FormGuide Training load review Training Load Review · USD 39
Your hard days are not hard and your easy days are not easy
Sixteen weeks of cycling data, and the pattern that explains why the numbers have not moved.
You have trained consistently for sixteen weeks and your threshold power is within two percent of where it started. The volume is there and the distribution is not: 71 percent of your riding sits in a middle intensity band that is too hard to recover from and too easy to drive adaptation.
Seventy one percent of your time is in zone three. A common distribution for riders at your volume is roughly 75 percent easy and 15 percent hard, with very little in between. You are doing the opposite, and sixteen weeks of it explains a flat trend better than anything else in the data.
Distribution
Where the time goes
Total volume is consistent and well managed, including three lighter weeks. The easy line is flat at under two hours and never rises with the volume, which means every extra hour you add goes into zone three.
Consistency
What is working
Worth saying before the rest. Your consistency is unusually good and it is the foundation everything else needs.
| Measure | Your 16 weeks | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks with 4 or more rides | 15 of 16 | Excellent |
| Longest gap without riding | 4 days | Excellent |
| Recovery weeks taken | 3 | Well placed |
| Week to week volume change | Under 15 percent | Sensible |
| Long ride, average | 2h 40m | Appropriate |
| Intensity distribution | 71 percent zone 3 | The one thing to change |
Five of six are what a coach would want to see. The sixth is the reason the first five have not produced a result, and it is the only thing this review recommends changing.
Why
How this happens
Group rides
Four of your weekly rides are with a club. Group riding naturally sits in zone three because it is paced by the group, not by you. Eleven of sixteen weeks have three or more group rides.
Easy feels like wasted time
Riding at genuine zone two is slow enough to be uncomfortable psychologically. Almost everyone who ends up at 71 percent zone three got there this way.
No structured hard sessions
Two percent above threshold across sixteen weeks. There is no session in your data that was designed to be hard.
- Change 1
Two group rides a week, not four
Keep the two you enjoy most. Replace the others with solo rides where you control the pace, which is the only way the easy band gets filled.
- Change 2
Make the easy rides genuinely easy
It will feel far too slow for the first three weeks. If you can hold a full conversation without pausing, it is right.
- Change 3
One structured hard session a week
Any format. The point is that one session in the week is designed to be hard rather than arrived at accidentally.
- Then
Hold it for eight weeks before judging
Sixteen weeks of one distribution is not undone in a fortnight, and the first three weeks of doing this will feel like you have got slower.
Questions
For your coach, and about the data
- Are your zones set from a test, and when was the test? Three of these findings change if the zone boundaries are wrong.
- Which two group rides would you keep? The answer determines whether change one is realistic or theoretical.
- Is there a target event? Everything here assumes general fitness. A specific event would change the distribution again.