I honestly don’t find at lower volumes that going too hard is a problem and in fact I def do a lot better going hard most of the time.

That said when I’m on my higher volume race plans, it’s enough volume that I absolutely have to dial in back on the non hard days and z2 is usually closer to z1. The body def knows - I know I’m fatigued and won’t be able to finish the week as planned if I don’t dial back.

I’d say keep going hard unleash your overtraining.

I have a really hard time believing that 80/20 is the way to go for someone with relatively few hours to train if they also want go faster in triathlon. For me it feels much better to maximise time in the intensity meant for the race. Easy rides are for filling up in between the hard ones and make you more comfortable on the bike (and run). The easy ones should feel earned I think.

Of course if you are a slower ironman athlete then your race pace should be low intensity and maybe that is exactly what you should practice.

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Did you mean "unless"? But this is actually awesome and maybe a mantra for some of us: "Unleash your overtraining!"

Needs some work on punctuation, either way

"Keep going hard; unleash your overtraining"
OR
"Keep going hard, unless you're overtraining"

YMMV

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Low volume, 2 hours, and endurance rides...

Endurance rides don't really fit with those first two.

80/20 only really makes sense for high volume training. For what you're doing, just keep on keepin' on.

For a pro training 30hrs/wk, 20% hard is still 6hrs of hard efforts (probably the most they can do without burning out or having to dial back the volume). For someone who trains 6hrs/wk (1hr/day with a day off....typical AGer), doing almost five of those hours down at Z2 isn't necessary or beneficial.

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Nah you’re good. If you’re taking multiple days off every week you are correct that you are recovering. More is more training. Now if your harder days aren’t progressing the way they should then you should go back and reevaluate

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Yes exactly. I find it helpful to look at your weekly plan and prioritize the workouts. If you could only do 1 per week which would get you closest to your goal? Certainly not an easy Z2 ride for an hour or two. Same for 2 workouts, same for 3. 6-10h per week of multi sport training can all be done at a fairly high intensity level. People do it all the time on Peleton.

Remember the end goal is to maximize the body's adaptation towards a specific goal. Most of the time that means increasing the stress on the body specific to that goal. If you only have a certain number of hours to train that means the only way to increase that stress and subsequent adaptation is to increase the intensity.

Some prominent people in 80/20 camp would disagree, e.g. Dr. Stephen Seiler. In fact they'd say the less volume you do the more careful you have to be about the high intensity work.

Don't shoot the messenger, I'm not a physiologist. Just relaying the school of thought.

A lot depends on how you're defining 'beneficial'. As for all the comments that you can recover from what you're doing, given your low volume, so what? Do you get more stimulus from riding higher in the zone, or low in the next higher zone? Yeah, a little. Training isn't (or shouldn't be) about the stimulus, it's about the adaptation, always the adaptation.

Hypothetically, let's say your power at LT1 is 200W. The difference in adaptation from riding at 180W vs 195W is minimal, but the fatigue at 195W is much greater, and greater still if you decide that 205-210 makes more sense. And, yes, you can do your harder sessions harder, and thus get better adaptations, if you back off a little on your easy sessions.

Wouldn't Seiler also say that 80/20 is sessions and not time?

I feel like the entire 80/20 thing has become so far removed from its origins by people with stuff to sell that it's something completely different now.

Yeah, but what is being said is that the extra fatigue from the higher effort matters less with lower volume because there's more time for recovery and fewer future sessions that will be impacted. You need to increase the stress on the body somehow to make continued adaptation, otherwise you plateau at whatever current stress you're at.

I'm not saying OP should do 4h weekend rides as an all out TT. Tbh the sort of obvious solution here is to integrate some kind of efforts into the weekend long ride. 3h with 5x10min hills at a hard pace is likely to be a more beneficial without than 3h comfortably hard tempo (the pace it sounds like OP is doing). But this is dependent on the rest of the training environment.

Yeah, the original studies where he arrived at the approximation of 80/20 was done in sessions, not time.

Per your second point, he also made it clear (to steal a phrase from Dr. Coggan) that 80/20 was descriptive, not prescriptive. He was just making an observation that a lot of very successful athletes seemed to arrive at a training pattern where around 4 or 5 workouts were done at a relatively low intensity.

And now there are lots of people who've turned that into a hard prescription.

He also had prescriptive ideas, but if I recall correctly they weren't based on sticking to a hard 80/20 type rule.

Are you asking if it’s okay to do z2 at the top end?

I kinda look at it as z2 is a range. As long as you hit the range you did your job for the day

If you’re fresh, the high end of the range is fine. If you’re tired, and hit the low end, that’s fine too

My hunch is the biggest benefit is doing the work, consistently over a long period of time. Whether you are low z3 or high / low z2 probably doesn’t matter that much (so long as you aren’t too tired to do the rest of your work)

My suggestion would be to increase the stress on the stressful days, whether by increasing the intensity or increasing the duration at intensity. There is minimal adaptive difference between 90% vs 95% of LT1, regardless of whether you can recover from it. Why bother recovering from it, if there's no real reason to do it? As for riding at 105% of LT1, there's yet another minimal uptick in adaptation accompanied by a much larger uptick in fatigue.

Whenever I feel like I'm going a little too fast - regardless of what the numbers say, like if I'm hitting my mile markers at the right pace, but ... just feel a little "off" - I play this exchange in my head



Things usually straighten themselves out LOL

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I think a 3-4 hour ride on high Z2 adds a lot more fatigue than the same duration at low Z2. If you are training for an IM, you really want to push it a bit and see how your body reacts, nutrition, run off the bike etc. If this is not an specific IM session, then your best bet is to take it as easy as you can and save energy to make the hard sessions really hard..if you gravitate the endurance ride into low Z3 and the hard sessions into high Z3/Z4 then you might compromise the whole polarized training concept.

