The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Episode 195: What To Do About 'Intensity Creep' During Zone 2 Rides

• CTS • Season 4 • Episode 195

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In Episode 195, we answer a listener question about using power, heart rate, rate of perceived exertion and the talk test to gauge if you're hitting your Zone 2 or creeping out of it. CTS Coach and physiologist Renee Eastman talks with Host Adam Pulford about which metrics to prioritize during specific training rides. They also discuss aerobic decoupling and the ways that changes in relationship between power and heart rate can indicate changes in aerobic fitness and durability.

Topics Covered In This Episode:

  • Setting Zone 2 training intensities
  • Factors affecting heart rate
  • Honesty of RPE values
  • Defining the work of the day
  • What is aerobic decoupling?
  • Training beyond Zone 2


Guest:

Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.

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Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more than 14 years and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. We're back with CTS coach and premier coach. Might I add, rene Eastman, to answer more audience questions.

Speaker 1:

Today's topic you guessed it, renee zone two training. We actually have a lot to cover today, so let me just read the original question that the audience member wrote in with and sit back, because it's a bit of a long one. So the original question is hey gang, I have a question about surprise zone two, specifically the relationship between power, heart rate and breathing indicators of whether you're in zone two or not. It's a two part question. First, is it correct that you shouldn't use power to determine whether you're in zone two, because you might be in zone two at a given power 210 Watts, let's say at the start of your workout, but creep into zone three at the same power late in the workout as your heart rate creeps up. Second, if you shouldn't use power to determine whether you're in zone two, which is better indicator heart rate or so-called talk test whether you're breathing easy enough and you can still talk.

Speaker 1:

And I've asked because I noticed toward the end of my workouts, usually around two hours, that I can pass the talk test at higher heart rates than at the beginning of my workouts. In other words, I get deeper into the workout, my heart rate creeps up, but my breathing doesn't get harder, at least not super hard. As a result, near the end of the workout, I'm in the situation where my power says I'm in zone two, my heart rate says that I've creeped up into zone three and my breathing says that I'm still in zone two, which should I take as the correct indicator? Thank you all. The podcast is pure gold, and that's coming from Ruth Renee. I have my own thoughts, but how about you take the first stab at this one?

Speaker 2:

Well, thanks for having me back, adam. We did a whole series on Zone 2 and lab testing and that's probably why you brought me in to answer this question. I do run our physiology lab. I'm all about the zones and the lactate levels and things like that. So, um, this is a great question because it is the application of the data that you get either from your own testing or from the lab and it's putting it into practice and I don't think there is a simple one answer.

Speaker 2:

You know I want to lean toward what I tell my athletes when I have them you know, in quote, do a zone two ride is. I usually prescribe that by heart rate Because the physiological response to the work that you're doing. But before we even get too far down that, I want to ask Ruth, like, how old are her zones? Like, when did you set them? Did you set that zone two power from your best 20 minute power of last year or have you recently updated that at your current fitness level? Same thing with heart rates. Heart rates tend to change less than power does as you go through a season and you're in better shape or maybe not at your best fitness, but certainly heart rate declines with age and over time I do see aerobic heart rate levels changing, that people can do a lot more work at lower heart rate. So number one are your zones up to date? Are they current? Have you tested? Certainly within the last 90 days, maybe even in the last 30 days, depending on where you are in your training.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's the simple fix and I would. I would start there because I'll even admit, renee, I'm you know, when we do some field testing with with athletes and stuff, I'm pretty quick to update the power zones and make sure that we're on track and all that kind of stuff. And I sometimes don't always update the heart rate zones because typically it, like you said, it doesn't change all that much. But if that goes, you know, a couple of years down the road, you know max heart rate as well. Well, whatever, that is right, but heart rate tends to come down. So if you haven't updated for a while in whether we're looking at training peaks or some other platform or Zwift or whatever, making sure that you know these zones are lining up, and if you haven't updated heart rate zones for three to five years, I mean that's a glaringly obvious one. So anyway, quick fix.

