Zone 2 questions

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1

A couple of Zone 2 questions. I am in the Sweet Spot polarized plan, so Tuesday Zone 2 ride are heart rate driven. My first question is Zone 2 one the VO2 max and sweet spot days. Is keeping it in Zone 2 power more important during the Zone 2 portions of these rides, or like Tuesday, should I focus more on keeping it in Zone 2 heart rate (I found my HR drifted up out of Zone 2 in the latter part of the ride after the intervals.

My second question is how important is it on the SS ride to do some zone 2 before and some after. I picked a TrainerRoad workout that had a good 3x10 min SS and then just added on Zone 2 for 45 minutes at the end. The “prescribed” workout had 20 min zone 2 before and 20 min zone 2 after. So I guess my question is whether I #FTfP’d or not!

2

Hi,

So it’s important to keep zone 2 heart rate on Tuesdays and Sundays of the Sweet spot 4 plan. This is to help keep you fresh for the intensity of Wednesday. Driving heart rate is a sign of fatigue and we don’t want that right now. In other plans, especially early in sweet spot training it’s ok but not during this plan.

The zone 2 before the sweet spot work is for a warm up. The zone 2 after is still to help build and maintain an aerobic engine. Zone 2 is still beneficial training just with sweet spot you get an advance aerobic interval. So more bang for buck. But you wouldn’t want to ride every single day and minute at sweet spot so that’s why zone 2.