redlude97

At Z1/Z2 you are using ~25% fat substrate and 75% carbohydrate. Fat adapted athletes are closer to 50-60% at Z1/Z2. So long slow without food will eventually deplete glycogen. High intensity work will also deplete glycogen, and at a faster rate, but you will more likely bonk and not be able to continue riding where the fat adaption occurs. Increase fat utilization occurs at low intensity through increased mitochondrial biogenesis and cell signalling pathway adaptions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840562

OBoile

I think you're on the wrong track here. Muscles can only exert force by contracting. On a bike, your abs can pull you down, but not lift you up. It would be your arms plus your glutes and spinal erectors that hold you up. IMO (which isn't a very knowledgeable one) would be that fit on the bike and making sure you don't have your weight too far forward relative to the seat would be the biggest key in making your arms do less work.

Iride01 

I focus on the comment at the end of the abstract..... " Further studies on dietary periodization strategies, especially those mimicking real-life athletic practices, are needed."

I'm still not sure I see the point of what you are suggesting. Many people that train as athletes do develop a tendency to convert fat at a faster rate to energy. I don't think the OP indicated any need to diet, but I may have missed that as the advertising is making my browser jump back to the top every few seconds. I guess they want me to get a paid membership. Might be worth it.

The OP's question as I understood it was..... is he getting any cardiovascular exercise if he doesn't go anaerobic.

The answer is yes. But for me it wouldn't be exercise if I didn't go anaerobic. I just can't imagine wanting to ride so slow. Maybe that's one of the reasons my wife won't ride with me.

Don't get ruffled though, your original statement just seemed more out of place for the thread at the time. I don't totally disagree with you.

Seattle Forrest

Why do you suppose everybody recommends core strength exercises for cyclists with neck, back, or shoulder pain, then? Not trying to be argumentative here.

redlude97

The OP didn't but others in the thread mentioned it. I was commenting on that. As for why you would exercise without going anaerobic? Well the answer is that a proper training regimen includes both, and going out and hammering every ride results in being a kinda fast mediocre cyclist.

chong67

The reason why I didnt get to Z4 or Z5 is because this is a flat ride. There are no uphills. I constant keep on peddling. I can get to about 15 mph avg for the first 2 hrs. Then things begin to slide. Muscle fatigue.

I am just amazed Garmin say I have no anaerobic, which is true.

DrIsotope

Easy to get anaerobic on the flats. At a stoplight, try to catch the car next to you as you take off from the green light. Chase it as long as you can. You'll blow past your LTHR in a matter of a few hundred yards. I got in ~10 minutes of threshold and 30 seconds of anaerobic today without actively trying to do so. I did the whole day on PLE, and still ended up with more Tempo than I wanted. But it was quite hot (dehydration will spike your HR even with decreasing effort.)

MikeOK

I am in Z4 most of the time, even light pedaling on the flats puts me in the bottom of Z4. I can't keep the bike upright and get in the lower zones. This is a screenshot of a typical ride with a few hills:

Carbonfiberboy 

Your argument interests me because it does not seem to gibe with my personal experience. Looking at the substrate use graphs in your post, I don't see a reference for the exercise intensity which produced them. Which is critical for understanding them.

My understanding is that when we burn carbohydrate, lactate is produced, while fat burning produces no lactate. At lower intensities, the lactate is easily burned off and can be as low as 1 mmol/liter or even less. There's a poster on here, I forget his handle, but he did some work with low intensity and lactate production using a blood lactate meter. He found that simply by dong long hours at intensities below the first ventilation threshold, VT1, he was able to ride while keeping his lactate levels below what his meter could detect. IOW, he was burning almost entirely fat while riding at a HR of ~80% of LTHR. He did nothing special with diet, but of course he didn't need to eat or get hungry while doing this, even for hours, as he was burning almost entirely fat.

I first read about this method of training in Chapple's 2006 book Base Building for Cyclists. He advocated doing a lot of work at about the above intensity to increase fat burning, no dietary interventions or attempts to burn off glycogen, etc.

My experience of ordinary long distance training with a mix of high and low intensity is that even after a 9 hour ride in the mountains, I can still sprint hard and easily get my HR up into the anaerobic zone, which I think means I still had glycogen available, i.e. I must have been burning a heckuva lot of fat because I was only eating ~40g carbs/hour and 9 hours didn't finish off my maybe 1000 calories (or less) of glycogen in my legs. However that's no longer true at the 18 hour point. Almost no glycogen left. It's all fat and food and my food consumption is up to ~60g/hour.

Chapple's thesis, with which I agree, is that ordinary base training increases fat burning, and in fact is one of its main purposes.

The lower end of the 5 zone system, Z1 and Z2, seem to me an arbitrary division as they don't seem to divide one metabolic process from another. I prefer the 3 zone system, divided at the 2 ventilation thresholds.

Carbonfiberboy 

Your zones are incorrect. Z4 work requires rapid deep breathing where the ejection of single words is about all you can do. I doubt that's your usual state while riding on the flat.

That said, it is usual for newer riders to have much higher HRs for a given effort than experienced riders. This is normal, but not to the extent you show. As blood volume and heart muscle increase with exercise over time, HR drops because the heart ejection fraction increases. Thus HR zones must be repositioned to reflect these changes.

MikeOK

Forgive me OP for derailing your thread.

Carbon - in that chart Z4 is 80-90% of MHR, which is 132-149 bpm. My MHR I think is 165, I got it by sprinting up a long hill to the point I thought I would pass out and seeing 163. That's where I got 165 MHR. If you look at that chart I am in Z4 almost all the time.

