Whats a better week: two hard sufferfest workouts and one 2/3 hour zone 2 ride, or two hard sufferfest workouts and four 1 hour zone 2 rides?
I’m 36 and got a bike a year ago. I live in Kansas and am fully hooked on the gravel scene here, and love casually riding and exploring routes solo and towards the end of this summer I started joining in on some fast group rides. I got an indoor trainer 2 months ago and I just signed up for a well known 100 mile gravel race in June. I will follow systm’s 12 week 100 mile gravel race plan in the lead up to the event.
Since I got my kickr I’ve been easing into doing my first ever structured workouts as well as some zone 2 rides just to build strength and base miles. It is easier for me to find an hour every day to train, but much harder to find 2 or 3 hours all at once even 2 or 3 times a week. I’m not currently following a structured plan, but instead I ride 1 hour of zone 2 about 3 days a week. So currently I’ll smash a hard sufferfest workout one day, then do 1 hour zone 2 ridea each day until I feel pretty fresh then go hard on another workout. Rinse and repeat. I understand that I’m not systematically creating stress responses by completing blocks of structured workouts. I’m ok with that now as I’m trying to build base.
FINALLY my question… My understanding is that zone 2 work is important for building base strength, and the adaptations increase as the session duration increases (2,3, or more hour rides). Are my 1 hour zone two rides “junk miles”? Would I be better off having more rest days/off bike instead of 1 hour zone 2 rides each day and try to figure out a way to work in a 2 or even 3 hour zone 2 ride instead during the week? Trying to understand shorter duration daily consistency vs. less frequent but longer sessions.
Whats a better week: two hard sufferfest workouts and one 2/3 hour zone 2 ride, or two hard sufferfest workouts and four 1 hour zone 2 rides?
At the training volume you mention, I don’t think zone 2 rides of that short of a duration would negatively impact your development or performance, especially at the middle or lower end of the range. If you can include the shorter zone 2 rides as well as the longer one, I think that would probably improve your performance more than only doing one or the other.
Until your weekly training volume would approach something greater than 12-to-15 hours, I think the more zone 2 you can include the better. At higher training volumes and/or higher levels of fitness (with corresponding higher power in training zones), there can be benefit to reducing fatigue by including a mix of zone 2 and zone 1.
There’s a podcast I like called the Time-Crunched Cyclist that recently did an episode on what junk miles are and are not (you can also listen on any podcast app):
@samuelsjohns Why not pick one of the plans for the offseason such as the All Purpose Plan. Designing your own training schedule is tough especially if you are new to training and mixing in HIIT workouts. Here is an article by Mac Cassin of Wahoo that details some of the considerations.
The Wahoo plans are designed to have the right mix of progressive overload to keep you on track without under or overtraining. Also I would suggest adding some strength and yoga to the plan as you will definitely need that for a 100 mile gravel ride.
To directly answer the question, none of that done 2 is junk unless you’re going a bit too hard and it disrupts your hard days. If you’re not, then either one works abd the “optimal” week is whichever one you can consistently do. Is including a longer ride better if you can do it, sure, but 4 1 hr rides is also good, and 4 hrs is more than 2 or 3.
If you really want to understand the physiology, health benefits, and the reasons for Zone 2 training here is a podcast about it.
As for Zone 2 training, the idea is to build your aerobic engine to be as large as possible.
During base training you should be about 80% upper end zone 2 training, and 20% VO2 max training.
As your event gets closer you should start to focus on the training that mimics your event. For example if there are a lot of Zone 3 efforts in your event, then you should start to focus on those efforts.
In a recent episode (#220), Coach Adam Pulford covered how much Zone 2 training is too much or no longer productive. At the other end of the spectrum, there were questions about the minimum dose of Zone 2 training necessary to achieve positive adaptations. The minimums depend on whether athletes are beginners, intermediates, or advanced riders, along with other factors. Coach Adam explains how to categorize yourself and how to find the appropriate minimum ride length to make Zone 2 sessions effective.
TOPICS COVERED:
Classifications of athletes for Zone 2 work
Minimum doses of Zone 2 for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced riders
Why different athletes have different minimum doses of Zone 2
Excellent podcast, btw. Thanks for the link, @Heretic . I jumped into the middle using the timeline listed below it, and watched almost 1-1/2hrs today. Very heady stuff and I don’t have a working knowledge of a lot of those terms but began picking some of it up; that said, however, there’s much that can be gained even if one doesn’t fully grasp all the nuances they discuss. I’ll be visiting that podcast again for sure.
