Beggars Would Ride
Zone 2
“You know, it’s times at like this when I am trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why? What did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
That exchange from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy has been playing in my head a lot these past few months. I’ve been riding substantially more than usual for this time of year, at least in comparison to the past couple decades. And I have been riding really slowly. And all this riding, chewing up hours while moving at what feels like a glacial pace, inevitably means a whole lot of time spent in my own head while spinning out the low watts. In my head is a vast repository of song lyrics and movie scenes. I’d love to say that I am thinking about quantum mechanics, but old Hitchhiker’s Guide quotes is about as close as I get.
Why have I been riding so much more than usual for wintertime? Well, I have been in Mexico, with both weather and time on my hands. So there’s that. And then there’s the comparative scale of life events. For the decade prior to right now, winter was when the dirt was soft, and so I would spend this time of year , every year, swinging Mcleods and shovels, benching singletrack and hacking out poison oak, building a janky network of trail on my own land that was infinitely more rewarding to build than it was to ride. Therefore, riding took a backseat to digging. The decade prior to that, I was in a state of profound self-loathing and so my winter times were spent, to coin a Ween lyric, getting fat, getting angry, and hating myself. I chose drinking, career suicide and relationship self-sabotage over the well documented benefits of long rides and slow base miles.
Impulse control has always been something of a problem for me. So has discipline, which, I guess, is kind of implicit with poor impulse control. I have always jumped toward what I want, or reflexively away from what I fear. Not a whole lot of planning involved. Mountain biking was something I glommed onto in the wake of an expensive and consumptive motorcycle habit, and everything about what mountain bikes represented to me at the time could be summed up as; “Cool, these go fast. Want more. Make go faster.”
This aligned perfectly with my feelings about cars and motorcycles, and basically anything with wheels, where the first impulse (see, here we go) included determining the absolute achievable top speed of any vehicle I was piloting. It took a few years for me to find my way to trying to go uphill fast, since uphill speed is a whole lot less of an adrenaline rush than trying to bust the double nickel on dirt on a rigid bike with a 42ish inch wheelbase. But somewhere in between the acres of gravel rash that the pursuit of downhill speed was delivering, I got hooked on racing bikes and that involved learning to love going uphill as well. Thing is, for as many years as I spent riding uphill as fast as I could, I never got very good at it. And I think now, almost 40 years after I began riding mountain bikes, 34 years after I started shaving my legs, 32 years after a sales rep for Gary Fisher referred to my friends and I as “a bunch of sport class ‘tards who are never gonna learn to hurt like pros”, finally, I am learning why.
Zone 2. That’s why. Well, that, disciplined training, proper nutrition, a solid work ethic, better reflexes and some bigger lungs. But for the most part, I’m gonna say zone 2.
This winter I have been wearing a heart rate monitor. I wore one a few times back in about 1999, mostly just for entertainment purposes during cyclocross races. But I never really paid attention to anything but maximum heart rate numbers. The same fucked up programming in my brain that wants to know the absolute top speed of a 1965 Ford Econoline with bald bias ply tires has been tied to my bike riding since I could remember. Start pedaling, pedal harder, keep pedaling as hard as possible until crosseyed, or vomiting, or, if I am really on fire, both. Anyway, being spectacularly undisciplined, this way of riding bikes generally left me getting spat out the back of the pack most weekends, when better disciplined, more rested athletes rightfully put the screws to me.
Thing is, in my mind at the time, I rationalized it all perfectly. Pedal harder everywhere, and eventually you’ll get faster everywhere. Sort of like the old farmer weightlifter adage: get a calf, pick it up. Easy to do for a husky farm boy, since calves do not weigh a huge amount. Do this every day. As the calf gains weight, you get stronger, until you can pick up a cow. Incredibly flawed logic that fails to take into account most of the fundamental aspects of strength training, but a myth that nevertheless still endures amongst the vain and the stupid.
I was not a very fast bike racer. And my back hurt all the time. So did my knees. And I would at times really hate bicycles, because I wanted to be faster, always faster, but I wasn’t getting any faster. Faster was the only thing that mattered, and if I wasn’t getting faster, I was stuck being not fast enough, and then what was the fucking point? I did not see any value whatsoever in Zone 2.
