Somewhat like Crosshair, my on-bike the fueling needs have dropped to the floor. Two hours before a mid-week afternoon workout I have a bowl of white rice and some other carbs. Then a couple bananas at the start, don’t notice an impact when we are out of bananas. Then 2 to 2.5 hours and I eat some “interval sandwiches” 
(no fuel, intervals sandwiched between endurance). Or pure endurance and toss in some late ride efforts. No performance issues. Eat after the ride.
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Does for me. Be sure and continue to work short power if you need some punch.
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I have been doing mostly Zone 2 with some sweetspot / threshold (5 min peaks are sweet spot, 15 min peaks definitely take me deep into threshold), but did an outside ride today… and felt much stronger once I’d warmed up. Overall, 85km today 9% more average power (blunt measure I know) but 1kmh faster and slightly lower heart rate. And I was taking it easy for the first 30km.
2nd best time up the local climb, but it was at the end of a a ride and had been pushing for the previous hour.
I know my low aerobic engine is quite under developed so probably need to work this most. As soon as I go up into the red it did feel more manageable. Also, I am finding that once I lose control of my heart rate, it tends to tick up and if this persists for a while I then really lose control of my heart rate and cannot get it lower for a long time after slow down and then it rises very easily.
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Not to go off on too much of a tangent from “ride slow, go fast”, but the ADP idea (ie just pushing LT1 up) is an interesting discussion and something I keep pondering.
My racing is all long distance stuff where realistically the higher power I can average in hours 4+ matter more than the start (although I also find starting fast nets the best results but hurts more 
). I can’t decide if it’s better to be able to more easily steady pedal at 260W, or more important to not go way into the red when climbing at ~300W for 5-20min.
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I can do several hours of high HR but then I find I have trouble sleeping that night. Max HR is around 185, RHR 50 and I’m 46. My aim with all of this is to get lower heart rate, therefore less strain on the body… but that’s a very slow journey from what I see.
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Yeah, probably periodization and both is the answer.
You’ll have a better chance of riding at LT1 if it hurts less to ride over it.
When racing as a Triathlete in a bike race I used to be stuck where my cruising speed was too high for the lower grades, but I couldn’t deal with the attacks in the higher grades. Guess it’s a similar concept.
You need both types of fitness to maximise performance.
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That’s pretty remarkable!
My base period of 11 weeks has ended. Lots of Z2 focus and one occasional (weekly) zwift race for some intensity. Longer Z2 was just around 60-65% ftp. Shorter sessions more ISM Z2 style.
Got a little sick at the end of week 10 so did not ride for 4 days so to not become really sick but was able to do 3 days of Z2 rides after that so no harm done.
I have no metrics to test any improvements because I started this weekend with the 14days World Tour zwift stage race. Hope my build up endurance will give me some extra strength to survive this adventure.
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I think it’s important to define what metric determines improvement. Is it FTP? Time over a specific course or segment? RPE? Something else?
Or a race. You know, that thing
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It helped me a lot when i was a runner because it was easy to add a lot of volume with Z2 and once i was over 40mph i just got noticeably faster.
I just started cycling last year, TR in January, so I’ve improved a lot in a short time but thats probably “newbie gains”, a lot of which would have just come from riding regularly and increasing volume. I am on the polarized plan but i dont love doing long rides during the week due to work stress and annoyances so i havent been super compliant and have been doing shorter alternates. I like having two hard workouts a week. I’m 49 and spacing out the intensity means i can work a lot harder on those days.
So basically I like doing Z2, but I think it’s too early to really credit it for my increases yet.
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I am with you… but every course and distance is different. Comparing place is dependent on who shows up as much as fitness. Even year over year weather is different.
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It’s not really a “plan” then though, is it? Not that I think this is bad advice…if’s what I’m doing now.
I’ve noticed quite an improvement in my fitness. Done a lot of Zone 2 work, but for various reasons not much high intensity (so probably haven’t had the full benefit) and I’ve noticed that I can maintain threshold power for longer, recover quicker and have a lower heart rate than I did previously.
Not easy to quantify just how much, but I’ve had average power 30 watts higher than this time last year which feels like quite an improvement. I’ll be working on lots more Zone 2 but really trying to keep to 1 or 2 high intensity a week and over winter I’ll be aiming to keep my weekend long ride to zone 2.
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I’m 5-6 km/h faster, at my Z2 heart rate range, on my regular 2-4 hour circuits, than same time two years ago.
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