And we don’t ride hooked up to lactate testers so inigo himself says watts or hr are good surrogates and correlate well. Hence, Wahoo and everyone else outside a lab uses hr % and it’s close enough.
Edit: anyway, we agree on 80% of the points and probably 80% of the remaining 20%, so let’s move on…
From my understanding, it isn’t that Zone 2 is being “debunked”–the value of long, moderate rides cannot be replaced–so much as the 80/20 rule. With the caveat of it’s just not needed so much for non-pros. We aren’t spending 30hrs a week on the bike, where its intended to prevent overtraining, so the proportion of harder intervals should be higher.
Assuming, of course, your body and life can support it–if you have a particularly physical or high stress job, that will effect recovery as well.
This one kind of feels right to me. I’m clocking a lot of z2 hours this season as I decided to race a (long) gravel season in the fall, and feel like my endurance is really up. But most years I’m racing CX, so think that a bunch of short Z2 efforts equate to no more than recovery miles.
This, for me, is a Zone 2 ride… Did this yesterday and it’s definitely at the level where I feel I could keep going until it gets dark. And, if I understand the nuances of Z2 now, then this kind of ride will be very beneficial, but doing something at this effort level for only 40 mins will not bring the same type of benefits and will be more a recovery ride.
Yes. I agree. And I think that’s the point of the short Z2 efforts for the short inspiration videos. They are more for recovery on off-days and rest weeks. Not strictly for Z2 endurance.
Because recovery doesn’t need to always be strictly Z1. Recovery can also include doing enough efforts to keep your legs moving and the blood flowing without the strain of a full blow workout. The Z2 rides can be used for different reasons at different times in a training plan.
Back when I started, SUF recovery weeks and recovery rides used to be the actual main SUF videos dialed down to 60/70/80% - often with FTP/MAP/AC individually changed to different percentages - to give you a less intense effort but still give your body something to keep your legs moving. Many riders felt that diluted the effect and “joy” of the SUF videos by having you ride them for recovery rides where your efforts in no way reflected the spirit of the video. So when SYSTM was rolled out they added Insoiration videos to fill the same role. So some are pure recovery rides. Some are Z2 recovery. Some are longer Z2 endurance. Some are Z3 tempo, and they all fill a specific role in the training plans. Sometimes it’s a long Z2 workout, but sometimes it’s just to give you a recovery that has enough intensity to keep your legs fresh and not let them get stale from too much easy pure Z1 spinning.
Not directly related to training plans, but I fell on a new Zone 2 training video on YouTube - short and quite a fun watch: https://youtu.be/aVfHaZoWj0A?si=XaM6PQtPRc8aIwCr
When I first read this I thought you fell riding a Zone 2 trainer ride. Lol
Ha ha ha…
No… My last significant crash was on a recovery ride 4 years ago - fractured collarbone and two cracked ribs.
that was fun, they should get this guy to do Sufferfest content. There’s nothing better to get your heart rate up than being shouted at by a sweary Scotsman.
Just curious: how can you only have 125k on a 8,5 hour ride?
what do you mean?
I have never heard Iñigo San Millán say to use power, and I have listened to a few podcasts/video where he participated. His boundary between zones in the three zone system is between 1-2 which is the talk test.
The issue under debate is how far into the Zone 2 (in the three zone model) should you go, and for how long.
There are two issues as I understand them:
