First of all, bravo. Sounds like we could learn a thing or two from you.

But to your question, both workouts are useful and have their place in your training plan. If your don’t train hard, you won’t go any faster and if you don’t train steady you won’t ride steady as well.

There are specific aerobic adaptations that take place much better at higher intensity levels. Capillarization and stroke volume increase to name a couple. It's not as complicated as a lot of folks make it, but it's not as simple as you suggest either.

Should make for a good discussion though.

your comment assumes that your aerobic "ceiling" is as high as it can be. A structured plan will add intervals helps to increase that ceiling, while including over/under and steady state efforts to adapt your body to manage working at that threshold level.

Recovery. Go hard in the paint and redline every time and you will improve but you also multiply your time for recovery by some X variable. The best athletes are the ones who are able to recover the quickest

I’d say the bold part. The machine has to be able to handle the beating of the intervals. And unfortunately you can’t just redline it over and over and expect it to not break.

I say this from my n=1. Went hard in the paint, had great “increases” and then broke. Had to reset for a month, then start again. Slow build, and then I don’t break when I go hard. Problem is the slow build is slow...and long. Once the foundation is there, then you can build the house.

What if you don't have 2 hours? Volume alone makes up for a lot of sins but it may well be possible to attain the same (or even better) fitness outcomes with less training time.

Or what if you've plateaued or stagnated (which is exactly what will happen if the training stimulus doesn't eventually vary)?

While most aerobic physiological adaptations can be elicited by training performed across the intensity spectrum, the nature of the adaptations does vary with intensity, such that it is effective to vary the intensity mix in your training.

Also, the adaptation required to further enhance aerobic capacities might suggest different mix of training volume and intensity is needed, e.g. training with a focus on increasing VO2max compared with training to increase the partial utilisation of VO2max at threshold (and fundamental endurance capacity). Which (and when) an individual best needs to place emphasis on will be individually variable and also depend on the individual's fitness status.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au

Just wanted to quote that because it's awesome.


Dang, and that too.

This guy must know his shit!

I have the reports somewhere in my files - maybe someday I'll scan them and post them here because they are interesting....from a MOPish perspective.

When I signed up for my first 140.6, I went to the Boulder Sports Med Lab ( and actually had a great consult with Neil Henderson (NeilHe here on ST). I did an Lactic Threshold (LT) test and came up with and FTP of about 240W, but with a fairly early rise in blood lactate so my Z2 was fairly low power - somewhere around 130 W. Neil and my coach proscribed a high volume of slow riding over the next 6 months. ( This was in my mid-40's ) When I tested again 6 months later, I had made some minor progress in my FTP (255W) but my z2 was now about 165 and I was accumulating lactate much more slowly.

This leads to my main learning in racing long course triathlon:
It's not how long you can go hard, it's how fast you can go easy.

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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

The goal of training should be to maximize physiological adaptations, not training load. You get different adaptations at different intensities and durations. Yes, a higher training load tends to equal higher fitness, but how you accumulate that training load matters. TSS and KJs are good ways to monitor your training load, but reducing variety in your training to maximize one of those metrics isn't going to maximize adaptations.