. If you don’t mind a slower but more long term (years ?) and eventually higher progression, then a focus on Z2 is best.
Is that a fair statement based on what ISM is saying ?
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In a TR ride I did, the instructions during the ride asked me to imagine I was in a race. My HR went up between 5-10 beats. I have tested it on other rides and days. Every time the same. I can raise the HR with up to 10 beats. Wish it would work on W too.
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Anxiety and related triggers that impact the body are real.
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I’d be careful of how you characterize ISM Z2 vs Sweetspot, ISM Z2 is ~80% of FTP (based on the discussion above) SS is ~90% of FTP so I wouldn’t call it ‘well away’. Different for sure, but maybe not night and day different.
Time constrained is different than TSS constrained. I consider myself time constrained, and as an example, I had my only available times to workout on Friday night and Saturday morning last week. I did 1hr Vo2 on Friday and 1.5hr threshold on Saturday, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but I completed every interval and rated it very hard. (I had other rides that week as well, but I’m just highlighting I can stack hard rides back to back and be able to recover adequately).
I also think you might be editorializing a bit what ISM says about required ride time for improvement. He said something along the lines of ‘even 1.5hr, 1:15 is enough to see improvement’ I don’t remember him ever mentioning 45min Z2 rides. (I could be wrong about that, but I don’t remember any talk of rides under an hour from ISM).
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“ISM Z2 is ~80% of FTP”. That’s not a statement he makes, but some numbers we made up in that thread, right ?
ISM himself in this video discards basing Z2 on a % of FTP. Preferred method : metabolic test, then by feeling (conversation test).
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Correct, from what I’ve seen, users range between mid 60% and up to low 80 percent! Also, metabolic test is best, followed by talk test. (As far as I understand).
I am sure it also depends a lot on how “realistic” the FTP is the percentage is base on. Another reason, why the percentage is pointless.
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One thing I’ve never understood, and would like to. When you say 1hr of Z5 is that a 1hr workout that has Z5 intervals in it (so maybe like 15-25 minutes spent in Z5) or does this mean 60 minutes spent in Z5 specifically?
The Time in Zone (TIZ) vs Session Goal (SG) vs Hybrid question
I was thinking something along the lines of 1 session with 8x4 intervals == 32 minutes
and another session of 4x8m intervals = 64 minutes in total.
If you then do 9 hours of Z1 / Z2 / low Z3 riding you are doing 10/90. Nicely polarized.
Totally agree with your thoughts. Im older at 57 with NO natural aerobic gifts. With a weak Vo2 over the years I have trained up the intensity SS in particular to compensate. To keep up on our group rides in the past I have to put out much more of effort closer to and above my meager FTP to keep up. 3.5 hour group ride results in 240 to 275 TSS Over the years my FTP plateaus pretty quickly in season but I can hold large percentage of it for longer. Now with age decline the group rides just take too much out of me and it takes too long to recover. I am backing off the intensity ledge and going with a nice long Base season working on those damn mitochondria and leaving the glycolisis stuff for small doses. I am doing Vo2 every 7 to 10 days with very disciplined keep it in the talking range for the rest of my time in saddle.
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And that approach applies well to running. I’ve been using 8020 Endurance training plans for running for some time now.
The older you get the more important it gets to maintain intensity
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I told my son not to get one of these
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From the little I know about this seems to be very important.
Long endurance workouts and then small amounts of very intense sessions to keep the vo2max up.
In light of all of this I’ll be reworking my cycling - the big group ride I did was too fast for me so I’ll be doing a slower one now, possibly on my own, trying to keep to 3+ hours of as constant 60% ftp or so which I think is within the ISM zone 2.
Then a couple of very intense sessions in the week and hopefully a 1-1.5 hour ISM zone 2 as well.
Will be tricky to maintain this but will see what I can manage over a 10 week period.
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Any chance TR is working on polarized triathlon plans? I would be a willing guinea pig to test them. I have several triathlons scheduled for next summer.
I haven’t listened yet, but this should be interesting:
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