When is zone 2 no longer zone 2?

Triathlon Forum
1

Hey guys just hoping someone would be able to give me a clearer answer so I can understand .

Last week I caught up with a friend who said they would be doing a zone 2 ride . I caught them mid way into their 200km ride whilst I was only planning on doing 100km . From the start riding with them I realised this is no way my zone 2 (one persons zone 2 is another’s vo2 😂) but took it on the chin to ride with a friend .

After about 90mins I could hear them struggling a little bit so I asked what his heart rate was and he said 155-160 . I questioned him about riding zone 2 to which his reply was yeah power . His heart rate will eventually catch up was his response .

Now here is where I’m hoping you can enlighten me with zone 2 . I have seen the argument 200 watts is 200 watts but with cardiac drift and length of time is that 200 watts still doing what the 200watts in the first hour was doing on your body ? If he was to maintain his zone 2 power level but his heart rate went from an aerobic system at the start but ended in the anaerobic would that cause his long rides to miss their purpose ?

Looking forward to learning , cheers guys

2

power zones have a “width”; the longer the ride (or interval) the lower you have to stay in the relevant zone, in order not to have the heart rate drifting into the next higher zone. for example, if your ftp is 280w, your zone 2 is likely 160-210w; for a 200k ride, it’s possibly better to start out under 170-175w.
If you stay too long higher than 190-195w, your heart will eventually drift into zone 3

3

And just to confirm by staying at zone 2 in power but heart rate going into zone 3 you are no longer getting the appropriate adaption ?

4

exactly. anyway you can reduce/delay the drift by properly fueling and hydrating

5

Thank you mate.

6

exactly. anyway you can reduce/delay the drift by properly fueling and hydrating

I think even if you’re able to stave off heart rate drift, there’s still a point where Z2 isn’t quite Z2 from a stress perspective.

Stephen Seiler says that 200 watts in the first hour is not the same stress as 200 watts in the 4th or 5th hour. TSS doesn’t account for that either.

No idea what the solution is. I suppose just know that Z2 will feel harder after several hours and perhaps switch to RPE at some point?

7

I would say that it also depends on what your training for.

If you are training to hold 200 watts during for example an ironman then I can see a point of trying too hold 200w despite having a heart rate drift. Sure you are not ready yet but sometimes it’s good to train the legs for the fatigue as well.

8

agreed with depends what you’re training for.
my take on zone 2 is that it has A LOT of bang for the buck (for aerobic adaptations) with minimal stress (such that you can do a harder workout the next day or can do several days of zone 2).
but, if the harder workout you’re training for is holding that 200 watts for many hours - then i’d say not really a zone 2 effort - this is your harder effort and the lead up to this effort could benefit from stricter zone 2 on other workouts.

the classic one human’s definition of the easy ride is unlikely to be another human’s definition (just substitute zone 2 or any other hard to define term).

9

Hey guys just hoping someone would be able to give me a clearer answer so I can understand .

Last week I caught up with a friend who said they would be doing a zone 2 ride . I caught them mid way into their 200km ride whilst I was only planning on doing 100km . From the start riding with them I realised this is no way my zone 2 (one persons zone 2 is another’s vo2 😂) but took it on the chin to ride with a friend .

After about 90mins I could hear them struggling a little bit so I asked what his heart rate was and he said 155-160 . I questioned him about riding zone 2 to which his reply was yeah power . His heart rate will eventually catch up was his response .

Now here is where I’m hoping you can enlighten me with zone 2 . I have seen the argument 200 watts is 200 watts but with cardiac drift and length of time is that 200 watts still doing what the 200watts in the first hour was doing on your body ? If he was to maintain his zone 2 power level but his heart rate went from an aerobic system at the start but ended in the anaerobic would that cause his long rides to miss their purpose ?

Looking forward to learning , cheers guys

Wait, the dude is riding 200km? Breathing is no longer smooth and/or easy and he thinks his HR is going to catch up to him? What the absolute fuck is he thinking?

Does he expect his hr to jump up to 170 (which I’m guessing it probably did by the end)?

I’m all for 200km rides though. Rather liked them myself. When I did ran training camps I always scheduled the first day as ~ 215km or more. Yet, you have to be smart, have to eat enough and ride within yourself. Which means starting at a lower power/slower than you think you should. I’ve coached pros who will start out at 50-55% of FTP.