Speaker 2:

Right. I think it's also fair to mention, as we do, percentages on field testing, percentages on field testing, that those are based on averages of we tend to see the top of zone two around 75% of somebody's FTP. And bear in mind, if you're doing a 20 minute test, we're estimating FTP, we're not measuring FTP. We're estimating it that it's 95% of your 20 minute power. Then we're estimating that zone two is, or the top of zone two is, 75 percent of that number. So there's a lot of variables in there that I see it all the time where I've actually tested somebody in their lab and the top of their zone two comes out at 65, 68, less than 75 percent of their FTP. I'd say that's more common that I see somebody's actual LT1, the first kick up above baseline of their lactate much lower than 75%. So I think on the power side of things not so much in the heart rate, the heart rate tend to track, I think, a little bit better but just based off of those raw percentages, 75% might be above your actual top of your zone 2. So that's another factor in the maybe that 210 watts is too high and then kind of another layer to that is if you listened to the last podcast I did.

Speaker 2:

Don't be a zone two hero. The top of zone two is not better. The top of zone two is like butt upright to zone three. So if you're riding at the top of zone two, even if your zone two is calculated really well, you are probably going to drift up over the time because it's not a flip of the switch the top of your zone two and in zone three. There's a dial in there and you know there's a gradient of you know, five, 10 watts above or five, 10 watts below on a given day. Maybe you're more solidly in zone two, more solidly in zone three. So just based on what she's telling me here, you know double check your zones. But at the end of the day it sounds like you're riding these rides a little bit too hard if you're seeing a fair bit of cardiac drift. Cardiac drift meaning your power is constant and then you see your heart rate just elevate over time and drift out of your zone.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100% agree with that, because in that true zone to ride we don't want to see cardiac drift. That's an indicator that the aerobic system needs more development right.

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

And so I would say this is a point where so, do I follow heart rate or do I follow power? To answer Ruth's question directly heart rate or do I follow power? To answer Ruth's question directly, this is where I would say I I vary a little bit from Renee, even though, like heart rate, following heart rate as a guide, that's not bad for my athletes. I'm going to educate them that power first rate of perceived effort, strongly in line with that, and there should be this matching there. And then I'm going to watch heart rate as another indicator. Okay, but that perceived effort for a zone to ride, we're talking like a three to five out of 10. And so let's just say four out of 10, 10 being a max effort, one being like the easiest spin you've ever maybe done in your life. We want to target a four out of 10. And if I prescribe that 60% of FTP and I'm just going to call it that right Cause when I prescribe for most of our athletes, when we did the other podcast, when we do a range, most of our athletes will just go to the upper end of the range. So I've been prescribing more like okay, 60% make it feel like a four out of 10. When we're aligned like that, the heart rate takes care of itself. So it's fine, you can go by a guy by that.

Speaker 1:

However, what I, what you should know about heart rate is is has a variability on any given day of plus one to five beats per minute, and that's not heart rate variability.

Speaker 1:

That is variability within the beats per minute, and that is due to stress, hydration, dehydration, heat, cold, caffeination, fueling I mean a lot of things right, including just being super stoked.

Speaker 1:

Right, you shouldn't be probably super stoked in a zone two sort of ride, but if you're in a, in a race setting, that heart rate will increase. So my point is is I'm not going to hang my hat on the most variable thing out there, because rate of perceived effort has shown to be just as valid, if not more so, than heart rate, and in line with power. In the end, we want that Holy Trinity of all three. So to your point, ruth, renee gave you a very simple, very solid answer Sure, follow the heart rate. I'm going to complex it and say all three and tune into your perceived effort, and I think we're going to have a better result in that way. So sorry to push back on you, renee, but man, I just want to throw out there that heart rate does have a lot of that variability to consider and in my practice I see people making excuses for their heart rate all the time and that's an excuse for them to ride or run.

Speaker 2:

Harder is valid that you know they're always coming back with the heart rate elevated because there's always some reason. And you know, I think if you can effective, if you can honestly use RPE, then that's fantastic. I do a lot of lab testing. We. We ask people RPE all the time during their test and they're like five, five, five, five, five, ten, like they, just like for sure as we're going up their lactate. They're like four millimoles and they're like oh, it's five, like people they're. They, they want to be tough a little bit, like, oh, it's fine, it's a five and they're breathing, they're breathing. So you know, if you can be disciplined, rpe is great.

Speaker 2:

The reason why I'm okay with using heart rate and yeah, I'm going to give somebody some context for that heart rate but if the goal of the day is I want to get max fat oxidation, I really want to spend time in zone two. Going easier is not a problem. Zone two, going easier is not a problem. So using that heart rate as a guide is going to force them into easier. Where the RPE? You can lie to yourself on RPE and then with the wattage as you're noting, no matter what range somebody you give them, they're going to go towards the top. So if they're going to the top of their heart rate range, I know that's going to keep them closer to that peak bad oxidation, if that's the goal. But that's not always the goal, right.

