A little experiment

Training
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To clarify how I came to this conclusion/experiment I’ve been doing polarized training in some sort all summer. Once the “season” was over in late September, early October, I headed indoors and quickly gave up. I couldn’t really motivate myself to start a SST-period with no real goals in sight for next year. Also I burned out completely last year doing SSB from September onwards. By January I had been sick three weeks in total and my fitness was a disaster. So Something had to change.

Now this wasn’t what I wanted to share. I wanted to share my Z2-experiment. Or POL Z1 if you like. Starting in November I began riding about 2h/day staying in Z2/Z3(Coggan) with only about 10% in Z1. Did longer rides on the weekend if I had time. now nothing can be perfect neither is my planning but execution has been pretty OK and adherence as well. Have a look at my November-stats.

Worth noting is that my time in Z3(Coggan) does not reflect back on HR having me considering that I might have gotten stronger. W/HR is telling me the same. I can do higher watts and have a lower HR/RPE now than when starting out this period. I’ll do this until end of December and report back if anyone wants to know.

I did a 40 minute-ish effort at 93% of FTP and wasn’t really close to my threshold heart rate so I guess something has happened and that’s where the threshold-hr-minutes come into play.

Screenshot 2020-12-04 at 23.15.12
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2 Likes
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So you were training polarized, then switched over to doing lots in Seiler’s “grey zone”?

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Not polarized, just old fashioned base miles:

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No, before that.

"I’ve been doing polarized training in some sort all summer.’

Then they switched to doing 90% Z2/Z3, and seem to have gotten fitter as a result (shocking, I know).

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Sorry, yes, whatever this means:

Followed by old fashioned base training.

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@old_but_not_dead_yet I have been racing competetively since 2018 and training with structure since then as well. Note that my fitness level isn’t off the couch to start with. I’m at somewhere between 300-320W FTP at 69kg. However having never done explicitly Z2/Z3(Coggan) for an extensive period I thought I’d try it and see where it goes.

Starting from April this year I’ve been doing between 2-3 hard days, strictly VO2Max-work, followed by days in more or less only Z2. The reason I say somewhat polarised is that it’s a wide concept but I’d say looking at my history this year it has been the best year ever numbers wise since there aren’t any races to back it up. Don’t know if this would count towards traditional base training. Would it really consist of minimal time in Z1 and more in 2-3? I thought it was strictly loads of hours in Z1-Z2 that was base training.