Originally Posted by
spelger
thanks, it is a wonder how much useful stuff you find when you have the proper search terms.
no rush to get to any particular level. i am not a racer and do not intend to be. i mainly ride alone but compete against myself.
thanks both of you, i now have something i can read that is useful. my first job will be to properly measure my max heart rate. based on what i have read so far i have modified my program to do just that. tomorrow i'll see how that goes (it works in simulation but reality is always a challenge).
-scott
IMO and the opinion of the majority here, don't bother with max HR. It's not useful. Instead find your lactate threshold HR (LTHR) and set your zones off that. LTHR occurs just below the effort at which you start to pant, so it's not very technical to find it, though one can do a 20' test. Google for it.
It's also not really necessary to have zones or know your LTHR. You can simply train in 2 zones - easy and hard. Easy is below the point at which you start to breathe faster, also known as the conversational pace - one can recite the alphabet easily in one breath. Hard is the zone where if you hold that effort for more than about 3 minutes, you'll start to pant. One does hard 2 days/week and all the rest easy. That's what I've been starting to do this year, just to see. For the past 10 weeks, I've done nothing but easy and lots of it, shooting for 10 hours/week. I've never done this before and so far, I'm amazed at how well this has worked. That's the pros' secret: volume. More volume, but the only way to do big volume is to go easy. The pandemic has lent itself to doing more volume - nothing much else to do.