It turns out things like zone 2 base mileage and hydration are actually beneficial. Who knew?
Zone 2, in heart rate training parlance, is where the magic happens. For me, this is a range between about 105 and 140bpm, and is where people who ride bikes for a living spend their winters banking miles at low effort, having conversations while dawdling, from a relative perspective, across the Belgian countryside. This is where the body burns fat instead of glycogen. It improves mitochondrial function, which is beneficial whether we are talking about burning fat, clearing lactic acid from muscles after hard efforts or helping a body fight metabolic disease. Zone 2, sustainable for hours at a time on rolling roads, at first incredibly frustrating in any sort of steep or rough terrain, is a rolling meditation. Zone 2 is where most people who are serious about riding fast at some point in the season spend about three quarters of their riding time in the early part of the year.
I knew none of this. Willfully ignored every single piece of advice handed down by well-meaning elders. Paid no heed to the complaints of riding companions when I would rocket up the first hill of a seven hour day only to be a cratered mess dangling off the back four hours later. It wasn’t faster, so why bother?
A couple months ago, on my very first ride aboard the Yeti ASR test bike, I did what I usually do; pinned it until my legs stopped wanting to work anymore. This particular ride came the morning after driving almost 3000 miles in a single week; so much time spent behind the wheel that my gas pedal leg took about four days to properly uncramp. I was tired, dehydrated, and it was the first genuinely hot day of the year. At some point, during one of many minutes spent in the red mist of zone 5, my heart rate boiled up to 187 and then decided to stay there. For a while. I’ve already written about that, so won’t go into too much detail again other than to say it gave me pause.
The pause it gave me was something along the lines of; “I’m getting too old to continue to be this dumb.”
I was a bit spooked by that metaphorical cooking of my own goose, and that led me to do some research on heart rates and heat, on heart rates and hydration, and to spend the next week paying very close attention to my resting heart rate and how my heart rate recovered from any effort. During my time digesting the Cliff Notes of heart rates, I realized a couple things. One, I had never really been an athlete. I had indulged in athletic activity, sure, but my own hubris and ego and laziness had blinded me to the careful measuring of effort and recovery that real athletes undergo as part of their daily existence. Two, I had been an idiot about most of my riding, and the many, many instances of burnout and recovery that I had subjected myself to over the past few decades could maybe have been avoided if I had opted to mellow out and ride tempo. And three, incidentally, I had no clue what riding tempo really meant. My thoughts of what zone 2 consisted of, judging by “feel”, were probably 20bpm above where they should have been.
That cone behind the bike is known locally as El Pilon, or sometimes El Pilon Las Parras. It pokes 3300' up into the air and is one of the more notable points in a range full of big rocky teeth that is easily distinguishable from land or sea. It once was how the pangeros used to locate home port. The road to San Javier from Loreto snakes up the southern flank of El Pilon in a twisty series of upheavals. It is not, by any stretch, an easy climb. Zone 2, here, means a whole lot of time in the 50t cookie.
So here I am. Wearing a heart rate monitor. Zone 2. Riding slowly, paying attention to the measuring of effort, and, damn, I kind of like it. It took some effort to get used to slowing down at the base of climbs, to purposefully throttle back on rollers, to choke back the desire to punch up each chunky steep. But then it began to feel kind of good. I started noticing more of the landscape, even seeing aspects of the trails that I had previously been deathgripping over. And yesterday, sitting right there in the middle of low-effort land, I cleaned a loose, shifty climb that has been dogging me for months. I am convinced that the conscious slowing down of my riding is what allowed that.
I am not doing this in the hopes that I get fast. I’m 59, for crying out loud. That ship has sailed. I’m doing this because I am tired of my binge and purge ways. I’m tired of burning myself out on riding because of my own inability to rein myself in, because I have the impulse control of a three year old. I’m doing this because I am really enjoying riding bikes these days, and I want to try and keep that feeling going for the rest of the time I have. If using an Apple watch as a personal rev limiter (but still allowing for occasional dalliances in the glorious zone 5 pain cave) is what it takes, so be it. This is where I will be, seventy five percent of the time.
