Why can’t I stop over-riding endurance rides

Triathlon Forum
1

I feel like I can’t as a lower volume rider mentally stop riding endurance rides too hard. Like constantly in tempo for hours rides. They say ignore the ctl and do your 80/20 but mentally that is tough when reality is a low volume rider like me has several off days per week where it should be enough recovery.

Even when I go inside for workouts and try erg z2 I inch up the damn resistance till my HR is the last bpm in z2 by hr.

I just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

I suck at this.

2

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.

3

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.

4

I’d say keep going hard unleash your overtraining.

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

5

I’d say keep going hard unleash your overtraining.

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

6

I feel like I can’t as a lower volume rider mentally stop riding endurance rides too hard. Like constantly in tempo for hours rides. They say ignore the ctl and do your 80/20 but mentally that is tough when reality is a low volume rider like me has several off days per week where it should be enough recovery.

Even when I go inside for workouts and try erg z2 I inch up the damn resistance till my HR is the last bpm in z2 by hr.

I just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

I suck at this.

Low volume, 2 hours, and endurance rides…

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

7

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.

8

just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

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

9

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.

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.

10

80/20 only really makes sense for high volume training.

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.

11

I feel like I can’t as a lower volume rider mentally stop riding endurance rides too hard. Like constantly in tempo for hours rides. They say ignore the ctl and do your 80/20 but mentally that is tough when reality is a low volume rider like me has several off days per week where it should be enough recovery.

Even when I go inside for workouts and try erg z2 I inch up the damn resistance till my HR is the last bpm in z2 by hr.

I just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

I suck at this.

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.

12

80/20 only really makes sense for high volume training.

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.

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.

13

I feel like I can’t as a lower volume rider mentally stop riding endurance rides too hard. Like constantly in tempo for hours rides. They say ignore the ctl and do your 80/20 but mentally that is tough when reality is a low volume rider like me has several off days per week where it should be enough recovery.

Even when I go inside for workouts and try erg z2 I inch up the damn resistance till my HR is the last bpm in z2 by hr.

I just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

I suck at this.

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.

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.

14

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, 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.

15

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)

16

I feel like I can’t as a lower volume rider mentally stop riding endurance rides too hard. Like constantly in tempo for hours rides. They say ignore the ctl and do your 80/20 but mentally that is tough when reality is a low volume rider like me has several off days per week where it should be enough recovery.

Even when I go inside for workouts and try erg z2 I inch up the damn resistance till my HR is the last bpm in z2 by hr.

I just need convincing that 2 hrs of true z2 is more beneficial than 2 at the limit of z2 tempo and sacrificing better intensity work later.

I suck at this.

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.

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.

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.

17

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

https://youtu.be/GBvBu5ErSSo?si=qOIEYXIsQapYsVEJ

Things usually straighten themselves out LOL

18

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.

19

**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.

20

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.