Speaker 1:

It's not always the goal. And I would say, before we move on from that, a couple other things on heart rate is, if we are going long, right, and for a time crunched athlete, a two-hour ride may be fairly long on the weekend, two or three hours and that's going to cause stress and strain. Stress is kind of this global thing that we talk about in the way of how stressed aerobically or anaerobically or whatever that we are within the workout. But then there's also this thing and I covered this on a couple of different podcasts, including with Dr Steven Seiler but strain is like more internal strain and we can see that pretty well in heart rate. Again, it has variability and there's a lot of factors that can cause that strain which causes a tick up. But if it is heat, if it is dehydration, if it is fatigue, if, if you see your heart rate going up and you say, oh, but my power is the same, but if you're going by heart rate, you're going to bring that down and you might go into, say, 55% for the FTP for your power target, that's also fine. So I like, and that may go again. It doesn't go against what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

I think in the end we want all of these factors to be kind of looked at and touched on and then a highly aware, educated athlete can make that decision on the fly of okay, my heart rate's up for these reasons, how much should I bring it down? Or my heart rate's up for this reason? But coach Renee said you know what we're just out to like, get the volume, so do it like, and we're just going to do work today. And that's where, say, some of the metabolic aspect may go out, cause we're just we want to do work. So let's talk about. Let's talk about that a little bit now, because my question to you is isn't stress a good thing? Isn't that what we're doing to our athletes when we tell them to get out there and do some work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean we do want to tax our system. Stress plus rest equals growth. Tax the system, then rest, then grow, and you know the. Should I back off the power or hold the power steady? Depends on those goals of the day that I was alluding to. That, if the goal is, I really need to accumulate as much time in my highly fat oxidative state today, or maybe just make this a less stressful aerobic session, less stressful meaning you, stressful meaning. Zone two If the goal is I want to improve my performance within the fitness level I have now, then doing maybe a constant power and let that heart rate show the know, show the strain, because you know your strain's going up, as maybe you are, maybe coach, or you decided that I'm going to do a ride right at 70, 75% of FTP today because I need to accumulate 2000 kilojoules in two hours. Yeah, or?

Speaker 1:

yeah, no, no for sure.

Speaker 2:

I mean like four hours. Two hours, yeah, or yeah, I mean like four hours two hours.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to say it depends on the rider, right, because a thousand kilojoules an hour, that's doable for some people. And what's fun about that, renee, is I've got workouts that I do for that and I'm going to give them like a normalized power target, um, to do that right over time and you can see some changes over time. Because one thing that you talked about where you kind of scratched the surface on, was aerobic decoupling, which can you define that for us and then tell us how to use that?

Speaker 2:

The decouple is when heart rate and power are no longer linear, that if you're holding a constant power over time that you would see your heart rate elevate up or the. I guess the reverse of that is you're holding a constant heart rate and then to hold that constant heart rate you had to drop power, heart rate, you had to drop power. So they decouple over time. In the metric that we're looking at in training, peaks is at PWHR, power versus heart rate, and a significant decoupling would be over 5%. You have to look at a length, certainly a length of time over 20 minutes. You have to look at a length, certainly a length of time over 20 minutes. So that's what we're talking about when we see the nonlinear response of that heart rate and power.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you can take a zone two ride, ruth. This is one tool that you can use to determine whether this is actually occurring or not. Because, again, like when I read your question, I was like well, how much did your heart rate tick up? How much time in zone three was it? Was it a minute, was it five minutes? Was it the last 20 minutes of your ride that your heart rate was up? And then what did your power do? What you can do, ruth, is take the whole ride on training peaks. Look at your aerobic decoupling, which is PWR, colon HR, and it expresses in a percentage. If it's under 5%, good to go. I don't think that you need to change that, ruth. However, if it's like 6%, 10%, okay, now we have some aerobic work to achieve.