Not in any way trying to even step to Uncle Dave's level of music sourcing awesomeness, but damn, this song... I got dragged hard at a previous place of employ for liking Ween, since the staff were pretty deep into Slayer and therefore liking Ween was some kind of aberrance in their eyes. Kinda like being into XC, I guess. Ah well, whatever...
Comments
TristanC
3 weeks, 5 days ago
I ride long stuff, like "hour 15 on the bike, business as usual" long stuff. When I'm training, I will try to go faster and redline it, because I have that same urge to go fast and if it doesn't hurt, you're not trying hard enough. But on race day, I have to consciously put that away and remind myself that I will still be riding this bike tomorrow. If it feels like I'm pushing at all, it's too much, I know I can't sustain that for that length of time. It's served me really well so far.
I also get some schadenfreude out of starting at the very back of any event and watching everyone zoom off into the distance, while I meander along, thinking about what I should have for my next snack. I'll see them again in a couple hours, as they start blowing up and I keep burbling happily along.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 4 days ago
TristanC, I don't do it anymore, but it's kinda what I was training for back when, 100 miler type "races", so a 2-3 hour ride was considered short, 4 hours was a normal ride and then 6 hours it was kinda getting into it. Base miles, seems lots don't know of the benefits of doing that early and throughout the season, builds something in you if you do it for enough years that seems to leave a residual effect
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TristanC
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Exactly what I'm always training for, 100+ mile "races." I take the apocryphal Eddy Merckx "ride lots" and "ride up grades" to heart.
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Mike Kittmer
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Same strategy I applied back in my 90’s XC race days. Odd that, at 49 years old, I lack the same restraint a I had when I was racing. Might be time to find zone 2 at my age but it’s just to easy to keep pushing hard all the time when it’s habit.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Man, that's an easy fix, just start to ride with other people, not solo, you'll soon find yourself riding much slower up the climbs, barely getting into zone2 if you want to actually ride with them and not zoom ahead and the climbs will take so long that more than enough of easy zone2 time in LMAO.
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Mickey Denoncourt
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Sir,
I’ve been reading your work since your time with California Bicyclist and Winning magazine, starting in Middle School.
Thanks for being such a self-destructive doofus, your prose was always better for it.
I was the 14 year old with a heart rate monitor and a fancy coach, developing an encyclopedic knowledge of all the shit you were too bull-headed to do. Your clearly poor preparation always made for better “race coverage”.
XC and CX races were and still are no less painful on 20 well planned hours a week all winter- lord knows MTB would be in a better place now if you and me still had fun grass roots xc events to attend and weird people out at. It’s funny, now that there is basically nothing to train for and fewer authentic personalities to debauch with at the races, that training comes easier, isn’t it?
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Andy Eunson
3 weeks, 5 days ago
At 66 years old I’m all over zone two like a fat Belgian on a Stroopwafel. I realized some time ago that training at my age is rather undignified. I see Nordic skiers and other riders going at it hard but not really enjoying it based on facial expressions and general unfriendliness. It’s like the athletic equivalent of the comb over. Dude you’re old! You’ll never be as fast as you thought you were. Time to simply work on technique and being happy.
Of course every now and then, on that ephemeral good day it can be fun to put some youngster in their place and jam by at a higher speed. Remember to smile and take up a conversation with them later when you collapse.
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Mike Wallace
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I spent quite a bit of time this winter figuring out this zone 2 thing. I’m 57 and riding in zone 2 more allows me to ride more often. These are my learnings:
Very difficult to do any serious climbing without going very slow.
Can’t do zone 2 descending.
Can’t do zone 2 on a Moto.
Can’t do zone 2 walking fast unless you go uphill all the time
Wrist monitors are quite inaccurate compared to chest strap
Road riding can be quite good for zone 2
The only way to truly stay in zone 2 all the time is on a spin bike
Mitochondria are quiet little suckers and don’t provide a lot of feedback
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Mike Ferrentino
3 weeks, 4 days ago
So much this. I am very surprised by how high my heart rate can get descending. Haven't tried it on the moto yet, but given how wrecked I usually am after any decent dirt bike ride, that makes sense. God I hate chest straps. And spin bikes. I know they are more accurate, but honestly the only reason I'm doing this now is because of how convenient the watch is. Done quite a few finger on pulse reference checks and this one seems accurate "enough" for my very basic needs.