Keep in mind that training zones are not written in stone, you might think your Wattage and Heart Rate is still theoretically in Z2 but your body could be working in Z3.

Of course it does. Research shows that for even well trained, even pro, athletes, you'll see a drop in power at VT1 after a couple of hours, with a continued drop as duration goes on. In a 3-4 hour ride, your power at VT1 may have dropped 2-3% at 2 hours, and another couple of percentage points each hour or so going forward. Especially if you're basing your Z2 efforts on power instead of HR and you target the higher portion of Z2, you could easily find yourself riding in low to mid Z3 for the latter part of the ride, all the while thinking you're still in Z2. The impact on your fatigue will be significant, but you'll get very little extra adaptation compared to staying in Z2.

I’ve always been a big believer in upper z2 for long rides. I’ve seen some great gains after a succession of upper z2 long rides. I do wonder if I could have been just as successful with low z2. I will say that I think the muscular endurance portion of going harder is very valuable for Ironman bikes, especially since it’s not much harder than upper z2 anyway. However, for the rest of the adaptations I’m not sure. I’ve seen some studies and research that shows more mitochondrial benefit to keeping it lower.

In terms of this thread though, I’d be surprised if on low volume a harder z2 workout wouldn’t be more beneficial. If you have multiple days of recovery each week I’d be hammering away.

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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

That's also a valid way to do it. I suppose it comes down to OP's total volume and fatigue levels. Realistically OP isn't going to be able to do consistent 2h workouts every weekday, and only bigger workouts on the weekend. If OP's training looks anything like a typical triathlete it's longer stuff on the weekend, Monday and Friday off or easy, and short workouts Tue-Thu (substitute the exact days, just a typical pattern). I'd much rather see someone bury themselves on Sat/Sun and start the Tuesday workout with a bit of fatigue than go easy on the weekend in order to hit Tue at 100%.
The other thing I noticed is OP says "the last few bpm of Z2". It's entirely possible OP's zones are pretty far off, 220-age or even just autoset by Garmin based on max HR.

Training is not about accumulating the most cumulative training load.
If that were the case, then everyone ought to ride around at 85% FTP for as long as possible.
You know this, which is why you aren't doing it.

Training is about amassing training stimulus that elicits improvements that are beneficial to your goals.

Picture this:
A student comes to you and says "Mr. Burnthesheep I'm studying all day every day, but I'm not getting the grades I want".
BTS: Wow, sounds like you're working really hard, what classes are you taking?
Student: Engineering, Calculus, Physics
BTS: Hmm, what books are you using to study?
Student: "Grote's A History of Greece"
BTS: Wait - that doesn't sound like it'll help your math and sciences
Student: I know - but I really like Greek History....
[/scene]

Riding "Base" isn't just another way of accumulating training load, it's about studying the "right" subject for your intended goal. Same with VO2, same with Threshold, etc. Some people and some events require difference combinations of the subjects for best success - the same with different students and different careers.

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The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
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You described my weekly plan to a tee. I generally try to get two 2hr rides on sat/sun. Off Mon. Tuesday is the time trial group where I do something intense, be it intervals or a simulated TT. Off weds. Thursday is generally very short indoors like 45min. If feeling it, I'll do an interval. If not, I'll just mash around Zwift. Likely a warmup and one trip up the 20min Zwift climb at sweetspot. Off Friday. Repeat. If I ride the 2hr rides outdoors, for fun sake and due to terrain largely the power winds up being a Z3 effort overall.

Right now based on max HR, actually went outdoors and did a 1min KOM effort, my Z2 HR ends at 152bpm. Generally speaking, indoors doing Z2 I tend to be low Z3 for power to be at that HR. If I'm doing middle Z2 by power, I'm falling asleep bored as hell kind of thing. Maybe ftp is low setting. If I upped it I bet the middle z2 would be less of a snooze sleep fest pace.

I think I can solve your problem.

Do as real FTP test, now. Not the 8 minute version, do the 2 x 20' version. Go truly all-out.

You'll definitely find that your FTP is underset, if you can regularly ride 2 hrs and average z3 effort the entire way (this would mean you're at z4 for like an hour outdoors or more due to downhills etc)

Forget the 1 min max HR business. It's practically useless for guiding aerobic training. Use the HRs you get from the FTP test.

When I'm in strong bike shape, my z2 HR is 120-125 (I do run low) but my legs really feel the burn after 2hrs.

Yep, there's good reason why it ends up as the default plan. I guess the big question is how fatigued do you feel on Tuesday if you go 'too hard' on the weekend? I wouldn't train so easily on the weekend that you're 100% on Tue, but not so smashed that you're at like 50%. It's incredibly subjective, but starting the Tue workout (in this case) I'd want to feel 90%, good but not amazing, pretty strong but not perfect, etc. If the total volume is 6h/wk you can really smash it pretty much every time you go out.

Depending on your goal, I would incorporate something other than Z2 on the weekend. Maybe Saturday can be a power hour (60 min at 90-95% FTP), 6x10min at FTP, etc (but be honest with yourself about your FTP). Then Z2 on Sunday won't be quite so easy. (FWIW another reason Z2 feels easy is that 2h in Z2 isn't really that much. It's en vogue right now because guys are doing it for hours on end. Doing 2h isn't quite getting the same adaptation as 3-4h)

Did you use the 1 min KOM for your max HR? That's a bit short to get a true value for MHR, and probably explains a fair bit of the troubles. Most MHR tests are something like ramping up over 3-5min to at least 120%FTP then sprinting all out for 20-30 seconds. I would guess there's 5-10bpm left on the table for MHR.