The fatigue hole you can dig by riding the first 3h too hard then dying over and over and over again on every little rise in the road or gust of wind in your face is pretty big. That can lead to subpar training the next 2-3-4-5d or however long it takes to recover. 1 super long ride + 4-5d of sub par training probably = worse overall than 1 well executed long ride and 4-5d of normal training

He is going on a 200km ride. He/you/everyone should start easy, easier than you think, don’t worry about power. Think about riding at a pace from the beginning that you can hold for 7h. You should be talking in paragraphs, paragraph with an s, not just a paragraph, without having to breath in deeply. That means your Zn2 power might be 165-205 but you may start out at 140 for the first bit. It’ll rise as you warm up. The second hour might be only around 150-155 (in this example). Who cares? No one. That is who should care.

I can hear people saying “I’m in zn1 power at the beginning so I’m not benefiting or getting better”. BULLSHIT.

And look, we’ve all done some dumb long rides stuff before. In the first hour you’re power is high you’re feeling good and KNOW you should back off. You let it ride. Sure, you may bonk, because you brought only a clif bar and a package of clif blocks. Sure you may be 3h in and know you’re going to bonk. So what? You roll the dice. At 4 hours in you need a 24oz coke not the normal 160oz you’d get and you grab some twizzlers because they didn’t have Payday’s. (for the record, twizzlers are not great for anti bonking or recovering from a bonk). We’ve all been there. You may also bonk again less than 90 minutes later because hey YOLO, got to keep that power high. You might need 2 more cokes, Payday and a Twix. Then you limp home, wondering why you YOLO’d and were so, so, so dumb. We’ve all been there, maybe even twice. (do as I say, not as I do people -I do the dumb stuff so you don’t have to)

The above paragraph should not be anywhere near your typical long or super long ride. The purpose of those really long rides is not in going hard it’s in things like subcellular improvements like mitochondrial density, AMPK etc. It’s in peripheral adaptations, central adaptations, the things you need in order to take your fitness to the next level.

10

And just to confirm by staying at zone 2 in power but heart rate going into zone 3 you are no longer getting the appropriate adaption ?

What do you mean by appropriate adaptation? You’re not less fit because you did it, you’re just more fatigued because you did it wrong. if you’ve been training and do a 6-7h ride correctly you may start out at 115-120 and end up at 130-135 for your hr without feeling shelled.

remember power is what you’re doing hr is the response to the power you’re applying. While thinking in zones makes training prescription easier I also think it confuses a lot of people when something like zn2 power with a zn 3 hr happes. Your body doesn’t know which zone it’s in. Just that you’re doing xxx power and your hr is doing yyy

(personally I don’t think that’s really HR drift (~115 to around 130 over 5-6-7h), mostly it’s due to dehydration and recruitment of larger and larger motor unit as the ride goes on. Drift to me would be higher and your breathing would be more ragged)

Don’t get wrapped in a ball of yarn over it

11

I think even if you’re able to stave off heart rate drift, there’s still a point where Z2 isn’t quite Z2 from a stress perspective.

Stephen Seiler says that 200 watts in the first hour is not the same stress as 200 watts in the 4th or 5th hour. TSS doesn’t account for that either.

No idea what the solution is. I suppose just know that Z2 will feel harder after several hours and perhaps switch to RPE at some point?

As the duration increases holding the same effort becomes a larger physiological ask.

I’d suggest switching to PRE for all your long rides (and runs) and not worrying about power or pace or hr. I mean check those things to make sure you’re not out there crushing it, but use PRE as the primary metric.

If it feels harder at the beginning than something you can do for 4h or 5h or however long you’re than it probably is harder than you should be going

Hope that helps

12

I’ve posted this many times, it’s been very helpful in helping me increase volume without killing myself.

Endurance training is an RPE, it’s not a power or a heart rate. It’s the RPE where you feel like you’re pleasantly moving without straining. Training with power is far too likely to encourage you to go too hard, and training by heart rate is going to make you think too hard since there are a million things that could influence heart rate which are independent of how things are going.

Riding harder than what I referenced above has basically the same adaptation but exponentially more fatigue (fatigue really is an exponentially curve).

The empirical cycling podcast did an interesting episode on this recently, ten minute tips episode #37. It’s also referenced many times on other episodes.

Lol reading back through the thread, basically what desert dude said.