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shenzhe
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I think "accurate enough" is all we (mere mortals) really need for these things. Getting your HR zones is already an exercise in guessing. (figure out Max HR but don't do it the "go till you pass out that's your max for today" way because that's not healthy, but don't use 220-age because that's not accurate, just go hard till you think you might pass out and that's probably good enough) then we take our zones which are x% - y% of Max HR, but they're not magical. You don't suddenly stop burning fat and get all your fuel from glycogen stores simply because you moved your heart rate from 152 to 153 bpm. You don't suddenly become unable to maintain an effort for more than an hour because you moved from 165 to 166 bpm.
So realistically, my wrist based HRM going to lag behind my actual HR by several seconds? Fine. I'm trying to keep it in a reasonable zone anyway and shouldn't see it moving that much that quickly, and if it is I'm probably not doing my zone 2 right. Is it within 5% of accurate? That should be good enough. If I'm trying to perfectly maintain Zone 3 - (1 bpm) I'm not doing it right anyway. That said, I'm never going to win any XC rides, I ride because I reset/ground by being outside and getting some exercise and I'd rather do that riding than hiking (and skiing isn't really a thing in the desert southwest without travel). So my "good enough is good enough" probably doesn't apply to the people that are really trying to maximize their genetic potential.
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Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
There's the Karvonen method which is more accurate than the 220-Age method and way easier/cheaper than doing a stress test in a lab. For the Karvonen method, you need to measure your resting heart rate as well. After you first wake up in the morning, lay in bed for about 5 minutes and then check your HR, this will give you your true resting HR which you can use to get a better estimate of your max HR and your training zones.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Now I really want to get hold of a HRM and see what my HR is like descending, as can't say as it's ever felt elevated to anything crazy, edge of zone1 into low zone2, definitely going to find one and give it a go. I'm interested because when I was heavy into computer gaming, my friend came to see what a LAN party was all about and while watching me in a very high intensity shooter, he said he couldn't believe how chilled I was and I confirmed this with a HRM, it was below zone2.
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Mike Wallace
3 weeks, 3 days ago
The only good part of wearing a strap is taking off your shirt at the busy trailhead. People of course have no idea you’re just putzing around in zone 2. :)
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Curveball
2 weeks, 3 days ago
I live in The Land of Steep Roots and Loam. Descents get my heart rate way up. I sometimes have to stop and catch my breath on a brutal descent. I have to force myself to remember to breathe because I'm so intently focused on not crashing down the mountain.
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Mike McArthur
3 weeks, 2 days ago
Same here - I get much better at staying in zone 2 on a spin bike. I'd go a step further and say that using singletrack time as 100% of the way to improve current fitness level isn't the way to go. Sure it's fun, but if you're riding the same local singletrack circuit on repeat, your doing it to improve/maintain for a day when you explore something new.
Functional fitness from dry-land programming - body weight and/or regular weights/bands, as well as spin bike time is just so much smarter. Working F/T and having others counting on you, can mean there's only enough hours to do these two as fitness means. I'd argue that singletrack on familiar/local trails is for socializing and seeing the land but isn't the base of your fitness triangle unless you have a lot time on your hands - both for exercise hours, getting to/from the trailhead and for bike maintenance.
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Offrhodes42
3 weeks, 5 days ago
The answer is 42
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Timer
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Zone -1
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Velocipedestrian
3 weeks, 4 days ago
The phantom zone
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Kenny
3 weeks, 5 days ago
The fact that there are people fit enough to be mountain biking on the north shore and staying in zone 2 for an entire ride just blows my mind.
I could maybe go up mountain highway and down bobsled at the pace of my 4 year old, or maybe circuit 8.
Something like riding up good sir Martin and down severed? Not happening. I have aspirations to get fitter, but I can't imagine that level.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 5 days ago
@Kenny - far as I can tell looking at maps etc, there's LOADS of flatter or rolling trails all around the area, you just have to choose to go ride them instead of trying to only ride what's fun if you want seriously give zone2 training a try and you've never done it before. Once you get fitter, you'd be surprised at what you can climb without going out of zone2, if you so wish.
