Interesting that many people say to look out for breathing and HR (not saying one shouldn't), because I personally feel exhaustion first in my legs and when I try to adapt my ride style (lower gear higher cadence) then I feel start to feel exhaustion after. Or maybe I am just imagining things.

How is that possible? In two ways, one z2 is supposed to be doable for hours, how can 1 hour be hard? And two, I assume you mean literally never stop, never into z1 and in that sense in the real world where can you cycle for one hour without at least having to slow down for traffic a few times?

Yeah. I mean literally never stop. It's possible for me because I am in riding distance of endless country roads in the Delta. https://www.strava.com/routes/11139003 Or you could do it on your trainer in the garage, but that would be next-level psychological torture.

And yes, when you've already been riding for an hour or and then you start an hour of steady non-stop pedaling. It's harder than you'd think.

This was one of the most significant things I learned and changed in my training after getting a powermeter. I'm not sure I ever pedaled for more than a couple of minutes at a time prior to that. All those little seconds of coasting don't affect hr too much, but it's instantly noticeable with a power meter.

Took a year or two to really get used to it, because it definitely does a number on your legs when you're not.

I'm very similar unless it's super hot or humid. My hr actually starts dropping a bit when glycogen runs low. After that watts start dropping, too. Could be breathing through my nose with a low hr and be absolutely cracked.

It isnt hard in the sense that your legs start burning or your HR goes through the roof. But it requires a lot of mental focus. When you do a normal Z2/endurance ride, you often take short micro-breaks and coast for a second or two, or let your power drop a little. When you are riding without any of these pauses, your legs definitely notice it, and you need concentration to avoid lapsing into this.

My earlier approach to Z2 rides was just got out and ride and as long as my average W for the ride were in the zone, it was good. But this would result in a lot of time in Z1. Now, my Z2 ride is almost entirely in Z2, and the benefit of that has been really obvious.

Hah, you have too much space in the US ;)

I can start to imagine, I must incorporate this into my endurance rides.

Essentially, the idea for really long rides is to start off easy enough. Without any gadgets, you're looking at "I can talk in complete sentences while doing this." intensity, and that includes uphill bits where people without a power meter routinely go too hard (and pay for it later).

If you go too hard initially, the return home can be a bit miserable, but everyone's been there, it's not such a tragedy and you'll be glad you've done it. I do suggest planning your first very long rides so that the return part of the ride is on mostly flat terrain where you can ride easy and still be reasonably fast.

I've been using my resistance rollers for a very long time. It's easy to hold power steady on rollers. One of my regular winter workouts is to ride at a steady pace, power Z2 or 3, for a while. One hour of Z2 is easy, 2 hours is very hard for me. An hour of Z3 is also hard but doable. Nothing like it. No real reason to do that outdoors, because outdoors one's task is to hold speed steady, not power. Power varies continuously with even tiny variations in pavement quality, and there's no such thing as a flat road. I used to have to come up and discipline the front rider of a line to hold speed and cadence steady through the gusts. If you can't do it, pull over.

I see on the list of "No Gos" that was just published in another thread that one of the No Gos is less than 2.5 hours of Z2. I think that's about right. On those, rather than keep power steady, I try to keep the average power in range and keep HR steady, not necessarily at the same number, just steady. I don't have that much flat around here, so I have to include some Z3 climbs and the resulting descents, but nothing to be done. I probably should do longer roller rides, but I don't.

But back to the OP's question, which rather beg's the real question, which is when you go out riding, why? What are you there for? That's the real answer. You simply want to ride for X hours or complete a route of Z miles. But why? Do you have goals beyond just completing that ride? If that's it, then just go as slowly as you need to. Don't worry about pacing. If you want to build endurance, that's a whole 'nother question. In that case, ride the hills as hard as you can and when you get tired just limp in. Repeat with ever longer routes until you're so old you can't balance on the bike anymore. Simple?

One complication is that you can't do that every ride. So ride some hard, some easy. I usually do 1 or 2 all-out rides like that. A second complication is that even doing an all-out ride is not simple. What you really want to do is to TT the course, i.e. finish in the least time. To do that, one goes hard on the hills and moderate in between, but only moderate enough that you can still hit the next hill hard, IOW recover between, but at the fastest pace which allows you to recover. You can pick a low traffic hilly course and work on reducing your time on it, using different pacing techniques.

