Who ever wins the most. 
To be fair if we knew the answer then there would not be a thread with 300+ responses on.
My take is that both sweetspot and POL training can and will work. However I think there is less scientific support that POL works, especially evidence that is specific to cycling. @mcneese.chad started a thread where he was going to try a POL period and see how it went. I followed the whole thread and to be honest I donāt think I every saw a final definitive summary but I get the view that it was as the Scottish legal system says āNot Provenā. It may or may not work but hard to call.
I donāt have a hard summary. I finished my POL period as planned but didnāt offer a firm conclusion for a number of reasons.
- My experience may or may not be applicable to any other rider. I never planned to make a strong claim of failure or success.
- The thread was sharing my experience and maybe help share info that is confusing about how POL might be planned and applied. But there arenāt many prescriptive plans out there, so I made mine up as best guesses. I canāt begin to say my experience was even ācorrectā.
- I only had a short window of time and made a 4 week effort. In all honesty thatās too short to make any call
- I completed the POL period and planned to follow with SSB for direct, personal comparison. Bit I got sick before that and ended up with 3 weeks off the bike. So my planned comparison kinda died.
Overall, it was a great experience and the biggest takeaway for me was the value in the long and easy ride. I plan to include a couple every month based on what I gained from them, even while following the regular TR plans.
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Thanks Chad, I agree that those findings did come out in the general discussion but it was hard to find a definitive statement with them all in. Might be worth adding it to the end of the thread.
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I do need to do that, and will add them.
My very simplistic view on this is to look at energy systems.
To do well at most cycling disciplines, you need to be able to ride for long distances using predominantly fat as fuel. This preserves glycogen fuel stores for when you need them at the end of a race, and also helps prevent bonking.
And you need to be able to ride at high intensities close to, at, or above FTP for climbs, breakaways, etc. - which primarily uses glycogen for fuel.
Riding at low intensities (~ LT1, VT1, ~65% of FTP - pitch your metric) is the best way to improve fat metabolism, as āfat maxā is somewhere in this range.
And riding at sweet spot and above is a great way to stress your body, boost VO2 max, increase % of time at a given % of VO2 max - basically boost FTP.
So I think both POL and SST have merit. If you already have a very strong aerobic base, do SST; POL if you are looking to improve aerobic base and fat metabolism.
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Some thoughts ā
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The āpolarizedā model works best for isopower effort sports ā rowing, running, XC skiing are all much less stochastic than cycling, unless you are a pursuiter or a 40k TT specialist.
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road racing cyclists spend a lot of time between 76-90% of FTP in races, and their training needs to reflect that (which usually means doing a good amount of that kind of work during the Base period).
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Lydiard, Daniels, Canova, Billat, and just about any other coach out there usually has two āhardā days each week and then everything else is steady-state endurance training (Lydiard did not specify heart rate, but āenduranceā for all of them ended up being 65-80% of HR Peak ā or, what cyclists would think of as Frielās HR zone 2). What the āhardā is varies by macrocycle, but really, all of these training methods were āpolarizedā in the sense that the vast majority of training sessions were done at the āenduranceā intensity.
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As for applying running programs to cycling, if your events are all 2hrs or less, it might be productive to look at how 400/800 or 800/1500 combo runners train ā yes, they have a big aerobic base, but their training emphasis is on going really fast for 1-4 minutes, which tends to be the duration of the make-the-break moments in the races that most of us do.
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Using different models in different phases is not exclusive to runners:
https://www.pezcyclingnews.com/toolbox/polarized-training-simplified-for-cyclists/
By the way, Seilerās study of elite endurance athletes has exactly 0 studies of non-track cyclists with a polarized model. the only two studies on road cyclists show threshold/PID models. Does not prevent cyclists to flock around this. This forum is a great testament for that. And what an influence a few podcasts can have these days.
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And running two-a-days. Donāt forget about that part. Thatās 2 hard within about 10 runs. Iām not saying you didnāt know that. Iām just pointing that out because ppl will read 2 hard per week and think: āoh, I train 4 days per week and 2 of those are hardā. Nope. They donāt do that.
Indeed ā the frequency of intensity depends on the overall volume.
Although we donāt do 2-a-days much ā if at all ā but if you make the time to train each day, the"two days of intensity, the rest easy" model works for us, too.
If youāre riding your bike 4 days a week, you should probably be going pretty well each time, given that you have a whopping three rest daysā¦
that is my only goal with TrainerRoad
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I would argue that the more classic model is the pyramidal tid for running and cycling. Many running events are significantly longer than an hour so to gain the proper specificity they are doing that tempo work.
So far the xc skier model is focusing on a sport where the specificity of the competition demands big surges then recoveries in a roughly 30 minute race.
The biggest takeaway from looking at how a polarized model might work better is it follows the mantra of ākeep the hard days hard, and the easy days easyā that way you can really nail those targets on the hard days and reap the most benefits from the intensity. Also, junk miles are not junk, they serve a purpose.
Iāve always hated the dismissiveness of calling low intensity riding junk.
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Junk miles are when you finish a training ride and then tootle round the block to get to a nice round number of miles.
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I would disagree with that. The fairly common usage these days is to use it to describe low intensity rides.
Riding another time round the block is pointless.
Mike
Feel free to disagree. 
Perhaps I should have said that one definition of junk miles is ā¦
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Miles are junk if they donāt serve a purpose. Too slow to build top end, too fast to recover or build endurance. They are āfineā in small doses just to enjoy cycling but the term ājunk milesā came about because thatās all that a recreational cyclist does. Toodle around at 70-80% of FTP and turn the odometer.
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Hi Chris - If you use the Maffetone formula of 180-Age how does that compare with your LT1?
So how are those then junk if they are done by a recreational cyclist with no racing goals? They do serve their purpose.
Personally that is a target range that is very much in line with an endurance ride, putting my hr right on the bullseye chad has listed in his spreadsheet. Again, definitely serves a purpose.
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Itās below sweet spot and above endurance. Seems bad man.