sandtiger steve wrote:
as per this article:
http://www.usatriathlon.org/...ast-your-competition but my read on Friel and Fitzgerald and others with the big books out (and what i have been doing), is they espouse the "do your slow rides slow and your fast rides fast" philosophy (and same goes for the run). For these purposes i consider a "slow ride" Z2. Most tempo/threshold rides i have seen in these plans never really do any significant mileage in Z4.
Is this debate old news? thoughts appreciated
thanks
SS
all depends on how much time you have to train. >15 hrs, you have to have lots of LSD as you won't be able to sustain the intensity of a tempo or SST/subthreshold. <8hrs, you better get enough training stimuli in each ride to see some meaningful adaptations. Vary accordingly when you have between 8 & 15 hours.
If my ride is less than 2 hours, i don't do Z2 as i can't get enough training stress in that amount of time. However, a five hour long ride is technically unsustainable at Z3, and i try to nail my LSD at the top of Z2 power. These rides are often solo efforts, and they'll hurt. There will be quite a bit of aerobic decoupling as my HR will drift 10bpm above its usual Z2 levels. Personally, i've turned into a believer. I built base through December and then did threshold work starting in January, but did few long Z2 rides. For all that, I went from 255W to 272W going from November to early April.
I got injured mid April and missed 1/2 of the remaining days in April along with 2/3 of May training days. I thought my FTP would plunge from 272 down to 250. Resuming three weeks ago, all i did were some tempo/SST but i made sure to have a long Z2 ride every weekend. Just this past Monday, i set a new 20' record at 292W despite not being so fresh as I did 243W for 35 min earlier that ride. Without having done any threshold work, I apparently regained all of my previous FTP and then some more. Mark me down as a believer.