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Mike Ferrentino
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Therein lies one of the rubs. In really steep terrain, attempting to maintain the heart rate in zone 2 means you are literally crawling up some hills. I have found that if it's steep enough that you have to get off and push, even a walking pace will have me in the 160s. So, yeah. But then again, this is all relative. One of the articles I read pointed out that Wout Van Aert's zone 2 would be the average punters zone 5, and I remember Mark Weir one year at the Santa Cruz Hellride casually mentioning that he knocked out the first 7000' of climbing that day without leaving zone 2.
So there are mutants out there doing just that. The rest of us, we slow way down and/or we find slightly flatter rides.
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Timer
3 weeks, 5 days ago
At some level of steepness, finding a low enough gear to stay in that zone becomes a problem. Not a huge fan of slow-mo pedaling (or rather my knees aren’t).
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fartymarty
3 weeks, 4 days ago
2x with a manual change to the smaller ring?
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Preach it Marty, 2x ain't dead. In fact it will help extend the life of your drivetrain components if you know how to use it properly.
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Timer
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Interesting idea, never thought of that!
In practice i usually try and find a flatter route or just spend a bit more time in zone 3 than would be optimal.
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JVP
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Or just stay slow and continue to have fun.
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mikesee
3 weeks, 5 days ago
i go slow because i like to. because i can hear the birds around me and think about how they fit into the bigger picture of the landscape through which i'm traveling.
but the region we live in is corrugated, with 4000'-in-6-mile climbs common. when it's this steep, with this much relief, sometimes how hard we go ain't up to us.
to the end of mitigating that i've been running my 1x drivetrains with 24t chainrings paired with 10-52t cassettes. on an average 4-5 hour ride i'll be parked in that pixie gear, twiddling away, for 3+ hours.
so doing is the only way i can ride 5 hours in this terrain. and it allows me to maintain enough gas in the tank to make fun of the ego-ringers i occasionally cross paths with out there, completely blown to pieces, goo all over their chins and chests, smacking their shins on their pedals as they do the sidi-slip-slide uphill, not even halfway through the ride.
i don't really make fun of them -- not aloud anyway. i just twiddle past and let that simple act speak as loudly as it needs to.
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Curveball
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Mike, I very much wish I could use a 24T on my bike. I could use it on some routes.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I'm no Mark Weir, that's for, not even back in the day when I was fit and actually training, but these days I find that with the introduction of those dinner plates people are running outback coupled with tinee, tiny 1x rings upfront, and humans proclivity to take the easy route out, that on a lot of the rides if I'm riding with the group, I'm barely even maybe making it into zone2, just on the edge of zone1, while most of the rest are zone3ing it, I have to ride off at my pace to raise the HR, everyone's "just suffering the climbs for the downs", so, so very sad.
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ReformedRoadie
3 weeks, 4 days ago
The story goes that Stephen Seiler observed an elite level runner stopping and walking up a hill on her training run and asked why she was doing that...
The top athletes are usually just ahead of the science in training methodology...they figure out what works, then the science figures out the why and formalizes it, names it, etc.
(unfortunately, the dopers are also ahead of the science for detection...)
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DanL
3 weeks, 3 days ago
That matches the training information imparted to my triathlete friend about hills as well
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 3 days ago
DanL, on a bike or running or both?
[Quote+DanL-That matches the training information imparted to my triathlete friend about hills as well]
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aztech
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I've found the best way to get in all that Zone 2 training time is commuting. 5 days a week of 30-40 minutes suddenly nets you roughly 3 hours of zone 2 per week for free. You have to get to work anyway, and at shorter distances it takes just as long to drive in traffic than it does to just ride (or run) there.
Plus, then you can justify another bike with all the gas money you're saving.
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Curveball
2 weeks, 3 days ago
I would love it if I could commute by bike. Unfortunately, I live the land of enraged (or completely distracted) drivers who are hellbent on mowing down cyclists.
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Dave Smith
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Dr Rock also may have worked here.
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DanL
3 weeks, 4 days ago
haha - "Bananas and Blow" to start the Illustration.
The only thing wrong with Ween is that I won't be able to catch them live
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Dave Smith
3 weeks, 4 days ago
They were something.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Bahahahahaha, yeah, if you ignored zone2 training, you did yourself a disservice Mike, that's for sure, glad you've finally figured it out, sometimes that takes something like what happened to you to make most people pay attention, glad you did and are still here with us.
