Road Bike Racing - Question - Friel vs. Coggan zones

I'm using Friel's book for my training plan for the year. I've used Coggan's book to find my FTP... haven't gotten much farther than that.

I'd like to use Friel's workouts... but Friel's zones don't line up nicely with Coggan's zones derived from FTP. So I don't know exactly where to be in wattage when Friel says "Zone 5b"... is that slightly harder than Coggan's Zone 5? More like Zone 6?

How can I figure this out?

what is your primary training metric? power? heart rate? perceived exertion?

friel zones correspond with heart rate. coggan zones correspond with power (wattage). if you're using wattage as your intensity metric, use the friel workouts for how they're structured but use the coggan zones for targetting your intensity.

A strange conundrum to have! I had the same. Here's what I did. Since I use the Trainingpeaks.com site to self-coach I was picking Friel workouts up to when i got a powermeter and the Allen/Coggan book. I too noticed the same thing about the power zones and wondered what to do. In the back of the book there is a 16 week workout plan for intermediate riders with 250w FTP. Thats me right now (well was me 3 weeks ago), so I've manually entered in all the workouts in the book into my Trainingpeaks workout calender. I saved myself about 95 bucks. Truth be told, when the 16 weeks are up, i'll probably pay for the next set of Hunter Allen workouts. There available thru Trainingpeaks under the Prebuilt Training Plans menu. So far after 3 weeks on the plan, I have to say the guy knows his stuff. My power numbers are steadily increasing week to week and I feel much faster and stronger. I just do the workouts and take the rest days when they're prescribed. I'm also losing about 1-2lbs a week also to get down to goal weight by the end of June before all my A races.

Good luck dividing zone 5 into 3 sub-zones with a HRM.

Good luck dividing zone 5 into 3 sub-zones with a HRM.

Thats not hard at all really. I've set up my Polar software to do it for me. But since im using the Hunter Allen plan, its irrelavant.

The key to sucess is to pick one plan or the other.

BTW Robo, If you want to stick with Friel and use power, he has written a complete set of Power workouts that mirror his HR workouts and his zones are based on his CP zone setup. They're on Trainingpeaks.com.

what is your primary training metric? power? heart rate? perceived exertion?

friel zones correspond with heart rate. coggan zones correspond with power (wattage). if you're using wattage as your intensity metric, use the friel workouts for how they're structured but use the coggan zones for targetting your intensity.

I'm using power.

I'm doing what you say now... sort of guessing at the intensity/zone of each workout. "If Friel's Zone 5b is ass-kicking intensity, then that must be the top of Coggans Z5 or bottom of Z6."

But I hate guessing!

BTW Robo, If you want to stick with Friel and use power, he has written a complete set of Power workouts that mirror his HR workouts and his zones are based on his CP zone setup. They're on Trainingpeaks.com.


HOTT.

This might be exactly what I need! Thanks. I'll check in to it.

A strange conundrum to have! I had the same. Here's what I did. Since I use the Trainingpeaks.com site to self-coach I was picking Friel workouts up to when i got a powermeter and the Allen/Coggan book. I too noticed the same thing about the power zones and wondered what to do. In the back of the book there is a 16 week workout plan for intermediate riders with 250w FTP. Thats me right now (well was me 3 weeks ago), so I've manually entered in all the workouts in the book into my Trainingpeaks workout calender. I saved myself about 95 bucks. Truth be told, when the 16 weeks are up, i'll probably pay for the next set of Hunter Allen workouts. There available thru Trainingpeaks under the Prebuilt Training Plans menu. So far after 3 weeks on the plan, I have to say the guy knows his stuff. My power numbers are steadily increasing week to week and I feel much faster and stronger. I just do the workouts and take the rest days when they're prescribed. I'm also losing about 1-2lbs a week also to get down to goal weight by the end of June before all my A races.


So you're saying you switch ed to Allen/Coggan when you got the powermeter?

So you're saying you switch ed to Allen/Coggan when you got the powermeter?

Yes.

Honestly, Its simpler to follow. Im all about the KISS philosophy.

I ordered a power computer for my Kurt Kinetic so I can join the "Watts Happening" gang.

I'm using Friel's book for my training plan for the year. I've used Coggan's book to find my FTP... haven't gotten much farther than that.

I'd like to use Friel's workouts... but Friel's zones don't line up nicely with Coggan's zones derived from FTP. So I don't know exactly where to be in wattage when Friel says "Zone 5b"... is that slightly harder than Coggan's Zone 5? More like Zone 6?

How can I figure this out?

The Coggan levels have HR guidelines. You can find them here:

http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/levels.asp

So in terms of threshold HR, you get:

Coggan Friel
L1=<68% Z1=65-81%
L2=69-83% Z2=82-88%
L3=84-94% Z3=89-93%
L4=95-105% Z4=94-100%
L5=>106% Z5a=101-102%
L6=HR n/a Z5b=103-105%
L7= HR n/a Z5c=>106%

You can now go back to Coggan's power levels to find the appropriate power for Friel's zones.

You'll have to do some math to get the exact ranges of power.

BTW, Coggan's L4 encompasses Friel's Zones 4-5b. L5 would be like Zone 5c.

This isn't going to be fun.

Thats not hard at all really. I've set up my Polar software to do it for me. But since im using the Hunter Allen plan, its irrelavant.

The key to sucess is to pick one plan or the other.

BTW Robo, If you want to stick with Friel and use power, he has written a complete set of Power workouts that mirror his HR workouts and his zones are based on his CP zone setup. They're on Trainingpeaks.com.

Hey FG, where on training peaks are the power workouts that mirror his HR workouts?

Hey FG, where on training peaks are the power workouts that mirror his HR workouts?

I think this is what he was talking about...

http://trainingpeaks.com/trainingplans/joefriel/fulldescription.asp?plankey=6351

He even lists the zones in the training plan example. They are the same as Allen's and Coggan's. But I still can't figure out how to get the zones to correlate to the Zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5a, 5b, 5c (percentage of LTHR) method he uses in the Training Bible.

I just emailed him to see...

Hey FG, where on training peaks are the power workouts that mirror his HR workouts?

You can see them when you add a workout to your calander. When the popup window comes up, click the "power" tab and then "bike" and then the list appears with just the power workouts. They're pretty much the same, but they have CP numbers to follow too.

Or click 'start' on the menu bar after you log in and click on "workout descriptions." You have to wade thru a lotta crap, but they're in there. You can tell which ones they are because they have CP nomenclature in them.

This isn't going to be fun.

Now you know why i just decided to stick with Hunter Allen's plan.