I’m planning to do my first Ironman in 8 months time.
My background is olympic distance and I’ve always done training based on time and RPE. I’m now getting into heart rate. I’ve worked out zones based on my threshold pace doing a 20km TT and 5km TT for the bike and run.
I’m wanting to know if training for ironman if it is ever worth training above threshold? Or should all training be below it? The sessions above that threshold level would take a lot out of my physically and take a bit to recover. I’m training to finish, not win my age group or anything.
Training above threshold will raise your Functional Threshold quicker than Easy and Tempo riding.
Since your IM bike time is a product of your Functional Threshold and weekly ride time, stimulating your ability at threshold will make your IM ride time shorter (faster).
I’m planning to do my first Ironman in 8 months time.
My background is olympic distance and I’ve always done training based on time and RPE. I’m now getting into heart rate. I’ve worked out zones based on my threshold pace doing a 20km TT and 5km TT for the bike and run.
I’m wanting to know if training for ironman if it is ever worth training above threshold? Or should all training be below it? The sessions above that threshold level would take a lot out of my physically and take a bit to recover. I’m training to finish, not win my age group or anything.
Thoughts?
For what you’re doing it’s tough to get much more bang for your buck than putting in a good deal of time in the sweet spot region I.E. ~ 85 to 95% of FTP. You’re likely to make continuous gains over the next 8 months without significant stagnation, you should be able to tolerate substantial doses of this level of training and it’s way closer to being specific to the power levels you’ll be racing at.
One concern I would have is that if you’re just using a HRM to hit the zones you’ll have a real tendency to overshoot the power at the beginning of each interval/workout as the heart rate lags way behind your true power output.