I’ve read people that prefer each of those scenarios. I do think there are pros and cons.

For threshold or lower zone intervals, I think you probably could get away with any of the choices. I would err against splitting the sets of intervals with a large rest, but then again if you are chasing pure watts there is a situation where that could be beneficial (ie you are doing 100-102% or something vs 95-100%). For something like sst, splitting doesn’t matter as much.

You have to be more careful with vo2 or higher intervals. I definitely wouldn’t break the set. When to do them is a little more tricky also. If you do them early, you’ll likely get more benefits of being fresher and hitting bigger numbers. However, another argument could be said for doing them late in the workout will increase more muscle fibers because you are fatigued, and is probably more race specific. I’ve also read theories that if you do intervals early you’ll have more lactic acid you’ll burn off later in the ride, preventing from using carbs/fats (I think thats been debunked but can’t remember). At the very least, rpe may be significantly higher for z2 after these types of intervals and/or not achievable. HR will be elevated.

Personally, I split the difference and throw them right in the middle. I think the truth is, don’t overthink it and just get the work in.

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My Strava | My Instagram | Summerville, SC | 35-39 AG | 4:41 (70.3), 10:05 (140.6) | 3x70.3, 1x140.6 | Cat 2 Cyclist

Yes to all.

If you put the intervals later in the ride you'll get there expending more kJ's. As you extend the duration, the same exact power output becomes more demanding physiologically.

Intervals after you've ridden a 1000kJ of work will feel different than after a 20-25min warm up where you might have expended 200-250kJ.

But if you're out of shape/time pressed doing the intervals early in the ride may be the smartest to insure you get the work done.

if you're on a 5h ride doing 10-20 min every hour at whatever effort level is a great way to increase the overall stress of the ride. Let's say you'd normally expend 2600kJ on a 5h zn2 ride, with 15min at threshold every hour you might bump that to 3000kJ and I suspect you'll find that interval in hour 4 and 5 to be more taxing, you'll be breathing harder etc than in hour 1 and 2


It's often more important to do the work than worry how the work is organized. If you normally ride 6-8h/wk and suddenly start riding 12-13h/wk I would bet you'll get a power bump across just about any duration you wanted to test after 3-4 weeks of that just due to the increased volume and physiological adaptations without any increase in intervals (which would actually decrease the total % of your riding time spent doing intervals)

Hope that helps

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

+1

And you'll probably be able to do more interval work the longer your ride is vs whatever you'd do on the trainer with much shorter rests. Obvs more fatigue afterwards.


Though if you're doing FRC work and max power is the goal, you'd probably do them at the start unless there was a specific race need.

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Thanks for the response, it is much appreciated. It pretty much confirmed what I suspected would be the case. I'm way beneath the hours you mentioned: I've been riding 3.5 hr/wk through the winter and am aiming to get up to the 6-8 hr/wk range over the next month (my total training volume maxes out at 10-12 hr/wk, including swimming and running). I guess I'll add the Z2 stuff to the front end of my rides to start with and then adjust that if I struggle with the FTP repeats later in the ride.

I also found a video where one of Pogacar's coaches was saying that the body takes 30 minutes or more to return to the predominantly fat burning state after hard efforts, so he also seemed to be recommending doing the zone 2 stuff first, since that allows the body to be using fat for fuel for longer.

Thanks for that. I am mostly focusing on 95-100% type intervals, not much VO2 max at the moment.

This is the video where Inigo San Millan talks about the body requiring time to return to the Zone 2 fat burning state:

"Zone 2 & Beyond: Training Secrets From Dr Iñigo San Millán (Tadej Pogačar’s Coach)" It's on Youtube.

I personally would shift the intervals into different parts of the workout by the week or month. I think that benefits can be gained by having them in different parts of the workout.

At the # of hours you're doing this is looking at the 1% solution.

Increased volume increases the body's ability to combust fats as a substrate for any effort level. Worrying about how fast your body returns to a greater % of fats being combusted compared to CHO is like trying to have the fastest final 200m of the run without training for the swim or bike.

Think big picture not small picture. You can put a lot of small pictures in a photo collage but you can't put a big photo collage into a 3x4 picture.

Hope that helps put some perspective on it for you

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Okay, that makes sense. I was certainly not meaning to draw too many parallels between my training and Pogacar's! So then I guess the question just comes down to: where can I add the zone 2 work to maximise the volume I can achieve? And for me that definitely means adding it to the start of a ride.

Thanks again for your guidance with this, I appreciate your advice.

People smarter than me tend to disagree with ISM on a lot of things. Lots of talk on Inside Exercise podcast that he has it wrong. Coggan has said the same.

https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/...ent/1/1/e000047.full

also here's a chart from a paper that shows this not being the case.

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IG - @ryanppax
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Just get extra z2 wherever it is convenient for you

Don’t over think it

Personally if you’re doing SST / threshold, I’d add z2 at the start to make my intervals harder

Whenever I do intervals first, I end up having elevated HR (therefore lower power) for my z2 at the end. These efforts are mentally fatiguing for me and I don’t really enjoy it as much.

Add in z2 work (or any extra training time) wherever it fits into your schedule. 2x1hr rides are better than 1x1.5hr rides. Until you're well past 10hr/w just keep adding on volume, DD is completely right that volume is the base of everything else. Not only does more volume give you a bigger aerobic engine, that bigger aerobic engine allows you to do harder/longer efforts, building the engine further.

Car guys used to say "there's no replacement for displacement". Same here.

As far as the schedule of specific workouts, it's helpful to think about what you're training for. A 30 min local crit? Put the hard stuff at the beginning to maximize the absolute power you're putting out. An Ironman? Put the efforts at the end to maximize the fatigue before you even start the intervals.

I have races of all distances from sprint to IM this year. IM Canada is my big race, so intervals at the end is the way to go. I tried it yesterday - did 70 minutes of zone 2 before doing my 2 x 20 and was able to hit the same output as when I was doing a 15 minute warm-up. Big difference is in how my legs feel today (much more fatigued) but I guess that's to be expected.