Seth- My apologies- I completely missed your questions, but it looks like you've gotten some great info that echo's what I would have said. Kudo's to everyone.
1. Your more recent zones look appropriate, if 170bpm is your Threshold HR (Which it very likely could be).
2. When doing specific efforts, aim for the middle of the Zone. E.g. If base is 140-150 bpm, Aim for 145bpm. It's OK if you bump up against the upper limit or even go slightly over, but aiming for the middle gives you that padding for when the terrain or excitement causes you to go a bit harder.
Re. Testing:
1. Do the 20 min all-out test. Hour long tests are near impossible to get an accurate result because of the required mental fortitude.
re. Zones:
1. There's two schools of thought as mentioned: The 3 zone system endorses by Seiler and the 5+ zone system endorsed by everyone else. All the systems that have 5+ zones are essentially the same through threshold, some add in additional zones above threshold (e.g. 5a, 5b, 5c or 6,7,8).
2. The 3 zone system's Zone #1 Base is roughly equivalent to Zone #2 Base in the other systems. However, it's technically a bit higher of of a workload. I, personally, like the 3-zone way of thought, however, I prefer the base workload of the 5 zone system (which is closer to 1.5mmol of Lactate vs. Seiler's 2.0mmol of Lactate).
Re. Volume week intensity
1. Staying in Base (Z2 (5+ zone)) plan will help prevent any unnecessary fatigue. However, I often do one workout during the volume week, assuming everything feels good.
2. Each zone doesn't necessarily have to be 7 days. (A week is just such a convenient length of time). In your recovery "week" you can do the Monday Group ride (if you feel good. If you feel tired, skip it), rest hard Tuesday-Friday, Pick your volume week back up on the weekend. However, shortening the cycle means you have to be real good about recovering (decreasing workload, no additional life-stress, eating well, etc.). If you're bad at recovering, then take the full cycle.
Re. VO2 vs. Threshold Efforts:
1. First, I use HR for Efforts below threshold and maybe efforts just above threshold. However, for most efforts above threshold just know that they need to be very hard. Try to pace yourself so that you can make it through the workout with an even effort (e.g. in a 4x 8 min VO2 workout, that the first and last interval are within 10% of each other in terms of power or performance (e.g. for the e.g.: You climb to roughly the same point in 8 minutes for each effort)). This means the first effort is likely hard, but doable and that the last effort isn't much fun at all. If we think about this in terms of watts, I'd rather someone did 300w, 300w, 300w, 300w instead of 350, 300, 275, 250.
2. As said above, typically Threshold efforts are in the >15+ minute range and V02 efforts are <10 minutes.
Traditional:
Threshold: >10minutes per rep, 3-5minutes recovery, 30+ minutes of total work (e.g. 3x10 minutes, 2x20 minutes, etc. ) Workload = Sustainable for the interval length. The total work and workload increases as your fitness improves, but the rep length doesn't necessarily.
VO2: <10 minutes per rep, Recovery as much as needed to repeat the performance, up to the amount of time of the rep, 15-30 minutes of total work. Workload = Sustainable for interval length (you can work harder for 8 minutes than you can for 20). E.g. 3x8 minutes, with 5-8 minutes recovery. The total work and workload increases as your fitness improves, but the rep length doesn't necessarily.
You can also do shorter rest intervals:
Threshold example: 3 sets of a block that consists of 3 reps of 5 minutes "on" / 1 minute "off". This is a way to do longer threshold workouts, but with a bit of a mental break. In between sets, you'd still do the 5 minute recovery.
VO2 Example: 3 sets of a block that consists of 8 reps of 30 seconds at very hard effort / 30 seconds recovery spin. 5 minutes between sets. The 30 second effort is harder than you could hold for your typical 8min VO2 effort, and the shorter recovery ensures you're sucking in a lot of oxygen during the block.
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