Originally Posted by
Campag4life
In bold, my counterpoint in response to your last post was...you lowered your Z2 with age. If you lowered your Z2 then it stands to reason your recovery wouldn't change.
And of course if you train to lower Z2 now that you are older, then you won't have the fitness of a more rigorous zone training and so aggressive group rides will be more taxing and require more recovery.
Does that make sense?
I think you are looking at part of it backwards. Z2 is what it is, based on tested FTP. It changes even within a season. You don’t drive fitness up by arbitrarily changing the Zone. Particularly with low intensity you want progression of time in Zone, then test, then adjust the zone based on the new test. Rinse, repeat. Just as rigorous, but all the numbers are lower.
I would agree an aggressive group ride with myself at 35 would be harder. Because 62 year old me would be riding at a much higher % of Threshold.