Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Yes, my upper zone efforts are also usually from burning a match here and there to stay with a stronger group. One comes out ahead on that in the long run.
My question in the OP however is how does your distribution of zones in training line up with your distribution on your goal rides? Or do you even keep track of that? Thus if your goal rides were only short TTs, would your training look more like that in your TT?
Ah, I see what you mean. I do a lot of indoor structured interval training in ERG mode, so my training zones vary a lot depending on the specific workout I'm doing. My outdoor training rides are mostly longer endurance rides of 3-5 hours, so they tend to look much like my events.
Some examples:-
45 min MAP/VO2 indoor workout
Z1 : 45% (Active Recovery)
Z2 : 7% (Endurance)
Z3: 7% (Tempo)
Z4: 5% (Threshold)
Z5: 37% (VO2 Max and above)
45 min team TT simulation indoor workout
Z1 : 26% (Active Recovery)
Z2 : 11% (Endurance)
Z3: 29% (Tempo)
Z4: 21% (Threshold)
Z5: 14% (VO2 Max and above)
3x25 sub threshold workout
Z1 : 22% (Active Recovery)
Z2 : 8% (Endurance)
Z3: 48% (Tempo)
Z4: 21% (Threshold)
Z5: 1% (VO2 Max and above)
75 mins with multiple anaerobic sprint intervals
Z1 : 45% (Active Recovery)
Z2 : 12% (Endurance)
Z3: 6% (Tempo)
Z4: 10% (Threshold)
Z5: 27% (VO2 Max and above)
So, as you might expect, my workouts just target specific zones and don't really correlate with my event zones, except for longer outdoor endurance rides.