Sounds like acute suppression of HR due to overreaching/fatigue to me. That would explain why the effect disappears as you gain fitness.
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Sounds like my typical schedule when my FTP was still 300 W (through age 51):
M: 1 h @ 250 W
T: 1 h w/ intervals
W: 1 h @ 250 W
Th: 1 h w/ intervals
F: 1 h @ 250 W
Sat: 2 h harder outdoor ride (tempo, road race, etc.)
Sun: 3 h easier outdoor ride
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I think your hypothesis would suggest that RPE should increase not decrease.
For further info - the power I can average for something like 4x8min VO2 or 2x20 consistently jumps after long rides as well. I don’t see this with shorter rides.
(Again, only if I haven’t been doing them regularly in a while. It’s like there’s some effect that saturated by a few weeks of doing them, and this effect isn’t stimulated significantly by shorter rides)
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For sure, all this makes sense and I agree with your points. However, issues like testing/understanding nutrition, fatigue and bike fit would be addressed by any long ride (e.g. go do a long group ride on the weekend) rather than adhering very strictly to the “don’t go above Z2” mantra.
I’m gathering that there is the “lots of Z2” school of thought and the “SS work causes similar adaptations in much less time” school of thought.
The answer always ends up being that you need both if you want to be as good as you can be.
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Don’t forget Seiler’s “never do SS” school of thought.
#trainingfaddism
Thanks for clarifying.
I’ve only been able to do weeks like that before when I was on vacation and had no other responsibilities. I agree the training effect from it is better than doing those filler rides easier.
Otherwise I can’t hit my intervals adequately if I do that though. Stress from work/poor sleep/etc impairs my ability to recover enough after the tempo stuff othewise - I do shift work so training is always in competition with recovery from that. I also may not have as strong as an endurance background as you.
I would see something like this as what I’d aim for if recovery from life (not cycling) allowed. In real life, if I want to hit those interval sessions though, I need to do some of those “filler” workouts easier. Some weeks maybe all need to be easy. Other weeks maybe 1-2 will stay at tempo.
I experience the same. It seems that @The_Cog hasn’t even tried the long rides big volume thing yet! 
Interesting.
The one thing this seems to also correlate with for me is a large improvement in aerobic decoupling after doing the first long ride in a while. Do you see this too?
Yes I do, but I care less about the HR patterns given what @The_Cog just said. My big realization was the RPE vs Power PR’s.
It worked in early season (April)….and after my A Race (July).
To argue the other side, one may say that we could have observed the same thing by just doing more intensity the week prior, somewhat matching the load of the big ride. However I don’t know if there’s such a thing as an intensity equivalence formula.
The rides I’m talking about are about 6-7h 300TSS, they are money
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Gotcha. I’m more interested in that improved aerobic decoupling because I have a suspicion that it’s related to why these long rides seem to have a disproportionate impact on training. Basically, while I’ve never seen a great scientific explanation for why aerobic decoupling happens (the only paper I’ve read blames it solely on heat… which I think all of us have enough experience with to recognize isn’t the full story), I agree with the perspective that it’s a indicator of how well your muscles are coping with the stress placed on them - is the energy they are provided with/can extract relatively balanced the work being asked of them. Basically is there a “steady state” or an equilibrium or not.
A high correlation between improvement in decoupling and fitness in the short term after introducing longer rides into your training, might suggest that this improved fitness is being mediated by improved metabolic efficiency in your muscles - ie: it might give a hint about why and how this effect may be happening.
It would be interesting to study - I can already imagine the trial. My vague hypothesis is that there is a muscle-derived humoral factor that is released in proportion to duration of exercise, and it’s this humoral factor which is responsible for muscle-level adaptations in the cells that improve performance. Just based on that alone, there are a few likely culprit molecules, like muscle-derived IL-6.
Basically, take a bunch of recreational cyclists (not pros as they will already be metabolically fit probably). Randomize them into two groups. Keep total weekly hours and TSS the same, but one group does a 4h ride each week, whereas the other group does nothing over 2h. Measure the easy pre- and post- variable like VO2max, FTP, etc. Also do a blood draw after the longest ride each week in each group and measure things like lactate, BOHB and IL6 and other plausible mediators. Do a muscle biopsy pre and post as well in each group to look at things like capillarization and mitochondrial density. See what happens.