One also needs to do enough moderate rides to build the endurance necessary to get faster on the routes you want to TT on. To do a moderate ride, just hold the effort down. Keep is well below the leg pain level. Let your legs be your guide. Just have fun. On an average 150 mile week, I'd do a 60 mile route, ridden as hard as I could. Then say 30 miles of hill repeats, 25 miles of speed work, the rest either moderate or pedaling drills, Of course that varies with the seasons, at least here it does. 30-50 mile long rides in winter, and way long rides in the summer. That might give you an idea of proportions.

It is possible to run into glycogen depletion and subsequent bonking when trying to extend one's hard ride lengths. Don't worry about it, just ride in slow if/when that happens. That responds to training, one gradually gets better..

Being self-coached is hard, but there a lot of good teachers on BF. You'll figure it out as you work up to it.

That part is true, I just ask questions and always get great replies :)

And well yes but it is also a lot of fun. I made myself my own plan and turns out the summit plans you can see are super similar.

Thanks! Yeah, one thing that can get easy to forget is that most people have experience with workouts less than an hour. The national average people who exercise regularly is only 50%. Of those, it's a very small amount that exercise for longer than 2 hours at a time (but to people who've been cycling for some time, this is nothing new). So for the vast majority of us, a 2+ hour ride is a completely foreign concept.
I quite enjoy endurance activities and love the thought of being able to ride for 4 hours some day. For someone my age (almost 40), unfortunately, "just going out and riding" isn't enough. I need to take precautions from getting hurt.
I do ride fasted as I'm in the process (half way through) of losing 40 lbs (and generally like intermittent fasting as a lifestyle). I only ride for performance once a week or so.
Also, I have limited time, so I want to maximize my rides (for example, if I can get "more" out of a ride, I'd like to).
I don't see any reason I shouldn't optimize even my base training.
This is going to sound sad, but on days that I get to ride, I wake up thinking about the ride, and it is what I look forward to all day. I like having a plan (e.g. light ride vs. intervals etc.). At night, I look over the ride analysis... lol.

Training is physiological. Your body doesn't know 15 mph from 30 mph. Speed isn't steady and I don't know a single person that actually trains to hold speed steady. In fact, if you were actually trying to go as fast as possible, your speed likely wouldn't be steady, nor would your power.

Besides, training indoors sucks.

Ha. The notion that you shouldn't do Z2 unless it's more than 2.5 hours is straight up dumb (as is the other end of the range: 14 DAYS!!!). Who has time to ensure that every ride is at least 2.5 hours? If I did 2 hour rides each day, those should be z3? Ridiculous. 14 hours a week of z3+. Yeah right.

There's theory, and there's application. Sometimes theory does not work with application.

BF is so much fun! True, you don't know me, but the riders I go out with definitely try to hold speed steady, which has a tendency to spike my power quite significantly on the risers. But that's a good thing. Thing is, random acceleration on the flat requires an expenditure of energy and expenditures of energy are not recoverable. Yeah, I know, some think that subsequent deceleration gets it back, but that's not true. That's the reason some find that holding steady power is hard - you're always accelerating and decelerating. You have to in order to hold power steady. You bet it's harder. My point.

We're talking endurance riding in this post. I don't know an endurance rider who doesn't try to hold speed steady. Ride the hills hard was the first thing that was shoved down my throat or perhaps up my . . .in my introduction to endurance riding. The second thing was hold your speed and line. That's beginner stuff.

I thought the 2.5 hour No Go on Z2 was actually pretty good. I have a tendency to do too many single hours of endurance. Not to repeat myself or anything, but endurance begins when you start to endure. I think 2.5 hours is the leading edge of that point. It's usually 50 miles between brevet controls. One simply holds it steady and a zone 2 power average is taking it easy. Then repeat and repeat. Hills don't make it easier.

OTOH, one can only do what one has time to do. But that said, I'm going to do more tempo and less "endurance" on my rollers. That is, once the doctors get done destroying my butt with their saddle sore treatments. Ouch. I'm training to do long standing intervals, probably what I've always needed to do anyway.

I don't maintain speed no matter whether I'm riding for one hour or six hours. At least not when I'm solo. I'm just going at whatever steady power output I know I can maintain without tiring. I don't have a PM, I just have learned over the years to feel in my legs what I can and can't maintain. Watching my HR and cadence also helps me make some judgments about how I'm doing.

