Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
The relevant question is, is your training making you faster or are you accumulating fatigue and bogging down? If you’re making progress, feeling good, and recovering, your intensity is appropriate for your volume. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
I have no zone discipline at all, but I’m only putting in 12-15 hrs a week.
Wise words.
I guess it all boils down to "are you improving", suggesting the "all roads lead to Rome (or Tokyo)" wisdom.
I don't have much zone discipline, either. Every ride seems to be a mix of
sorta-easy,
sorta-hard,
pretty-hard, and a dash of
really-hard. About all I can glean is "the more I ride, the stronger I get".
12-15 hrs per week is a decent amount. I can thrash myself pretty throughly in 15 hours.
Originally Posted by
work4bike
Isn't zone 3 basically a race pace? Seems like you have to train in it occasionally if you're a racer, but like already said, if the fatigue is accumulating from too much time in zone 3 then you'll just have to back off, but I know that's easier said than done. I'm not a racer, but I am a life-long commuter that needs to get places in a fairly quick time, so I do spend a lot of time in zone 3.
Yeah, I figure a large portion of a road race is spent doing zone 3. I do a 1 or 2 long-ish zone 3 rides per week, when I climb Mt Hamilton (about 1:45 at zone 3). It seems these workouts help me go longer at the "almost threshold" pace. Some of the training coaches promote these as "
sub-threshold intervals":
..
Sub-threshold intervals should be an integral part of any training plan to build aerobic endurance. When you train at an intensity slightly lower than threshold power, you can work for a longer time with minimal anaerobic metabolism.
Because these intervals are performed at an intensity safely below threshold power, you can perform impressive amounts of these without overshooting. So sub-threshold intervals improve your aerobic performance and have almost no impact on your anaerobic endurance.
..
So not all coaches hate zone 3.
Originally Posted by
Hermes
When I climbed Mount Hamilton with constant force in my muscles in both zone 2 and zone 3 it kicked my ass. Riding flat to rolling terrain in silicon value with traffic lights, stop signs and etc zone 2 was easy.
Yeah, the muscle fatigue that Mt. Hamilton produces is serious stuff. That constant stress from a mostly unrelenting grade seems to be much harder than shorter climbs. I'm trying to improve my fatigue resistance, doing Ham twice per week (weather permitting -- didn't get out of the 30s on Sunday).