Managing Cycling Fatigue
Strong At The End
Part One explained two workouts to dial in Zones 1 & 2.
Part Two ended with a progressive set to enable you to confirm Zones 1 through 4. The top of that set, your “low Zone 4 effort” is an important ceiling for racing and training long.
From the progressive set in Part Two, we can infer:
Getting close to Zone 4: Power over 240w will raise my lactate materially.
Entering Zone 5: Power over 275w will raise my RPE, and lactate, rapidly.
When my heart rate is over 150bpm, the effort is going to feel Very Hard in short order.
For yourself:
What’s the upper limit of a Zone 3 / Tempo effort (heart rate and power)?
What is power at the bottom of Zone 5?
What does it take to decouple heart rate from power & RPE?
Fast Starts Shock The System
When we are going long, John’s subjective perception chart (top of this article) can be used as a guide. Be aware of what it takes for RPE to spike above heart rate and power.
If it feels harder than it should… then it is harder.
Green Zone: Low risk zone.
Tempo Zone: Use cautiously, because it accelerates fatigue and is easy to creep into the red.
Red Zone: These efforts impair long duration performance. Use sparingly, if at all.
It is important to remember we ride a range, not an average.
Below is the same ride, presented differently.
The ride was a virtual group ride, rolling terrain. I jumped into the group cold, and averaged LT1 watts out of the gate. This is stressful. My lactate indicated a Zone 3 effort across the entire ride. You don’t need to be sampling lactate to discover if this is happening to you => your subjective perception will be well above what your heart rate is showing.
Many athletes train this style for the vast majority of their endurance training. It’s the point I made with my Hybrid Athlete article. The section in that article was called When Zone 2 Isn’t Green. On that morning, my lactate data indicated my Zone 1 wasn’t green either.
Heart Rate Reacts Slowly, You Should Too
Don’t push heart rate early is a favorite training mantra. The reason is evident in the difference between the power and the heart rate response (above). We can do quite a bit of stressful work, without much of a heart rate response.
Let’s briefly consider reaction speed within our workouts.
Ordering from quickest response to slowest response:
Thought - Nervous Response
Muscular Response
Power Meter Response
Velocity Response
Heart Rate Response
Our power meter lets us see what’s happening earlier in the process. However, our power meter understates the strain that is happening in our working muscles. If we haven’t trained to tolerate peak forces (inside our muscles) then we can get deeply tired, and sore, from training that appears relatively moderate for our cardiovascular system.
The solution isn’t to remove all spikes from our training. What I recommend:
Make time for an appropriate warm-up. It’s a key part of the readiness assessment in Chapter Ten and you’ll reduce the metabolic stress associated with starting up. This is particularly important if you are seeking to improve your capacity to use fat for fuel.
Shift gears and develop a wide range of comfortable cadences. My comfortable cadence range is 75 to 105. Together, cadence and gears, enable me to avoid spiking effort. Gearing is most important for rides in the hills and dealing with steep rollers. To avoid being forced into a high torque (low cadence) riding style, make sure you have at least one gear more than you expect to need.
Change slowly. When riding in a group, or on your own, build a habit of changing slowly. This applies to everything: power, velocity, position, heart rate and RPE.
Place effort when air speed is low. Many (perhaps most) amateurs do the inverse. Slamming into the base of climbs, loading up, slowing down, then limping over the top.
Flip that script.
Calm into the base. Ideally, you will have worked yourself towards the front of the group. If you can’t get to the front then you are riding with a group that exceeds your ability. This is OK for racing, but suboptimal for Green Zone training.
Get into the correct gear, before you need it. This is where the ability to lift cadence helps (I can spin up to 115 rpm without stressing myself).
Settle into the climb. Relative to your group (of overstimulated amateurs), you will be falling back gradually, especially on a virtual ride.
Finish the climb. Get back up to speed by building effort, but not so much you exceed low Zone 4 power.
This kind of riding is scary for many. You are experiencing a primordial fear of being left behind. You’re going to be OK. Don’t let your fear blow your workout, or your race.
If you're riding virtually then warm up with a group one level lower than you intend for your workout. It avoids the early ride shock to your system. Once you're ready to go, you'll ride off the front (of the easier group) without strain. At that point, if you are on Zwift, you can teleport to your goal group (and effort). Sometimes, I’ll place a flat, evenly paced endurance set after the warm-up. By the time I hit my target group, I’m ready to go.
Subjective perception is the best guide. If the early workout feels hard then it is hard, regardless of what our heart rate is saying. Have a look at the first ten minutes of the ride (above). My heart rate is more than 40 beats below max but the ride felt hard. That’s my lack of warm-up showing.
To see how well this article works, I recommend you experiment with the opposite of my advice.
Accelerate into the base of climbs.
Shift gears late.
Attack the base of all climbs.
Compare that approach to how you feel when you use my recommendations. Remember to place your highest power as you accelerate over the tops. The longer the session, the better this advice works.
Do what’s required to be strong at the end.
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