Speaker 1:

Now back to what Renee was talking about at a high kilojoule per hour sort of goal, or normalized power, or just like, ride hard for three hours. The first time you ride hard for three, your first hard three hour ride, you probably will decouple. That's fine, I want that to occur. Stress is a good thing. Stress plus rest equals adaptation. But the next time you do that three hour ride, same loop, same conditions, check your aerobic decoupling again, because what, hopefully, what you'll find is that you either decouple less or don't decouple at all, and that's a great kind of metric to check in to make sure that the aerobic system is going just fine. And it's also it's a great method to get your mind out of to improve you need to do more than zone two. I think a lot of people just they. They see the zone two hype, um, they, they get super excited about all the mitochondria building in their system. But it's like you need all zones. It's not just zone two that's doing. That's like pushing the needle forward here.

Speaker 2:

Unless I'm super crazy, renee, I don't know well, you might be super, but not on this point. You know, and to that end, if I might just in general use a little bit more heart rate based and you know, zone to focus in, like the in quotes, base phase or base preparation phase you know, a lot of times, november, december, maybe January for people, and then, as we're you know, turn the corner and people are getting ready for their first event now and now there's definitely occasion and I've given this direction to a couple of guys who are racing this month Like zone two is not out the window, but we are no longer like we don't have to stay in zone two. It's not out the window, but we are no longer like we don't have to stay in zone two. I want you to kind of like do the best three hours that you can today, because that's what you're getting ready for, that best three or four hours, you know, doing longer events that now we've got to put it into application and put it together.

Speaker 2:

And, yes, that you are going to see those stressors initially and you're going to see a lot of decoupling. Decoupling is a it is a sign of stress. I'd also interject about the signs of stress. You mentioned the caffeine, and the temperature and the heat and the things like that. Also, like the fueling and hydration. Maybe this is a good sign that you need to do better with your fueling and hydration that, if you're you know're running out of glycogen and getting dehydrated, you're going to see that decoupling even more. So there's more factors than what we talked about with make sure your zones are set right and how many shots of espresso that you had before you started 17.

Speaker 1:

But it's a super valid point, renee, and I think then you know, if you're a coached athlete, it opens up the door for a lot more questions. If you're a self-coached athlete, it opens up the question for more evaluation because you decoupled. Why did you decouple, my? My point is you decoupled, sure, maybe you need some more aerobic work, but if you did your best three hours and you decoupled, but you didn't take in one carbohydrate, that's a separate issue yeah because that's a hard ride, right, um and so now you know we've kind of come out of zone two.

Speaker 1:

So I guess the the intellectual question is can we improve this aspect? Can we improve our aerobic decoupling, or lack thereof, with more than zone two? Can we do it with intensity? Can we do with higher intensity?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think that you could see some improvements. You know tempo work, longer tempo work. You know that I'll. I will look at that. Aerobic decoupling, uh, a lot with whether it's just that moderate, let's say around 85% of FTP zone. Three long, 20, 30, 45 minute plus minute tempo session. I might use that as a criteria of how long do I need to go in these tempo segments. Can we keep the decoupling Like okay, maybe you can keep your decoupling under 5% at a 20-minute effort? Well then, try 25. See what happens. Try 30. Like you know, progressing within that, because maybe you like an hour is just like too much to start with. I would say a little bit with sweet spot too. I mean, can sweet spot just that one tick up? So those two workouts, we can accumulate a lot of volume and we are staying predominantly aerobic.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think you know we've talked about kilojoules, tempo sweet spot kind of these sort of workouts, and they just get longer. Right, I've talked about the workouts that I call fatigue resistance training, where I go back and I look at, uh, like races and hard group rides, I look at the kilojoules achieved in those rides, I look at the normalized power and the average power and then I just try to replicate that in in solo training. Typically it's going to be more aerobic rather than a group ride or a race that has a lot more anaerobic kind of impact. And so I'll err on the side of like less normalized or the kind of like the lower end of the normalized power. Let's just say, for two hours, go do the work, go do that kilojoule, and it's not interval based, there's no on off, it's like kind of on all the time, and then see this aerobic decoupling and that's where we get again.

Speaker 1:

We get out of zone two. There's a ton of applicability there and, ruth, this could be something that you use as opposed to just staying in zone two and waiting for that heart rate to come down. Maybe you push on the gas pedal a little bit more, do more work, because that's going to induce more stress. Then you rest, then you get better. But you're still seeing sub threshold on the training.

