I hour zone 2 endurance ride

81

Please remind me how many hours per week you are training. Oh, I see 7-10 hrs/week.

@PerBack ok, let me try to recap:

  • mostly ride on the trainer in Zwift
  • roughly 2 years cycling, mostly intense Zwift racing
  • you want to “develop an aerobic base” by doing some easy endurance (70-80% ftp) in Zwift
  • you are targeting 7-10 hours/week
  • want to continue doing Zwift scratch races that are <45 minutes
  • you posted a 75-min “anti-progressive” Erg ride descending from 80% to 78% to 75% with no decoupling on each of the intervals (45m, 15m, 15m)
  • people on this thread have commented that developing an aerobic base with endurance is about long-term consistently riding at an endurance pace that doesn’t impact your Zwift races and any interval work
  • your idea is that increasing power by 5W on 75m anti-progressive intervals will help identify when you “break apart”
  • you have some medium term W/kg goals

Did I get that right?

Are your Zwift races all-out efforts or are you pacing them at below FTP? Are you planning on doing any interval work? Or just endurance Zwift racing?

FWIW the people I know that ride similar hours/week, they used to swear by structure only. Then they started Zwift (or real-world) racing and got a lot faster and increased W/kg and FTP. But they kept doing intervals, and riding easy endurance so they could really commit to the hard efforts. And they had an off-season month or two to deload, and didn’t try to go hard the entire year.

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82

Hi,
I think you got the picture very well. Just a few clarifications

I never ride outdoors

In addition to my 7-10 Bike hours, I try to do 1-3 sessions a week running 5km in zone2 on my threadmill-Zwift (to preserve knee and leg strength) and approx 3-5 hours/week full body gymwork, in addition to my bike hours. Priority-1 is Zwift racing and training to improve Zwift racing.

Since I am light (60.4 kg) and have tiny pure watts (in lower B-cat in Zwift, based on 20min wkg/zMAP/VO2max (54,7 according to Zwift) but mid-B based on results), I no longer do TTT and since my aerobic engine is weak, I always have to work hard to stay in the pack, not much power to do well on FAL/FTS segments. I am hoping that a stronger base engine might give me more reserves so I don’t have to work as hard just to stay in the group.

It is mainly the first 45min that I will use as the test-bench for comparison. The last 15+15 min I just added to get some more training volume.

+4wkg@20 min (3.6)
Improve current FTP (now 3.4)
+8wkg@60sec (was 8,01wkg a year ago and it was done end of race @Legsnapper)

If I do B-cat GC races Mon/Tue primetime, it’s all out efforts where I need to sit above my FTP just to remain in the pack, which I mostly fail to do in the final 2-3km.
Mid and late week GC races are also very hard but not as hard.

Zwift Ladder races are very hard but much more tactical/punchy in it’s character, with possibility to recover a little in between.

Zwift crit races are typically hard from the gun with 1 or 2 vo2max sections every lap.

First year I had a good development, but now I am at a stage when I have plateaued. My guess is now I need more structure to develop further.

My Phenotype is mostly Puncheur and sometimes Pursuiter.
I am more of a grinder around 80-85rpm cadence and at later stages in races I’m around 70rpm.

image

This picture shows how I compare with other Level5 riders in ZRapp in wkg (red is me, blue is everyone else in L5)

83

Thanks for all that.

I’m not a coach…

Our local Wed Worlds are flat but windy, about 45-75 minutes of threshold with a lot of punchy big power bursts when you rotate to the front of the echelon and put your nose into a gusty headwind. Or tailwind, where you lose the draft effect, trying to stay on wheels at 30mph. When I got fast enough to hang with the A group, it was because I was able to do somewhat punchy 2x30 minutes at threshold IF. Never looked at aerobic decoupling.

My “not a coach” bias is to use structured training to work on longer threshold efforts. If not racing, and in a build, that would probably look like 2 easy endurance days (1.5-2.5 hours) and 3 interval days with a mix of tempo, threshold, and above threshold work.

To your point about decoupling, personally I would look at a long tempo effort. After an off-season break (2-4 weeks), and 2+ months of base, my expectation based on experience is that I should be able to easily finish a 1x60-min steady effort at 85-90% ftp, here is one from earlier this year:

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and see less than 3% decoupling. That one had zero decoupling (-0.2%).

HOWEVER, those efforts are really about muscular endurance to support doing harder threshold efforts for 45+ minutes. And less about decoupling.

So if I had your ftp and data, personally I would target 180-190W (85-90%) on a flat Zwift route (and NO erg) for at least an hour and assess two things:

  • did it feel like a moderate effort that required focus but not hard although I was happy to finish at 60 to 70 minutes (depending on my outdoor route). If I had to struggle to finish its time to do more tempo intervals
  • casually look at decoupling and be happy with anything under 5%

hope that helps.

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84

I am unfamiliar with the ZRapp heptagon you show and could not find any mention on a cursory search of the internet. Time is obviously one scale, but what is the 0, 25, 50, 75, 100? Is that showing that you are in the 25th percentile of your group in 20 minute power?

You said your first year you had good development and have now hit a plateau. When was your first year? What has been the frequency and duration of all these different races? For example, you state once a week for GC. Then an additional twice more per week? How long are they and how many weeks have you been doing them? Same question for the others, all races.

When was your last off season?

I think the race information detail is useful information to have in addition to your training detail you have provided.

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85

I think you and MedTech are right with regards to where my focus should be.

This is my last test done 24/8 with first 45min at 175w. I expect that my next test I will crack at 180w, or at the test after at 185w. I noticed that after 20 min, I had to focus on not having the cadence drop down.

