You are training too hard

Training
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[quote=“fabric5000, post:80, topic:98195, full:true”]
I’m all about beating dead horses!

For that effort, my heart rate was oddly low. High of 170 for an all out 10 minute effort. I just set a new (recent) HR of 187. I’d typically be about 8-10 beats higher for that sort of effort. It didn’t feel any easier. :squinting_face_with_tongue:[/quote]

Pretty interesting that you would hit a PR with a much lower HR than usual. I wonder what was going on…

Well, that’s a good point. Ultimately I don’t care about zones or heart rate or lactate or anything like that, but what can I do and recover from so that I can keep progressing and improving my race results. I’m confident that my training is “working” but also wonder if it could be better, since I’m the one that is going against the grain here. I may experiment in the fall since my last important race is early September.

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My max and LTHR are a bit higher than yours, FTP around 310, and like I said my recovery ride was 150w / 95 bpm average for 1:15. What do you make of that?

FWIW, my legs felt a little heavy from yesterday’s intervals when I woke up, and now after the recovery spin they feel good.

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It’s simply about promoting blood flow with no stress. Something like 5-ish TSS. Under 45-60 minutes unless you are national elite or pro or wannabe. Lower tss and lower stress is better. I’m usually 30-40% ftp and 30-45 minutes.

That’s my takeaways and interpretation.

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I must be doing something wrong.. My Easy rides can’t get <100bpm (max ~185). maybe around 120

an indoor low intensity ride yeah.. it ends up as ~30tss w/ HR Max set at 132bpm (using the BreakAway’s Ride to HR feature)

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So was I, it seemed really weird when I saw it afterwards. But that could also be what a good day looks like - I mean, we’re aiming for lower HR at same power! It hasn’t been continuing, so I’m just going to chalk it up to it just being what it was.

It doesn’t seem like you are going that hard against the grain. Your low-intensity days don’t seem overly difficult. They’re just somewhat more than some of us are doing.

Something else to consider, and something I’m trying to pay more attention to, is that a long Z2 day needs more recovery than you probably are giving it. Particularly if you are in a period where you are increasing the longest rides every week. And if you are fueling the long rides appropriately and not over doing it, you can certainly come back from a 4+ hour ride not feeling totally wiped out - which is probably what you want!

So look at it this way - if you are doing 2 hard workouts, and then 1 medium duration Z2 and one duration Z2 - you only have 3 days in the week left. Probably want to take one of those fully off. what do you do on those other 2? Also throw in some weight lifting, and now how much value are you getting out of doing a whole lot more than a recovery ride on those 2 days? Or at least not push it much past a lower or medium duration z2.

This is speaking as a masters racer. If you are younger, you might be doing 3 hard workouts a week. And now those 2 days probably really need to be super easy.

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During a week when I’m not racing or recovering from a race, and not going to the mountains for the weekend I’ll do something like this:

Mon: off the bike
Tue: 3 hours with intervals
Wed: 3 hours at ~70%
Thu: 3 hours at ~70%
Fri: 1 hour easy
Sat: 3 hours MTB with 2x30 min race pace
Sun: Trade pulls on an ~80mi route with my son, ends up being tempo-ish

My longer rides are usually on the harder side. I’m doing intervals as part of a long ride, trading pulls with my son, riding in the mountains, a training race, or doing race pace intervals on the MTB. Always something like that. I almost never do 4+ hours of Z2.

I also lift 3x a week and go rock climbing 3x a week. I’m 48 years old, so not quite masters. Next year my racing age will be 50 and I get to compete with the old guys haha.

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I only did on year of 40+ when I got back in, and 50+ is definitely easier, depending on the field. At a national level event, the 50+ field is still bonkers hard, I didn’t notice a huge difference last year between 40+ and 50+ at ToAD.

Yeah, that’s a lot of hard training. I’m lifting 2x a week. I’m not rock climbing. And you’re doing a 17 hour week there? I’m assuming that’s 70% of FTP. If you’re not burning out, then you have some nice natural ability there, you should be totally competitive with the 40+ guys today!

Why not just try those 2 ~70% rides at ~50%? To me this just sounds like way too much at that volume, plus that much off the bike work? Sounds like you can do this, but I think you might surprised with what less intensity does for you.

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I’m pretty competitive when it’s 40+, but MTB can be inconsistent depending on the series and race director. Sometimes it’s 40-49, sometimes it’s 35-49, and my favorite series of races is just juniors, open men, and then 50+.

Like I said earlier, I may experiment with doing rides at 50% rather than 70%, but I’d have to change things up somehow otherwise I’d end up doing basically nothing for three days in a row with this schedule.

