Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
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.