IMHO, for a fixed amount of time, the harder you go the more fitness you get from it.
Somehow some people have worked themselves into some twisted logic wherein zone 3 is “bad” somehow. I do not agree with that, and certainly there are examples of elite world championship level athletes that do lots of ‘sweet spot’ training.
So, anyway, the best intensity to go for any given workout will depend on how much time you have to train in a given week, what other training you are doing, etc etc. If you aren’t running much, and only have 3 hours a week to bike, better do all of that in zones 3/4
If you are running a lot and biking 10 hours a week, probably a lot of that will be zone 2 or you will pass out.
Assuming you used zone 2 per this definition:
http://home.trainingpeaks.com/...y-andrew-coggan.aspx
yes, you did some good. For 2 hour rides, you might as well go to the high end of zone 2, or zone 3 though. Get more bang for your buck.
Question for you Jack! I’ve occasionally heard that I’m better off being in Zone 2 or Zone 4 if time crunched. What physiological/real world benefits are there of doing Zone 3 workouts?
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the clarification. I’d heard that zone 3 is junk from a coach but didn’t have context for the statement so never understood why. Thanks again for clarifying.
I haven’t posted in a while, so, I’ll keep my account active with this one…
Actually, more correctly, Zone/Level 2 is “junk”. I remember doing a USAC power clinic in San Fran a couple years ago and was asked a very similar question. I told them I don’t set out to prescribe ANY L2, even in the “Base” phase, there was a gasp from the throng (ok, a bit of an overstatement, but there were probably 60 in attendance and there really was a collective gasp… I have that effect on people), and the questioner had a puzzled look on her face. I elaborated by saying I figure out 1) how much total time there is to train 2) how much/many interval(s) training there will be and the rest is pretty much L2. For the most part, L2 is really filler and there is really very little training bang for the buck unless you’re training 20 hr per week. At the same time, it’s typically the default level the athlete reverts to when recovering between hard efforts, so, most get plenty of it without any focused effort. Along these lines, at the clinic, in an attempt to alleviate the questioner’s quizzical look, I further clarified that it didn’t mean that my athletes don’t do any L2, quite the contrary, unless you’re only training 6 hr per week, between WU, CD and rest between intervals and easy days, L2 is still typically the single biggest component of training load. That being said, it shouldn’t be a target training zone/level; at it least shouldn’t be for most people. Even athletes who are training really hard (think of the hardest ass trainer you can think of) still get the majority of their training in L2 by default.
In contrast to this, L3 is actually quite good in terms of bang for the buck. You can do a fair bit of it frequently with minimal requisite recovery. Granted, extended periods of L3 focus may lead to staleness, but as a focus of the “base” phase, it’s hard to go wrong doing a bunch of L3. Still, if you plot your overall training zone/level distribution during this period, it should still come out with L2 being the single largest component, that is unless your total volume is low.
There is the old school mentality that L3 falls into the “no man’s land” region of training, but that’s really a remnant of the days when all we had was Polar Vantage monitors, Winning Mag and Eddie B’s book to go by for training guidance. Anybody who says that L3 is junk is a bit like an unfrozen caveman lawyer.