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Kind of late for the party, but that’s precisely where I think I’m cooking myself every single season. Thanks for the post @fabric5000

I always start my season fine, hit my PB all-time 5S, 60S 5min. I was doing 4x5 vo2 @345W and the feeling was great. Then, probably inebriated by the feeling that I was flying, the house of cards went down. Last 2/3 weeks, I’ve been feeling terrible. I failed miserably a 4x6vo2 @340w, and got dropped on our Wednesday worlds. Essentially can’t sustain power at all. I took 3 days completely off and went for a 5hr easy ride with friends after that, the feeling was better, but I could feel that my legs weren’t there. It’s funny, I can ride endurance and tempo quite easily feeling good, but when I have to put the hammer down the legs aren’t there. It’s a total failure.

I have an odd schedule because I have a 7yo shared 50/50, so I can put 20 hours one week, and 5 the next.

I think my way out is easy endurance only and recovery to be good for my Wednesday world, where I want to perform the best, or at least not get dropped.

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Tuesday/Thursday 50%, Wednesday intervals?

Tuesday gets things moving again after a day off, you can still hit intervals hard Wednesday.

Doesn’t have to be 50%. I think it’s really just ride easier to feel, and not have a set power number you aim for. any time I’m doing z1 or z2, I really don’t worry about the power, I just ride up to an effort that feels like I"m starting to to push it, or I ride down to my HR being around 100.

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Glad it helped you think more about it @Alex, that was my goal with starting the thread!

I’m in a similar boat right now, and that’s with taking it easy in general. I was doing a hard group ride and I could tell at the first sprint things weren’t great - couldn’t even come out of the draft of the guy initiating the sprint. I know he’s strong, so I didn’t worry too much, but it was a data point - lookin later the power was no great shakes. 2nd sprint point didn’t go great, but didn’t seem egregiously bad - also no great shakes looking afterwards, but I decided I’d pay more attention next sprint. 3rd sprint - I miss the boat on the guys who jump, so I’m going all out, and I look down and my power is like 450W. This was after maybe 10 seconds, I wasn’t necessarily expecting something amazing, but I know I can do more than that. Then 5 minutes later I’m just dangling behind the group when it’s going sorta hard, and I feel like I’m a 9 outta 10, and closing a 10 foot gap seems like it’s gonna be a challenge.

So I pulled the plug, and road in easy, cut my next 4 hour sessions to a 2.5 hour cafe ride, and took 3 days off. The old me would have just put my head down and powered through the rest of the ride and scheduled some killer workout for Tuesday or Wednesday.

My libido had also been in the tank, which I think is another great sign that maybe you are overcooking it. Yeah, I know, TMI. :slight_smile:

Even when you are working to not overdo it, you can overdo it. I’ve had a few big training weeks, I did a 3 day Omnium, and 2 sets of practice crits and a race the last 2 weeks after that. So lots of intensity.

Also, last year around this time I was flying, but then the fitness sort of went away for a bit. This year I’m going to try and get ahead of it, I have a little break from racing before hitting it hard, going to try this break now.

Oddly, my HRV was looking good, but has gone the other way these 3 days off. Heart rate on the other hand has been very low recently. More interesting data.

You gotta learn your signs and figure this out. A coach can certainly help.

I think the biggest trick is not to fall into the “holy crap, what’s happening with my fitness, I better train more!” trap.

Anyway, I hope all these details resonate with people. You gotta figure out what will keep you consistently riding the bike. And not getting too over-cooked is the biggest thing I’ve learned coming back. I’m now on my 3rd year of consistent riding, something I never managed back in the day. I feel like my fitness is as good as when I was 20-30 because of it. And that I probably squandered a lot of my talent back then overtraining. Live and learn!

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“Zone 2” is a huge zone and depending on what training you’re doing on a given day, you might ride at the bottom of Z2, or maybe near the top.

The mistake people in general make is that they treat all “Z2” as one and the same.
Let’s say your Z2 is 170-240 watts. 4 hours at 170 v 4 hours at 240 are entirely different training sessions. But a good athlete needs to be efficient across the entire range of zones.

Another thing people often get wrong is assuming the zone you’re in at the start of a ride is the zone you’re in at the end. Take an athlete for example who has an upper Z2 limit of around 240 watts. They start a 3hr Endurance+ ride. For the first 2 hours they may well be in a bona fide Z2. In the last hour though they’re probably not. Heard a podcast a while ago where Pogacar said he does 6 hour “Z2” rides, but for the latter part (2 hours) of that ride he has to drop the watts in order to stay in Z2

So in summary - your Z2 changes day to day. Your Z2 power limits changes within a ride itself. And bottom of Z2 v top of Z2 are completely different. One is essentially recovery and the other essentially tempo

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I’ve been consistently riding for 10 years, which is my strength, I guess. I’m consistent. I won’t be the strongest guy or the weakest. I’m always there annoying people hehehe.