Carbonfiberboy 

Ah, that's it. Never set your zones by MHR because MHR is almost impossible to find. Always test for lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR) and set zones by that. Complete instructions here: CTS Field Test Instructions and Training Intensity Calculations - CTS

MikeOK

Okay I'll give that a shot, thanks. I was starting to think there was something wrong with my heart. Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

gregf83 

It's hard to tell much from a ride like that. What would be more informative is looking at your HR during a 20 min all out interval?

Measuring your true MaxHR on a bike is difficult at the best of times and if you're a newer rider it will take a while before your MaxHR on the bike matches your MaxHR obtained by running. It's much easier to measure your LTHR which you'll obtain during a longer (20+ Min) hard interval.

chong67

Did I read I have to recalulate my HR zone? I went to a website and I know my max HR and my rest HR. Then I just do the percentage thing.

I been doing the same hilly ride for a while now, about 1+ years and it seems like it is easier for me to bike up the hill now then before. This is normal right?

OBoile

Good question and I'm not entirely sure (but not saying it's wrong either).

"Core" for some people includes your lower back rather than just the stuff on the front/sides of your mid-section which makes it clear.
It could also be that the advice is simply copied from other sports where it makes more sense (a strong core seems to be the default solution to a lot of problems these days).
It could be that a stronger/more toned (in the sense of muscle activation when resting - not the typical appearance based used of the word) core provides somewhat of a base to support your weight without actually actively lifting it.
It could just be wrong, as is the the case with conventional wisdom from time to time.

DrIsotope

What you want to do is a Lactate Threshold Test. Ride a short warm-up, 5-10 minutes, then find a clear piece of road where you won't have to stop at lights/intersections. Ride as hard as you can for 20 minutes, then cool down for 5-10 minutes. When you look at the ride data afterward, take the average HR for the 20 minute period and multiply that number by 0.95. This is your LTHR. You can then set your heart rate zones based off of that number, there are loads of calculators out there, I use DataCranker. (which I'm pretty sure uses the Friel calculation for HR zones)

MikeOK

Thanks for all the help guys and sorry again to the OP. I used the calculator and it gives me 7 zones but I only have 5 in my bike app. Which zones do I use?

Carbonfiberboy 

You did the CTS test? If so, what was the result?

MikeOK

152

Carbonfiberboy 

This works as well as anything:
Threshold: 152 bpm
Zone 1: Recovery to 122 bpm
Zone 2: Aerobic 123 to 135 bpm
Zone 3: Tempo 136 to 141 bpm
Zone 4: SubThreshold 142 to 151 bpm
Zone 5: SuperThreshold 152 to . . .

redlude97

Sorry I should have provided more detail, it is around 70% for the second figure.

A primer in exercise metabolism is probably helpful here. A review I find mostly palatable is available here Exercise Metabolism and the Molecular Regulation of Skeletal Muscle Adaptation - ScienceDirect

Glycolysis occurs both within the mitochondria using oxygen and in the cytosol without oxygen. Both of these occur regardless of intensity simultaneously even under completely aerobic conditions. Lactate is the byproduct of the glycolysis in the cytosol and can be excreted which is why it is measureable in the blood. Lactate is "burned off" via gluconeogenesis in the liver(and to a smaller extent kidney muscle etc) by recycling back to glucose. Fat burn or more specifically fatty acid oxidation is a separate process that is occurring in parallel with glycolysis.
As explained above, he isn't burning solely fat. So at lower intensities you are not burning just fat just because you don't detect lactate. Fat adaption does occur during base mile traning, and by doing long hours below VT1(<Z3) then he eventually is operating in a glycogen depleted state. When I say glycogen depleted I don't mean completely empty, and you have means of generating glucose for not fat burning metabolism, gluconeogensis of lactate, and glycerol from the cleaving of the fat molecule(glycerol+3 fatty acid strands) before FA oxidation occurs.


Sure, fat adaption compared to an untrained athlete occurs during long base miles. The current research in a training low strategy attempts to use diet/training manipulation to increase the efficiency of the fat adaption by starting the workout in a glycogen depleted state so you can spend more time training these adaptions.

Friels opinion is here Joe Friel - Becoming a Better Fat Burner although a bit outdated with the current research.

I highly recommend the article i provided the link to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840562 if you can't access because it is behind a paywall pm me your email and I can send it

Dr Hawley is at the forefront of this research building upon the train low strategy with specific nutritional periodization, this podcast is a very interesting listen to minimize the drawbacks Fast Talk podcast, ep. 23: How periodization works... for your nutrition | VeloNews.com

You've likely depleted your glycogen but not your circulating glucose via gluconeogensis for restoration of carbohydrate energy sources. Given enough time and low enough intensity you can actually replenish glycogen stores. Even keto athletes have relatively high muscle glycogen content via gluconeogenesis due to adaption. The key is training, a non trained athlete could not do what you do even if they dialed back their intensity to match yours for that period of time. Your stores also only likely allow for short bursts of anearobic work, like you probably couldn't hold VT2 for an hour after 9 hours of riding.


Agreed, but it does not explain the science, and it isn't necessarily the most efficient. I am certainly not an expert physiologist.

I agree there isn't a strong differentiation between the two, but the 5(or 7) zone coggen system matches the VT system and simply has more detail. I think grouping everything above VT2 into a single zone is too simplistic for example

redlude97

I prefer friel's 30 min test taking the last 20 mins https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/j...setting-zones/

Carbonfiberboy 

Thanks for your effort in making this detailed reply. I get what you're saying. On that first point, 70% of VO2max? That seems awfully high for the duration shown, LT being ~60%-80%. OTOH, 70% of LT is zone 1, much too low.

Yes, I hit the paywall. I'll PM my addy.

redlude97

Its from this Coggen paper, 70% of V02max ARTICLES | Journal of Applied Physiology
I'll email you the paper