I kinda sorta understand what some are getting at by staying in zone 2 for an entire long ride. It forces you to deal with some things you have to learn how to feel and control. Perhaps it exposes more of that to you. However, regardless of which way you go or the advice you take, it'll all involve riding more.

I don't follow. What's your point again? You said you don't ride to power outdoors, you ride to speed. But that's just wrong for anyone that actually trains with power. It's "harder" only in the sense that people don't do it. Once you start doing it, it's not hard in the least. You just keep constant pressure on the pedals.

You think endurance is only built in a single ride? Surely not. I can ride 1 to 1.5 hours every day and build endurance. I can go out and crush a 100 miler on that plan (well, maybe not crush, but ride it well enough). Endurance is cumulative. Training stress is cumulative.

Now, I wouldn't necessarily go try a 120 mile race off of nothing but two hour rides, but that's an altogether different kind of endurance. Suffice to say, consistent shorter rides build substantial endurance, too, especially in easy zones.

You misunderstand me. I do ride to power outdoors, I just don't hold it steady unless I'm on a steady climb. Then it's easy and natural, just like on the rollers. But on seemingly flat roads, I hold a steady pace which will produce the average wattage I'm looking for. On seemingly flat roads at a steady cadence, I'll see power fluctuate from 100w-150w or even more. I'm pretty good at steady cadence from decades of roller work. Yeah, one thinks one is keeping constant pressure on the pedals, but the PM doesn't agree. I even use 3-second averaging. I disagree that keeping power constant in the micro is more important than keeping speed constant. We may each have our own goals.

There's endurance, and then there's serious endurance. You can't ride a 400k in the mountains to your genetic ability without a particular type of endurance training. 1.5 hours/day won't do it. Even though you accumulate adequate training stress, it's not distributed correctly. There's a good reason that the SR series goes 200k, 300k, 400k, 600k. Interestingly, the biggest jump for most riders is 200k-300k. You're right, of course you can ride a 200k. You can probably do fine on a 400k too, but not to your ability. This is a bit over the top for this thread, where 50 miles looks like a big jump. But the principle is the same. You need one long hard ride to near exhaustion and then fill-ins for the rest of it, with recovery, endurance, intervals, whatever one can do and still be able to do a big ride the next week. I know a rider who only rode a 200k every weekend, no other riding, just the opposite to what you advocate. That wasn't the most successful training schedule either.

I was taught how to get fast over long distances by people who have 25 RAMROD jerseys in their closets and their methods have been proven right. The group with which I've been riding all these years has had a goal of enabling riders to ride our local big rides, STP and RAMROD. There's also a special once-a-week training ride series for RAMROD, that runs from April to July, just not this year. It features increasing distance and elevation gain, starting at about 50 miles and 2500' and finishing at ~120 miles and 7500'. That series has trained 100s, maybe 1000s of riders to be able to undertake long rides.

I should mention that it's perfectly possible to ride a 400k to your best ability, training on rides of never more than 6 hours, but they have to be to-exhaustion rides, and one needs also to have had the experience of doing dark-to-dark rides.

I wish I knew the technical details of the physiological adaptation which occurs on long hard rides, but I don't, I only know that it happens. I also know that this process, like any training process, must increase one's CTL to whatever peak level values work for the rider. Only the distribution of TSS is different.

Again, this works for all levels of ability where increasing ride length is desired and one wants visible process. I'll never forget my first 50 mile ride in my 50s, when I found myself sitting in a ditch with the world strobing around me. I ate a Clif bar, remounted 15 minutes later and had no problem finishing the ride. One has to eat, duh. Lesson learned. An STP record holder once told me, "Distance equals strength." It's true.

I never rode PBP, but you should put it on your life list.

I am not denying that its been your experience, but it seems a bit weird to me to try to maintain the same speed throughout the ride.

Edit - Ok, saw your subsequent post about training for the Super-Rando rides and it makes more sense now.

You see power fluctuate that much simply because you're not used to holding it steady. It's a skill like any other, and you get better at it by doing it. I was the same way initially, but now holding within a 20 watt window isn't really a big deal, even on rolling terrain. You might be good at steady cadence, but that's only one aspect of power (and why cadence is a red herring as I've pointed out in other threads where you opined that steady cadence up climbs was optimal).

But your disagreement isn't the issue. You stated that people ride to speed outdoors, and that's simply not true. You may, but people training with power do not as it's pointless and not at all what our training is about.