I hadn’t paid much attention to this in the past, just started to train with power for the last 3 years, but looking in retrospect, I always had these ups and downs. I built, feel good, ride strong, then without notice I’m cooked. A couple of months later, I’m strong again.

I had a coach last year, and it was all the same. Built, break, frustration, back on track later.

The funny is, I can’t put two and two together to identify why. Fueling? Resting? more endurance, less endurance? More intensity, less intensity? I just can’t figure out what is the issue.

I hate this not for the perspective of racing because I’m not currently racing. But for the feeling. I go for a ride and my legs are trash. I’m fine for low intensity, but when I touch in the upper zoner, boom… I don’t have motivation sometimes…

I guess the only approach I haven’t tried yet is to do all, except for my Wednesday ride, endurance rides and fluctuating on Z2. As @nasatt said, z2 is a big zone. My z2 is about 165-225 and improving my carb intake on and off the bike.

I’m reading the endurance diet and the author mentions Kenyan athletes and an absurd amount of carbs, I mean literally absurd. 8/9gr per kg per day. Sure we are talking about top of the top elite athletes, with a huge consumption on a daily basis, but still. I don’t do 4g per day. My diet is pretty good, I hate fast food and everything deep-fried. I love fruits and vegetables and I cook 99% of my meals, but still, 5g of carbs per kg daily is a lot!

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Yeah man, that’s why I put “zone 2” in quotes a few times or refer to it as endurance pace. I’m not concerned with a precise zone 2 ride. Everything happens on a continuum anyway, and I need my training to be sustainable and not leave me fatigued for hard rides, rather than obsessing over zones. If I had 6 hours to ride on a weekday like Pogi, maybe I would ride at 170w. But I don’t so my “”“Z2"”" rides are 220-240w. FWIW, my decoupling is about 1% for those rides on cool mornings.

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It’s appropriate that you put Z2 in quotes, because for a 310W FTP almost half of this range is Z3.

That being said, based on doing an 8 hour MTB race, training high Z2-Z3 is probably the way to go.

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You can’t determine your zones from FTP unfortunately despite what TP and other platforms would have you believe. You can have a weak base and get an inflated FTP because of good anaerobic power which will result in inaccurate “zones” calculations. More often than not people’s Z2 range is too high

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IMHO step1 is to abandon the 20-min test and go out and do long (30-70 minute) long tests, I started doing those in late 2016. Step2 is to take that result and ride a little above/below, increasing the above, and find the tipping point where your breathing and HR keep increasing (no longer stable). That took about 6 months to do, assisted by riding on flat terrain where it’s easy to ride steady power. Step 3 is to triangulate your “Zone 2” via changes in breathing, by riding steady power and slowly increasing. With a little attention to detail, you can get really close to both ftp and lt1 (a little less than vt1 your breathing change).

Then determine what type of training to do based on your goals and hours and how you recover and respond to training. For me, at 6-8 hours a week with a 20-24 week base training completed, I’m good riding upper power-zone2 and progressing into lower-zone3. Push up to 10-12 hours/week and my recovery becomes an issue, so I ride well below “zone2” (40-60% ftp). But thats me, not you. It’s easier with a good coach, but absolutely achievable by ordinary humans with attention to detail and learning to feel efforts (mind-body connection).

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And remember that 50% is technically zone 1 :smiley:

Maybe one of these days I’ll do lactate testing just out of curiosity. I’m going to guess that my LT1 is about 230. That’s where I feel a crossover from easy to it takes a bit of effort and focus. Or maybe it’s 170 and I’ll eat my words.

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This is why I’m super curious about the Tymewear strap. If this breathing frequency thing is as good as they say, you’ll be able to get a lot closer to understanding your thresholds.

@WindWarrior that’s a good method too! I think not enough people ride based on what they actually feel. I went out for a planned 4 hours, and although I’ve been riding at 150W a lot recently, I ended up doing 172NP and it didn’t feel particularly hard. FTP is just a number. :).

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I dunno, these devices seem to come and go. My experience is that more data is just more data, and more breathless marketing messages to take the focus away from learning how to ride by feel and read the terrain and other riders. Replacing the brain with the next holy grail of data.

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