I enjoy 60-75 minutes. After that my mind wanders. I need intervals to add up to something. Just riding for the sake of pedaling doesn’t work indoors for me. For example, if my goal is indoor endurance (z2) I might break it up into 4 x 15min with 5 minute breaks. I might target a certain heart rate. My z2 HR is around 120 and my high Z2 HR is around 125-130.
Mentally, working on these chunks of time seems to help the time pass plus I’ll watch a movie or binge watch a show.
To make those long sessions more interesting work on your form. Cadence drills, aero positioning and make sure to stand up and pedal out of the saddle to keep the buttocks happy.
Two-a-days are great for racking up hours indoors, too. I’ve been trying to do more of these to focus on increasing volume, and 90 minutes on the trainer at like 5:30AM, followed up by another 60-90 minutes over lunch (with maybe a little bit of work on the trainer) has been working really well for me.
I do Zwift on one monitor while streaming something on a TV in my Zwift setup, and the time passes very easily. Usually. And generally much easier than a single three hour session on the trainer, both in terms of what I can take mentally and in terms of maximizing volume.
Rule #5…got it!
How does one know if they are time constrained?. When they can’t add more time?. What if they can consistently train 15h/wk, but not 20h?. Are they constrained?
It seems that at some level, everybody is time constrained. And at the limit, time and fatigue are join at the hip.
Philosophically I agree with this.
I’ll have to dig into it, as it was a LONG time ago, but back in college I vaguely remember reading a research article that running 60 min showed substantially greater gains than 30 min (obviously) but less so when compared to 90 min. There was a point where the “return” on your time investment declined.
This is what I was hoping to find out…
Im sure there are many other factors, but was hopeful to get an idea of “After X minutes of Z2, gains are marginal” …
Not sure the validity as it was a long time ago… and was for running (so cycling would be different obviously). But from experience there is a point of dismissing returns… or rather you have to do much more for less gain. On the bike it might be 4 hours, 6 hours… maybe more?
It’s a good question though!
If you can’t manage 1x 2 hrs on the turbo do 2 x 1 hr if you can. Volume is volume.
There is certainly diminishing returns to any training. The hard part is quantifying the gains from endurance riding.
Lots of high volume endurance riding allows one to be a better fat burner, have better “durability”, respond to repeated attacks, and still have good glycogen stores at the end of a long road race for the finish.
On a time budget like most of us amateurs, you have to pick your battles and train your endurance accordingly. I mean, you probably aren’t going to be effective at the end of a 3 hour road race (if you can make it to the end with the lead group) if you just do 1 hour rides or even max 2 hour rides.
Doing more hours is probably not going to raise FTP significantly by itself. I’ve done the frequent 3-4-5 hour ride thing a few years ago. I got really good at riding 5 hours and recovering from it. I didn’t get some magic 20% boost in FTP.
Fair enough. Then (in my opinion) it comes back to what many above have said: volume!
To oversimplify wildy, using reductio ab absurdum: just consider how you feel after 1 hour at 60% FTP vs after 6 hours at 60% FTP. Do you think there are specific adaptation signals generated by that 6h ride that aren’t generated by that 1 hour ride?
From another approach: Do you know any world level athlete that rides polarized with 1h a day endurance rides (outside of rest days)? If there were no additional benefits from long endurance rides whatsoever, someone would have figured out by now that the freshness from only doing those 1h rides would have allowed them to crush the competion 
Could you accomplish results similar to a 4 hour long ride by doing 3 or 4 one hour Z2 rides daily? I doubt it because of the recovery implication, but I don’t know
I read somewhere that it didn’t matter too much how you got the volume, but you did need the volume.
Volume = frequency x duration
If you can’t do duration then try and up the frequency, if you can’t do as much frequency then up the duration.
Think of each workout as providing a stimulus for adaption. The more frequently you do a workout the more frequent the stimulus, the longer the duration the bigger the stimulus.
You also need to remember that adaption goes both ways. If you aren’t providing a big enough or frequent enough stimulus your adaptions may revert to a previous state. You lose fitness.