I don't ride nearly, not nearly as often as I'd like now because of well, basically the cost to fuel the engine vs feed 10 rescue dogs properly and pay the rest of the bills, but I'm glad that when I did try my hand at getting faster and fitter back when I was in my late 30s that I did a lot of zone 2, long riding. So now it seems, that even when my last ride was 4-6 weeks ago, I can still hop in with the guys and not have trouble keeping up, if even at the beginning they seem to be going harder than I would like and I find it a bit challenging, but then as the ride goes on and the time ticks away, they slow and I just keep on keeping on at my steady, can ride all day pace.
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mikesee
3 weeks, 5 days ago
75%ers unite!
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fartymarty
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Mike - I "discovered" The Mollusk but Ween a couple of years back - man that's a trip we'll worth repeating.
Thanks for the great read, it's a bit like looking into a mirror. I'm cusping 50 and think my kids have forced me to slow down or have slowed me down in many aspects of life. I still like to give it some occasionally on the bike but have realised every ride doesn't need to involve getting getting a PR or KOM in fact over the last year or so I've given up on KOMs and ridden the HT and enjoyed trails.
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Velocipedestrian
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Late to the party, that can be fun - discovering something from your youth later in life.
I was introduced to Ween by the same high school friend who first blew my mind with Portishead's Dummy. Good times.
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Kos
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Mike, welcome to the age where you frequently think to yourself "damn, I wish I'd figured this out twenty or thirty years ago"!
P.S. This would have been an even better column if written as you turned 60. :-)
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Brad Nyenhuis
3 weeks, 5 days ago
"Mike, welcome to the age where you frequently think to yourself "damn, I wish I'd figured this out twenty or thirty years ago"!"
At 63, this is a near-daily mantra.
On another note, just watched that Ween video; Dayyyyyam, that's brutal.
...and awesome.
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Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
If ride/training time is limited then high intensity interval training is your best friend for improving your cardiovascular performance.
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Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
As little as 15-20 minutes 2x/wk can result in big gains in your cardio performance. There's lots of research on the benefits of HITT and Tabata training.
HITT: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6763680/
HITT: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8294064/
Tabata: https://jps.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12576-019-00676-7
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MTB_THETOWN
3 weeks, 5 days ago
I started doing some consistent zone 2 rides about 2 months ago to prep for my racing season (I'm a sport class 'tard as well). I had my first xc race of the season two weekends past and was amazed how mich better I feel compared to prior years. The only way I've been able to tolerate and moderate these rides is by doing them on the trainer while playing video games. But if it works, it works.
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Kenny
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Yeah, trainer seems the only real scenario where I can envision having a go at this type of training.
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 5 days ago
I read this article on the toilet this morning and then proceeded to complete my slowest ride to work ever. Truly inspirational stuff, Mike.
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If your "Beggars would Ride" column name ever wears thin, consider "sport class 'tards". That's gold. Pure gold. I know you credited some unnamed and unknown sales rep with that line, but I'm going to canonize it as being said by Gary Fischer himself. Probably somewhere post buy-out in a Trek University sales course, fully endorsed by John Burke. Thanks for that one, Gary. Truly brilliant.
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Serious comment time: I did this whole 'Zone 2' thing for the first time a year or two ago, albeit not as much as I should have for 'athletic' gains. I had a severe, somewhat life-altering concussion and exercising at ~120bpm was part of the prescribed 18-month recovery plan. It was actually really nice, but if that didn't inspire me to stick with it (or realistically, go out for long enough rides), I'm not sure what will. Especially in the land of the shuttle truck and chairlift.
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Mike Ferrentino
3 weeks, 5 days ago
It wasn't Gary, it was a guy named Don. It was 1990, we were having dinner at his condo in Mammoth before the XC race the next day. He was a pretty quick expert, and we were, as mentioned, sport class 'tards. And he was, at that time, right. My friends and I did not really know how to embrace the pain cave yet, and I think his implication was that we and he were not the stuff that pros were made of. Basically, if we were going to be the next John Tomac, we would have already shown that spark...
