That’s exactly what it required. Quite frustrating. So much easier on trainer.
Enjoying the ride. May 10 was just concerned with power. May 16 looking at hr and power. I feel a little worn out after yesterday. Tried the trainer road scheduled workout inside last night and bailed a little while into it. I will do the indoor workout today properly and then rest until ramp test Tuesday. On wednesday I’ll start commuting to work again. It’s around 15 minutes to 30 minutes each way(gravel bike vs fatbike) I zone 2 heart rate as I dont have a power meter on those bikes. Like the tr crew I may add Coliseum-3 to some days riding for more volume. Like everyone else all of my gravel races have been canceled so I’m just trying to get fit and lose that extra 40-50 lbs still.
Seems like you learned how not to do an outdoor level 2 ride, then.
That would be a level 2 ride.
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So you say that you prefer your alternative facts to the actual facts?
even on a rolling ride, power and hr should be flat. this was 70 miles with 4000ft of elevation gain on rolling hills.
steep hills, ok, then all bets are off. Ride by feel, and keep the HR line flat.
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I do… as that is how you pace non draft legal time trials. Once you get in to mass start racing, there’s a definite advantage to ditch the steady effort.
What you do depends on a few things. During early base I’m not expecting to see an increase in FTP. My target events are 7-10 hours, and therefore I usually increase duration out to ~5 hours. In addition increasing intensity to tempo / zone3 rides at low cadence can drive aerobic adaptations in Type IIa fast-twitch (fast glycolytic oxidative).
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I did a max heart rate test. It came out at 174. Then I forced maf in there at 129.
Looks like you didn’t have any intersections either.
ride out in the country with either all right turns, or traffic-free intersections.
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Cool, thank you. I’ll swap 2x Longfellow for Mount Blackburn and Mianzimu then.
I’ve got a 4km loop about 5min from my house I use when I want to bang out some uninterrupted work. Nice scenery and smooth roads but boring as heck about 1/4 of the way into the ride. Gotta do what ya gotta do!
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I live in the country too, but it also looks like the power traces are a bit smoother on strava than the TR data analysis screen.
No out on the highway. Stopped a couple times to pee lol.
I’m glad to have found this post and the article from Tom Bell. My zone 2 power and HR for cycling do not align very well, and I am pretty much always in the lower end of my zone 2 HR range even when riding at the upper end of my zone 2 power. To get into what many would consider mid to upper zone 2, say around 130bpm (my max HR is 188 and my resting HR is 39) I have to ride at zone 3 power. This feels like it defeats the object of easy endurance riding, and I can’t find anything definitive on this subject explaining whether I should ride by HR or power for Zone 2 rides.
I am quite the opposite. My max heart rate is around 186 BPM and my zone 2 power is 150-205 watts. My Zone 2 heart rate is 112 watts to 130 bpm.
At the bottom end of my Z2 power I can maintain 130 bpm, but around 185 watts (indoor with two fans and around 70 deg. F) I’ll be closer to 140-145 bpms.
As a former recreational runner, you can really only measure Z2 by heart rate since there’s no power meter, so it makes it relatively simples. Since I picked up cycling early this spring, I’ve largely been doing my Z2 rides at the bottom the endurance range (around 155-160 watts) so I am around max Z2 heart rate and min Z2 power.
The last few weeks I have somewhat started putting more emphasis on varying my Z2 power rides and setting heart rate aside. I may be higher in the range and closer to 145-150 bpm. I do polarized training so my rides are basically either Z2 power or Z5/Z6 power.
It seems to be a bit of a grey area that I haven’t found a solid answer in for cycling (Z2 HR vs Z2 Power)
So earlier this week I did an 80 minute ride on the trainer with a 60 minute segment targeting around 127 bpm (bang in the centre of my zone 2 HR according to Garmin) and you’ll see from the segment below that some of this interval had me in zone 3 for some of it, and at the higher end of my zone 2. I haven’t tested to see how long I could sit at this wattage before my HR creeps up. For reference my threshold is 290w which puts me at 4.3w/kg. I’ve been training around 6 hours a week pretty consistently for a couple of years now.
I think perhaps I’d be better off just training by power and sitting at around 200-205 watts, with HR around 122-123 bpm.
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Yes I would like to do a test like that. Would you recommend testing that at the top end of Zone 2 or the middle of Zone 2? And seeing how long until HR is no longer steady and moves up?
Those tabs are interesting. You can see that my power zone straddles Z2 and Z3, whilst my HR zone is bang in the centre.
Like the other poster has said above, it’s frustrating how there appears to not be a definitive answer to using power or HR for base endurance training.
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Neither: ride to RPE 
hides
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