Jonas Abrahamsen's Zone 2 Zwift ride

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Another illustration of the gap between a regular Joe and a Pro cyclist

A Zone 2 / LT1 zwift session for Jonas is doing the rounds of the cycling media just now.

A 5 hour ride, with 10x 20 minutes at LT1

Looking at the Strava screenshot in the article

  • average cadence 71
  • aveage HR 136
  • average power 308

But it does look like he maybe had a sprint finish, max power 1,025W

Couple this with Pogacar talking about 5 hour Zone 2 rides in this (52 second clip from an) interview with Attia and it is clear that this high end Zone 2 work is a staple for cyclists at the top of the sport.

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So what I see is this holds true for regular joes too for the most part. Obviously pros are aerobic monsters. When you are a monster your zone 2 hr is very high power and in many cases sweet spot. Many reasonable cyclists are still aerobically poor, meaning zone 2 hr is much closer to zone 2 power. Might have a 300w ftp but still this ratio is far from their own personal optimal ratio of hr/power. Might just be better at suffering.

I think almost everyone can get to the place that zone 2 hr does not feel easy, and when it is no longer easy and you head outside it’s going to be your staple and generally be lower stress so you can handle more volume compare to those that are spending most of their time in upper zone 3 hr. Maybe you don’t have more time so you don’t feel you need more volume, but that also means full recovery between sessions, which allows for better adaption.

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Magnified when duration comes into play.

Holding a high power at Z2 HR for 10 minutes is very different from being able to sustain that situation for an hour, or two hours, or three etc.

Depending on what someone is training for, the significance of duration will differ.

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Some don’t realise it, some will not accept it etc.

Here is Bulletproof Cycling on a related subject

It opens “Just because you ride a bike doesn’t mean that you’re healthy or even metabolically healthy. In fact, you might think that riding 100k on a Saturday morning would make you a champion and a warrior for health and fitness. But for many ageing cyclists it’s doing the exact opposite and they don’t even know it. You’re tired for days after that weekend ride. You’re still carrying belly fat and you’ve got this constant lowgrade injury in your joints. And your sleep, well, it’s still crap.”