I have absolutely zero interest in riding 400k in the mountains. That's a pointless endeavor for me, and is far beyond the scope of either this thread or training in general. You comparing riding 400k in the mountains to this thread is like me comparing 90 minute crits at 32 mph. You're not doing that, OP's not doing that. It's extremely specific and not at all relevant.

The OP said 2 to 3 hours. 2-3 hours rides can be well done off of consistent 1-1.5 hours training a day.

Sure, there are differing adaptations. And depending on your goal, a weekly/bi-weekly super hard 5 hour ride may be necessary for maximum performance. Specificity is important as always. But it's not mandatory for building endurance in any way, shape, or form.

My CTL is at 93 and I've done five rides over 3 hours, and zero rides over 4 hours. Like I said, training stress is cumulative.


Will never happen. I have no interest in long distance riding. I don't enjoy hours and hours in the saddle in the least.

It's beautiful out there. I've always felt such joy in seeing the valley drop away below me, whether on foot or in the saddle, I couldn't say why. Seems to be built in. To each his own.

What you say about training hours is absolutely true, but inefficient, which is the reason that it's not the usual recommendation for increasing ride lengths. The standard measure for increasing the length of one's longest ride is that one can do one ride that is as long as the total hours or miles per week one has recently been putting in. So to do a 3 hour ride, you only have to have been doing three one-hour rides/week. That's the minimum though. For a "fast time," one has to do double the long ride's hours or miles per week. So to complete a 3-hour ride, one only needs to have consistently done three 1-hour rides per week. However if one is regularly doing a 3 hour ride and doing three 1-hour rides, one will have fun on the 3-hour ride. That's quite usual, though mostly folks do two 1.5 hour mid-week rides to match the 3-hour ride. That said, this total weekly miles goal doesn't need to go beyond about 175 miles/week to be able to ride most usual distances, including ultras, though it's important that a good bit, say 10%-15%,, of those miles or hours be ridden in zones 4 and 5. Again, this can be scaled down to whatever ride lengths are contemplated.

We each have our own group of rider friends of course, but mine follow some approximation of this pattern. Many do two long weekend rides. Back to back long rides are the best if one can recover adequately. Here's a typical training plan for a strong century. Those with a current shorter goal need only shorten all the rides by (chosen ride length)/100. It's not necessary to spread the miles out this much, as long as the long ride and total miles are as programmed. Riding 3-5 days/week is more common.
https://www.illinoistocht.com/upload...32.jpg?417x163

I think being able to race bikes off of 8-10 hours a week is about as efficient as you can get with regards to training stress and performance.

You want to go slowly for a long time. I want to go extremely fast for a moderate amount of time.

The difference is, I can do both off of my training. Now you may not want to ride fast or competitively, just like I don't want to ride long distances slowly. But my training provides me the fitness necessary for either, so again, that's about as efficient as it gets in my book.

Slightly OT: did you always train 8-10 hours to get to Cat 1? Or is that what you need now to maintain your fitness, but you put in more hours earlier to get to this stage?

Kind of both, depending on the time period. I became a Cat 1 at 20 years old and I was riding 10-20 hours a week throughout the year. Then I quit and didn't ride for 7 years.

After starting again in my 30s, my training is squarely in the 6-10 hours a week range. I've done one 15 hour week in 7 years, and a handful of 10-13 hour weeks when building for long races.

So in my 30s, 8-10 hours to build up fitness (like this winter when I started after a 6 month break and an ftp of ~220w) to being competitive, and then 4-6 hours a week to maintain it.

I bike train about the same amount for long events, though counting hiking it's more like 15 hours. No, I want to go as fast as possible for a long time. I TT my long training rides. In my early 60s, I rode the last 25 mile continuous stretch of a 150+ mile ride in one hour flat (with three racer boys, rolling paceline.) I rode a 400 in a hair under 15 hours, elapsed of course, also in my 60s. That's not riding slowly. I'm not a talented rider at all, just well-trained.

Your training is sufficient for what you're doing. It's not sufficient for other things. I assert that really efficient training, however, would allow for both.

What's fast for you isn't fast for me. What's long for me isn't long for you. But your training, despite being significantly more, wouldn't prepare you for what I want to do. My training does prepare me for what you want to do (at least physically. mentally would be a toss-up depending on motivation).