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I did a test race today at Zwift stage 4, London Loop with the Box Hill climb and Zwift gave me new FTP from 210 to 219w and Intervals gave me new FTP at 223w and a new Threshold HR at 161 bpm.

75% of 219 would give me Z2 power at around 160w. My current fitness score is 79.
And as said, it is likely around the 180-190 watts I should focus on improving.

Thinking then I wweek would look something like this:
2 x Zone2 session
1 x Threshold session
2-3 races Sub45min races and warmup and cooldown

:+1:

86

zwiftracing.app is a race ranking platform that only considers race finishing results and no FTP or other wkg data. Also based on your phenotype they have some kind of handicap system

image

It shows that compared to other L5 riders (L1-L10) “the red parts” that I am relatively strong vs other L5 riders in the 1-2 min, doing OK 5sek-30 sek, and that I am terrible after 2 min.

Myy bad 20min (47,4%), relatively to the L5 riders. I am basically surviving the harder races due to my punch capacity that I can cling on to someones wheel, unless they push +5wkg for +2 min, then I am dropped.

image

With the handical system it looks like this. Even though I am light, I am not good at Hilly terrain in general and Mountain terrain in particular.

image

my first time on Zwift on a bike was April-2021 and I got hooked quite immediately. First month I was just riding around, no idea of anything, then I tested racing and I got addicted. Since then I basically only did races. 5-6 days a week, no strutured training at all. It is very uncommon I do races over 35km so most races are 35-50min with few exceptions.

Since then I have never had any OFF-season, except for being sick in Covid one time in 2023 but have been lucky to not have been sick more than that. My only OFF-times have been vacation periods but this year I bought the Zwift Ride so I could bring it with me to summer house and I have done Z2/Z3 training most days during vacation. In average I think I have had maybe 1.5 days off bike per week for the last few months, but I try to listen to my legs. When they feel very fatigued, I try to take a rest day.

Looks a little like this :slight_smile:

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87

Short progressreport:
My focus on more volume on Z2/Z3 since early Aug seems to pay off and my body seems to respond fairly well. Maybe because I have not done this kind of training in the past.

Last week I raced up Zwift box-hill and increased FTP from 209 to 219 watts.
2 days later I did another Zwift race “Muckle Yin” and increased FTP again from 219 to 230, so now I am at 3.8wkg, getting closer to my target of 4wkg.

Today I also did my 45min at 185w. The fun part is that my cardiac drift was only 2% and my HR was at the same level as when I did the 45min at 160w earlier this summer. So things are improving in the right direction.

Thank you all for all the good advices and making Z2/Z3 fun :slight_smile:

After Race 3/9, new FTP at 236w, giving me 4,01 wkg as new 20min power, so now I reached that dreamgoal :slight_smile:
55yr old body responds quite OK, after sitting at a plateu for +1 year or so.

Also found that I had ~3.6% Cardiac drift for 190w@45min so now I am going to back off a little with z2 focus at 70% of FTP and see if that changes my 45min test in a couple of weeks with regards to drift and efficiency.

A big difference now is that my ability to recover in races after multiple surges have improved a lot.

Now FTP 237w, quickly closing in on my other goal of FTP@+4wkg :slightly_smiling_face:

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88

Been away from here for a bit due to other commitments and a sort of meltdown after my own training wobble.

But just wanted to say, again, that I’m just staggered by the level of knowledge and also the helpfulness of the community here.

I’ve learnt a lot even from just reading this thread. That’s not to say I come away with a clear idea of how and what to use in practice for me personally as it’s quite overwhelming range of info and opinions - but it’s interesting reading all the same!!

:pray:

Could someone remind me about the workout builder steps pls if I wanted to do ramp as mentioned above - 3min intervals in 20w steps?

I ended up mostly going back to Garmin but will try again to do here. Do you just make loads of lines of -3m 100w, -3m 120w type thing, or can you do a stepped ramp in 20w increments. I’d like to try and estimate these LTH1&2.

89

Probably best doing like you describe
This is my ramp test that I’ve done over the years

power: 1s

  • Warm up 5m 130w
  • Warm up 5m 250w
  • Warm up 5m 185w
  • Cool Down 3m 120w
  • 3m 200w
  • 3m 220w
  • 3m 240w
  • 3m 260w
  • 3m 280w
  • 3m 300w
  • 3m 320w
  • 3m 340w
  • Cool Down 3m 100w
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90

Thanks. Yes except I’d take at least a hundred watts off the starting point :wink:

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91

You don’t want to go too low either or you’d risk turning into too long a test. Trial and error… You’ll know after first test!

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92

Oh yeah didnt think of that. Buy my ftp is pretty low around 200 and im pretty sure im into z3 above about 140-150w. Hopefully will find out on this test.

I wonder whether 2 min per, or 2min30 would still give decent result?

93

No, not really. Do the 3 min ramps and when test is finished you can plot the HR taken at the 2:45 point of each ramp v power. You’ll see the 2 deflection points on the graph where HR stops rising linearly. These are your AeT and AT4

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94

For someone that is well trained, testing lactate can be expensive, so steps can be bigger than 20W, say 30-40W. Vice versa for someone who is less well trained, tue steps can be smaller.

It’s truly not a case of “one size fits all”.

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95

somewhat my humble opinion, for a 200w FTP, it’s probably better to switch to 3-5on/1off and jumps of 15-20w . IF you are not an endurance athlete, this 3-4 minute ramp without rest will finish because your legs are burning than your aerobic system could handle.