Speaker 2:

I do work out similar to what you were talking about. You know whether it's a kilojoule goal or you know having, you know kind of stay at a constant power. But one of the twists I like in my fatigue resistance is you know start maybe 60, 65% of FTP and then finish at that top of zone two and you know kind of a negative split ride if you will or finish the ride with 20, 30 minutes of, you know, solid zone three, you know pushing that fatigue resistance.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and when you do that, you can still use the aerobic decoupling metric to ensure that everything's fine. Because if you push on the gas pedal your car, you would assume that it goes faster. It accelerates. Same thing with power and heart rate. If you push on the gas pedal of your car, you would assume that it goes faster, it accelerates. Same thing with power and heart rate. If you have push on the gas pedal or the power of the cranks, I produce more power, the heart rate should go up and if you do a progressive workout like that, the decoupling is zero in a well-trained athlete.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's true, yeah, so that. So those are good tools, but that progress, the aerobic progressive workout that you just described and I've had Tim Cusick and Jim Miller and other coaches on here we talk about that that's far better than doing what pretty much every master's athlete does, which is sprint out of the parking lot, get it and then get tired power drops heart rate and I stay high.

Speaker 2:

You can almost guarantee decoupling if you spend the first 30 minutes of a two, three hour ride at tempo. You can, you can almost guarantee it above.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, for sure, For sure, and that's an internal strain. So to to take this thing home, Renee, I think to answer Ruth's question, like holistically and entirely, it's like do the simple kills first and just make sure that training zones, both heart rate power, are all matched up properly. Rate of perceived effort my opinion, super valid, but you need to work on your awareness and your honesty within yourself to do that. But that's the Holy Trinity, in my opinion, for monitoring exercise performance. Additionally, what's the goal of the workout? Is it metabolic, like you talked about, or is it doing work, something more like race specific or event specific? Or if you want to induce a ton of strain, then I'd say some of this like super hardcore zone to low aerobic decouplings. It goes out the window, Like I want to stress you and get you fitter, Okay. So these those are my kind of takeaways from this episode. What else do you want to stick in there, Renee?

Speaker 2:

We spent a fair bit of time talking about the coupling and the heart rate drift and things like that. And, just to emphasize, we've been talking about steady rides this whole. Time that you cannot take, you can't really take these like to the group ride. Time that you cannot take, you can't really take these like to the group ride. Because when you see the more sporadic power, the decoupling doesn't really, you know, hold true, and I don't think that's what ruth question centered on. She was talking more.

Speaker 2:

You know, sounds like a zone, like a purposeful zone to ride.

Speaker 2:

And for that purposeful zone to ride which to me means I want that metabolic adaptation or just not to put a high amount of stress on my body, you know one thing would be like yeah, look at heart rate, of course, perceived effort, you know it's not.

Speaker 2:

These zones aren't a flip of the switch, they are a dial. So it's like giving yourself a couple of beats above that, that's no big deal. Yourself, a couple of beats above that, that's no big deal. But when you see that constant rise up and then you're just pegged at, you know, uh, you know top of zone three heart rate, or you know, even into zone four, that's a sign of stress your body did, was a ride longer than your body was capable of that day, or was there heat stress? Or lack of fueling, lack of hydration, stress, that those to me are indications to slow down that take the excitement and maybe the shots of espresso, heart rate response out of it. If your body, if you're overheated, if you're dehydrated, if you're glycogen depleted, those are all reasons to slow down, in my opinion.

Speaker 1:

Or a poor night's sleep right.

Speaker 2:

You're unrested yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

No, those are great summary points and you know, ruth, again like this is a super awesome question, everybody's in a zone two and I was like, oh, zone two, here we go again. But these are super valid points that I think every athlete uh is is struggling with and is in his questioning as we learn more about it. So I want to thank you for writing that in and if you're listening to this and you want to give us feedback on how we answered, cause I think we answered it well, I hope we answered it well, but if you have any other questions, write in and we'll um, we'll patch that up into our audience members. If this spurs on more questions that you have, head on over to train rightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. That gets sent directly to me and I work with awesome coaches like Renee to answer those questions here on the podcast. So, that said, renee, thank you once again for joining us. Your uh wisdom is is brilliant and I know everybody learns from you when you hop on the pod with me.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, adam, thanks for having me back and I look forward to all the follow-up zone. Two questions, because I know we're going to get them.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, they're coming. They're coming, all right, thanks, renee. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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