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I like it. But add cross-over as well.
Yah, Ideally you’d want some sort of pre-intervention wash-out period too, where riders went at least a month or two without doing a longer ride.
I don’t know. For my money mitochondrial biogenesis in type i skeletal muscle is better served by a high zone 2 ride than a sweet spot ride, mostly I would expect due to the relative contribution of the different fibers. But I’m not a scientist. I’m 52, and I can maintain a 330w ftp doing 10 hours of training, with 8 of those hours solely z2. ymmv. Is that my build plan? No, that’s the plan where I lost 2 lbs a week via 9k calorie weekly deficit generated on the bike. But then it’s only 500tss.
I see this squarely as 3 zones. z2 → type i density, z3, lactate efficiency, z4 maximal aerobic conditioning. Assume a blast radius of 3 with a 1 decay. train z2 at 3, z3 gets 2 benefit, and z4 gets 1. Train z3, z2 gets 2, z4 gets 2 and z3 gets 3. (that’s 7, sweet spot). train z4, z2 gets 1, z3 gets 2, z4 gets 3.
But then you have to ask, is there a ceiling to each zone. Do zones contribute to other zones? if the answer is yes to either or both there must be some logical benefit to maximally training each and laddering them…like I don’t know…base, build, specialty?
crazy talk. 
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There is no such thing, the question makes no sense. It is all aerobic training.
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right which is why sprinters and marathoners have the same bodies and training plans.
you got me there.
Undoubtedly, having @The_Cog openly discussing and answering questions is an honour. There’s on-point though, that he makes himself clear. He’s a physiologist.
From this point, I believe science “can’t see” much difference between a 1-hour ride and a 5-hour ride at the same intensity.
From the training/coaching point of view though things may change. I’m from Brazil, and we have a popular said that says “wanna improve, have tea, saddle tea”.
What I meant is: there might not be significant/measured physiological changes, but a 5-hour ride for sure forges the rider. It might be purely mental. Plus, there are few things better than a good long day on the road with friends.
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Why are you are you making a snarky irrelevant comment?
You didnt say anything about Z5 upwards.
And no one mentioned sprinters and marathoner so I dont get why you bring that up, it has no relevance to my comment.
One thing I’ve heard in multiple places is the effect of fatiguing slow twitch fibers on a long ride and force the fast twitch fibers to do endurance work?.
And theoretically that should increase your stamina at high power efforts.
And conversion of type 2x to type 2b muscle fibers if I remember right.
Is any of that actually true?
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And we’ve circled back to the ‘all roads lead to Rome’ idea 
I do think there is something that happens, physiologically, on rides of over 4hr duration that doesn’t happen in the same way on shorter rides. I’m not sure what, though I have a dim recollection of Seiler saying something about it. Maybe it’s as simple as a big lump of TSS in 1 hit. It’s pretty hard to hit 250TSS in less than 4 hours!
That said, I also think all TSS is not created equal; though riding for 45 minutes at sweetspot and 90 mins at lowish Z2 may generate the same training stress in the software, I don’t think they feel equivalent or create totally similar adaptations. That’s not a knock on the metric, but rather an acknowledgement of the limitations of using just 1 number to assess the training stimulus of all types of workout.
Experientally, that disparity widens as you push either distance or intensity; to me, long rides create, primarily, more benefits for long rides, while harder work makes you better, mainly, at harder work. That may have a substantial psychological component, too.
In other words, I intuitively feel something happens regarding specific adaptation. Given that’s basically the first principle of training, it would not at all surprise me if someone was able to measure some difference here.
Obviously there is crossover, and obviously for the kind of disciplines most of us do, you will need to train in a variety of ways to maximise performance. But as I get older, I am increasingly of the view that you mainly get better at what you do, and that you can do a lot worse than follow the old saying ‘train your weaknesses and race your strengths’.
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