To me it seems like mostly a waste of energy to add such a small amount before or after a set of intervals if your reasoning is to somehow see the metabolic improvements you’d get from a normal z2 ride. Hard days hard, easy days easy.
This is pure and utter nonsense. Anyone espousing it should have their graduate degree taken away.
More to the point, you should ask yourself why you should believe anything coming from anyone who is so far wrong.
ETA before I am once again falsely accused of not “being excellent” to others: my initial statement above is directed at the Twitterati (Xeratti?) who mislead the public by putting forth such false information, not anyone here. Furthermore, they are based on my personal expertise on the metabolic responses and adaptations to exercise and training, e.g.:
(Note: plasma lactate concentrations exceeded 8 mmol/L in the untrained participants, yet RER was less still than 1.00 and plasma FFA were still being oxidized.)
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Looks like you got some science, for whatever that is worth on this particular matter.
I’m a “whenevs” kind of guy. Just get them in. Beginning. End. Middle. Underneath. Sandwiched. Bookended. Structured. Unstructured. Hard-start. Ladders. Pyramids. Roll round, flip 'em, and reverse em. Just don’t do that thing where you’re all in for a few weeks and then nothing. Inconsistency is worse than trying to tease out which interval session to do.
Fat is burning the whole time, and is largely (completely?) irrelevant to this question, if you haven’t already figured that out from the authorities.
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Ok so on the hard days hard, easy days easy mentality. An easy ride of 45mins or an hour doesn’t do much for you big picture. So could a hard day be 45 mins of VO2 intervals or something else that’s a ball buster and then the easy day is longer Z2/Z3 stuff?
I tend to be able to hit my VO2 targets even with a lot of Z2 work on the front. They might be a little harder, but Z2 isn’t particularly taxing. Maybe if I underfueled the day before it might be a problem…otherwise I seem to be able to bolt on VO2 work after 1 or 2 hours at Z2.
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Exactly. Doing Z2 before by definition shouldn’t be tiring unless you’re doing hours of it. So there’s no downside to doing it before. And it at least simulates a race that starts easy then gets hard. No races start hard and then finish easy.
I’d say there is little downside to before and/or after. I started doing more outdoor intervals this year and I typically have to ride a bit to get to a good place to do them. An hour or so of Z2 before hard intervals usually just feels like a nice warm up. And after doing hard intervals, Z2 always feels good to me. I don’t know which is more beneficial, but I wouldn’t hesitate to add Z2 any time you can without affecting the quality of the bigger planned work.
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I can only read the abstract but that doesn’t support what you are saying. I can find plenty of articles stating that high lactate inhibits lipolysis and FFA oxidation in the mitochondria but to be honest I much prefer doing intensity myself, so I really want to be convinced
Maybe this is just me but I feel like most in the thread are talking about a extended warm-up and cool down rather than a legit Z2 ride.
Is adding on 15…20…30 min before and after “Zone 2” or are you talking go for a 2-3 hour ride then throwing in VO2?
In my running days marathoners might put some threshold intervals in the middle of a long run, but there is no way we could legitimately do a VO2 workout. I know cycling is a different beast, but I still wonder if you get the full benefit? VO2 is hard… and regardless it just sounds brutal.
??
Our data directly contradict the claim that you can’t oxidize fat when lactate concentration is greater than 2 mmol/L. Furthermore, it is one of probably hundreds of studies demonstrating this one way or another (says somebody who has twice been asked by other experts to write about the history of exercise metabolism).
As for lactate inhibiting lipolysis/fat oxidation during exercise in human, there are exactly ZERO studies showing this to be true. In fact, when Ben Miller infused unlabeled lactate into exercising individuals as part of his dissertation in George Brooks’ lab, he found that it had absolutely no effect on plasma FFA or glycerol levels, or on RER.
TL,DR: ISM’s claims are pure and utter nonsense.
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Why do you think we’re talking about warmup/warmdown? I specifically said Z2, as in true Z2. Immediately after the intervals for 5 mins I might allow myself time to recover by doing Z1, but otherwise it’s right back to Z2 power.
Tomorrow will be a 2.5hr ride with some VO2 intervals thrown into it. So think of it as a 45 minute intense VO2 workout surrounded by Z2.
Saturday is my group ride which is a mixture of a lot of things, structure isn’t one of them. But we take some pretty good pulls on the front and have an 11 mile hot zone that really allows you to mash the pedals pretty good. This is usually a 250-300TSS 70 mile ride at 21-22mph.
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Throughout the thread people are talking about adding on 15-30 min Z2 at the end of a workout. You mentioned doing VO2 sandwiched between 45-50 min before and 45-50 min after. The reason I asked is that sounds a lot like an extended warm-up & cool down to me.
You’re both right.
Warmup or warm down via zone 2 or zone 2 as zone 2.
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I don’t follow this thought, could you explain? Since when are we concerned with “optimizing” Z2 time in this scenario?
The plan is an interval session, and we come from the idea that adding Z2 would be better than not, right? (As long as you still hit your plan otherwise etc etc)
@sryke wonder if you have any input from your background of looking at pro workouts for a long time, as well as your own experience 
Input on what exactly?
If you are doing intervals and Zone 2 (single ride/session), should you do the Zone 2 at the beginning of the session or after the intervals?
(I already know your answer. I am trying to help to clarify the question…and of course cannot answer for someone else)
I’d say the majority does the intensity somewhere in the middle of equally spaced throughout a ride. Most pros don’t do very intense stuff (often).
And then you have (ex)pros like Valverde, they just go out with their friends and do a proper group ride all the time. W/o any structure or whatever.
And then you have pros (often US pros) whose outdoor rides look like erg-mode indoor rides.
Many roads led to 1964 Tokyo …
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is zone 2 really a cool down after doing a bunch of hard intervals?
Why not? After VO2max or long suprathreshold intervals, Z2 is really calming, feels like can go forever. I usually stretch outdoor interval workouts to 3-4h (30min out of city to smaller roads, 1-1.5h intervals, 1.5-2h back home). For me, way back home is best part of hard days
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