The note about concussion is an interesting one. There's a whole shit-ton of wellness benefit and overall body health that comes from improving mitochondrial function.
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Come on Mike, I want to Mandela-effect myself into remembering a Trek-u sales video where a well-dressed, properly mustached Gary Fischer says that Trek's SLR road bike models are perfect to sell to schmucks and by elaborating on the real story you're totally ruining that for me. "Remember, Be The Guide by guiding your customer into a bike that won't make them faster, but might let them think it will help motivate them to train more and become faster (it won't)".
Greg LeMond died in a South African prison.
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Mike Ferrentino
3 weeks, 5 days ago
You are a dark soul, my friend. Remember, even Gary eventually got subsumed by the BurkeBorg. At least he got a nice suit out of the deal.
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XXX_er
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I can ride my E-bike for however long I want and I'm in zone 2 at the end which is also the fat burning zone,
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I have a hard time differentiating between ebike marketing ploys and legitimate training aid use cases. I recall an article or video segment about how Martin Maes used his ebike for long rides on recovery days so he could still get descending training in, or keep his speed up on flat trails in his flat home country. Is Martin really out there crushing the electric miles or did GT just really want to sell some ebikes to enduro guys? Both?
The entirety of my limited eebing experience involves:
I understand the appeal as heart-non-exploders and training tools, but personally, I'm not sure I could bring myself to take one out on a 'regular' ride. Misplaced hubris, I suspect. For someone like myself, an eeb is different enough that it opens up entirely new styles of riding that feels MTB-adjacent rather than a core MTB experience.
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XXX_er
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Not almost puking is a new style for me, I ride it up hill without stopping to arrive in zone 2
telling my self I'm better off than I really am and i can do it again if I want
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Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
> I am really enjoying riding bikes these days, and I want to try and keep that feeling going for the rest of the time I have.
Unfortunately that lesson gets learned either way too late in life or never at all for most people. If we could really bite into that when we're teenagers, I wonder how different the world would look.
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ShawMac
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I have been trying to embrace the benefits of Zone 2 training, but my struggle is a lack of time. I never can have enough time to ride more than 1.5 hrs more than once per week, and in the winter if I hit the rollers, I usually only get 30 minutes grace from the family. I am not sure this actually getting any benefit from Zone 2.
Every asshole that publishes some sort of training guide seems to be totally out of touch with the realities of us sport class 'tards with kids and responsibilities. Comments like "short rides" of 2 hours and then your "long ride training day" of 4-5 hours. My wife would divorce me by the second week.
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Lynx .
3 weeks, 4 days ago
No, they're not assholes, they're just not thinking about any of those factors and giving you what you need, if you really want to get fitter/faster. It's not anyone elses "fault" you don't have time but yours, so don't blame them, you need to look for someone who's looking at helping to train the working Dad who actually spends time with his kids and wife.
As the old saying goes, "You can't have your cake and eat it too!"
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ShawMac
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Yeah. I don't blame them or anyone else for my lack of time to do it. I don't actually think they are assholes. Ye old algorithms just don't have a lot of content served up for "improve your fitness with only 1.5 hours per week of free time!" Life gets busy, health suffers.
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Mike Ferrentino
3 weeks, 4 days ago
We all gotta make the choices we make. I have no fucking clue how I was ever able to bank 15-20 hours a week of riding time. It just does not compute in any reality I have been living the past couple decades. Currently, I am enjoying the luxury of being able to ride about 10 hours a week if I want. But I am also realizing that I now NEED to ride about 7 or 8 of those hours at a mellow pace or I'll just dig a hole for myself. None of this has anything to do with training myself faster, and is more a realization that I need to learn to temper my riding. If I only had a couple hours to ride a week, I would almost certainly just light the fuse and go for broke.
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fartymarty
3 weeks, 4 days ago
Lights and night riding? That's the majority of my rides. 730pm meet up and back at 1030-11pm. In summer I'm getting 2 maybe 3 night rides in with an early 6am start pre-work / pre-family ride.
Now my kids are getting older I am managing to get a few 2-3 hour weekend rides in but they aren't every week yet.
I guess the other thing is you need riding on your doorstep. Adding driving into this equation wouldn't work.