In the context of my post it was time constrained by life and other obligations. I was referring to the (vast?) majority of folks who only have a certain amount time to dedicate to training each day/week. For them the equation is fairly tightly constrained and can be balanced (although I’d bet most people choose to do too much)
For those without those constraints…obviously it is much more complicated, which is what you’re alluding to. There isn’t a simple answer for those without time constraints, but anecdotally I’ve found I need surprisingly little intensity until I’m getting close to in season form
At that end of the time availability spectrum it is more what you’re training for that should dictate how you balance things, all with the overriding caveat that you need to recover from whatever you do, and when you aren’t then that overrides everything
Longer rides build fatigue resistance, which preserves the ability to generate power deeper into rides. A guy that only rides 60-90 mins max may be able to do 20’ for 300 watts after a short warmup but only be able to produce 250w for 20’ after 3 hours of road racing or maybe even 45’ of an intense crit. A guy that does 2-4 hour rides during the week that also produces 300w after a short warmup may be able to produce 290w for 20’ after 3 hours of road racing or at the end of a crit. Same ftp in theory, but one rider will be faster for longer.
I struggle with the same, and my approach has been:
a) changed my static trainer for rollers, the ride is way WAY more engaging, no nome saddle soreness, back pain, all good. You can keep your trainer, just buy a very basic set of rollers for endurance, no need for fancy ones.
b) I’m not a huge zwift fan, but robopacers help a lot. Just join a 2.2 to 2.7 w/kg pace and ride, there will be slightly variations to keep the pace with the pack which helps.
c) as already suggested, break down the workout in pieces - you can eat an elephant in bites. In a 2hr ride I brake it down in 40 min, use the coffee stop on Zwift, get off the bike, new water, eat something, 3min I’m back for the next 40 min. this helps a lot for 2hr rides and has been very productive for me.
First, physiology aside, if you are targeting longer events, you will need to do longer rides to get a sense of comfort, pacing, and fuelling.
Second, psychologically, long rides create a different kind of fatigue that you need to learn how to deal with; it’s one thing thinking ‘this interval is horrible but it’s only 5 minutes’, but quite another to realise ‘I’m definitely tired and I have 50 hilly miles left’.
Third, in any endurance sport, volume is ultimately king. The more you can do (certainly up to at least 15 hours/week) the better. BUT, the greater the intensity you ride at, the more recovery you need. The ‘magic’ of Z2 is that you can do lots and lots of it and still recover. THAT is why pros do 15 hours of easy riding: it allows them to maximise their TSS. If you only do an hour or so, then you’re missing out on that repeatability.
You can only work with the time you have, and this is also supposed to be fun, so don’t do long rides if you don’t like them: just be aware it will likely limit your success in events over 90 minutes.
Personally, I won’t do more than 2 hours on the trainer these days: if I have a long outdoor ride scheduled and the weather is truly awful, then I’ll do 2 hours on the trainer early in the day then go to the gym later if time allows. If that won’t be realistic, I’ll do 2 hours with 2x40 at tempo. It’s not the same, but I’m not likely to be worrying Tadej or Jonas any time soon, so I don’t worry about it any more. YMMV.
Say more… I’m experimenting with the opposite.
I’ve been spending something like 18 hours a week at endurance and around 45 minutes at threshold or above (spread out over 90ish elapsed minutes). This blend has been pretty good for me
Granted my training has been very different lately due to a much higher amount of time fully off the bike. Currently sitting at around 4.8 or 4.9 w/kg after two weeks training which directly followed a three week vacation with no bike
So…much too soon to draw conclusions, but over the prior year I’ve done more like 15 hours endurance and 90ish minutes over threshold (spread over 120ish elapsed minutes) and done very well at consistently pushing my power curve to the right
Ok. This explains most of it.
I just calculated my yearly hours and I sit at 8.5h/week for 2023. 4.2 w/kg. For reference Keegan Swenson is doing 18.5h/week.
[quote=“themasher, post:41, topic:88787”]I
have heard there is one mechanism for moving lactate out of muscles, and another mechanism for moving lactate into muscles to be used as fuel for aerobic intensity work. That second mechanism is developed by long Z2 rides … 4-5 hours.
[/quote]
Neither of these statements are correct.
Transport of lactate in/out of muscle takes place via facilitated diffusion. The primary facilitator is monocarboxylate transporter 4 (MCT4); the fact that it is diffusion and not active transport means that it is driven by the concentration gradient (no gradient, no net transport).
High intensity interval training is more potent stimulus for increasing MCT4 expression than moderate intensity continuous exercise. In fact, there is often little to no change in MCT4 in response to steady state endurance training (unless the latter is carried out under hypoxic conditions).