I also picked up a trainer over winter so I could do a session in the garage after dinner.
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ShawMac
3 weeks, 4 days ago
I told myself I was going to night ride more. Just didn't happen and it is my own doing of too many other community volunteer commitments. Thankfully most of my riding is from my doorstep. I can squeeze in 30 minutes here and there, but I don't think that actually achieves anything with Zone 2 training. Some strength training might be a better benefit in those short periods.
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ReformedRoadie
3 weeks, 4 days ago
People who trash other people's tastes or opinions about music are a peeve of mine...
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taprider
3 weeks, 3 days ago
LOL
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Suns_PSD
2 weeks, 6 days ago
Agreed. Which is why I blare the Spice Girls using my outdoor bike speaker on every slow Z2 climb when with my group. They don't have a right to say ANYTHING negative!
what I want... what I really really want...
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ReformedRoadie
2 weeks, 6 days ago
There is a special level in hell for people who ride around the woods with bluetooth speakers...
and a lot of overlap with said violators and people with poor taste in music.
Also, I think the joke went over your head.
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Raymond Epstein
3 weeks, 2 days ago
I like Ween and I like Slayer. Never saw the latter and have no desire to see whatever it is Kerry is up to now. I did see Ween several times and they were always fantastic. Not Ween nor Slayer, but maybe the best mash up to get your ride on with... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_7DC6qSlzs
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lkubica
3 weeks, 5 days ago
So e-bikes may be not that bad? You can stay in zone 2 and actually ride bike in the mountains not raiding road or god forbid indoors.
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cxfahrer
3 weeks, 5 days ago
If you live in a place where you can't ride uphill without going out of Zone 2, then a motor is good for training. But don't forget to ride the fire road back down again, not the trail - it might push you out of Zone 2 also :).
Most folks riding eBikes never thought about training in zones, they just rely on the motor.
I wonder what they invented the 52 sprocket for, even on bikes without a motor. Anyhow, soon I will need it approaching 70... :(
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Very clever commenters will say that fire roads are all ebike riders are capable of riding down
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Sethimus
3 weeks, 2 days ago
you can set a hr in the specialized software and the motor adjusts to the measured hr of your sensor
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XXX_er
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Yeah but the down side of the E-bike is you will be the Anti-christ, but only on internet forums, the rest of the time its really fun
I was unaware of the zone 2 side benifit of losing weight
but I discovered it by not working too hard
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Nostradamus predicted ebikes
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XXX_er
3 weeks, 3 days ago
every time someone powers up an E-bike a kitten dies
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Lu Kz
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Napoleon, Hitler, and the Specialized S-Works Turbo Levo SL Carbon
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Larrabee
2 weeks, 2 days ago
Comment of the year. Or decade.
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Paul Stuart
3 weeks, 5 days ago
Great article as usual, Mike.
Maybe folks could chime in with some recommended books or websites that cover XC training? Hopefully aimed at the past their prime weekend warrior type?
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Mark
3 weeks, 4 days ago
The biggest thing to consider is energy management, specifically recovery. As we age it takes more time to recover from higher intensity, longer duration efforts. So while it's possible to train/exercise with high effort, we just can't do it as frequently as when we were younger. That presents another benfit of HITT training, older athletes recover at pretty much the same rate as younger athletes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8822894/
https://www.sportsperformancebulletin.com/training/masters/older-athletes-dont-get-sore-get-faster#:~:text=General%20advice%3A,training%20session%20to%20maximize%20recovery.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8822894/
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Sethimus
3 weeks, 2 days ago
This comment has been removed.
megastoke
3 weeks ago
I wasn't expecting Ween when I started this article, but I'll take it.
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Suns_PSD
2 weeks, 6 days ago
I tried the entire Z2 thing a couple of years back and learned some things including: 1) can't do it on many of our trails as they are just too rough and steep, 2) I'm all fast twitch man and activating my slow twitch properly really exhausts me for days, 3) have to have an indoor trainer and be watching TV or it's pretty awful at my fitness level, 4) I don't like the way Z2 makes me look. Lots of carbs and all that training left my body looking even less impressive than usual, 5) or the correct choice, honestly, is buy a mid-power e-bike. You can ride all the cool stuff and essentially stay in Z2.
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