The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS

Are Intervals More Effective At The Beginning Or End Of A Zone 2 Workout? (#230)

• CTS • Season 5 • Episode 230

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OVERVIEW
Should you perform your interval efforts at the beginning or end of your workout? In most cases, doing hard efforts early, when you are freshest, increases power output and time-at-intensity for those intervals. In this episode, Coach Adam Pulford provides the rationale behind this structure and shares the three specific scenarios when he has athletes ride in Zone 2 for most of the ride and execute hard efforts at the end.

TOPICS COVERED

  • Why you should do intervals in the first third of your workout.
  • How early intervals improve Zone 2 training effect afterward
  • Intervals at the end for competition specificity
  • Intervals at the end for fatigue resistance training/durability
  • Interval timing advice for Time-Crunched Athlete

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HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.

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Speaker 1:

From the team at CTS.

Speaker 1:

This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Happy New Year, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford. This is the first podcast recorded and released in 2025, and I hope everyone had happy holidays and is finding their groove here in January, starting the new year off with more audience questions submitted by you, our listeners.

Speaker 1:

Today's topic deals with workout structure, asking when best to do intervals within a workout. Here's the specific question, and then I'll get into the best advice that I have for everyone out there, including the listener. Here it is. Hello, sir. My question is this Is it a good choice to combine a zone two ride with zone four intervals or tempo intervals at the end, for example, doing a 75 minute strict zone two ride followed by 30 minute for intervals of tempo or threshold effort or threshold effort Total ride of two to three hours. I don't really like one hour tempo interval rides, so I mix the zone two with tempo intervals, but I always do it after a decent zone two ride. Maybe in the middle of zone two would be better, I don't know. Thank you very much for your efforts, marat. Okay, so straight and to the point here. Marat, the majority of the time it's best to do your warmup, then do your intervals, then ride volume, called zone two, endurance or whatever you're doing afterwards, usually aerobic, and do that afterwards for the best overall effect. In other words, do your intervals in the first third or the middle of your ride for best effect. Specifically, I would really advise doing those intervals early on for zone four. So we're talking threshold or 91% of your FTP or higher, but personally I do this for anything over zone three tempo, which is about 80% and higher. Okay, so, even when you have two to three hours total for your efforts, like Marat here, this is the better scenario, why Doing intervals when you're most fresh will give you more training effect and therefore better adaptation. That means you'll be able to hit higher power numbers or the prescribed power for longer or feel better when you're doing your efforts, usually doing more total work when fresh versus at the lower end of the power of the prescribed power or the same power that you could have done when you're fresh, but you have higher rate of perceived effort or higher heart rates. So more work when you're more fresh equals better situation.

Speaker 1:

Riding endurance after your main set of intervals in mostly in aerobic intensity doesn't require as much glycogen like harder intensity at zone three and higher. So if the goal is for good intervals and, like I said, training effect, do them first when you have the most energy. Combining intervals plus endurance after is the best way to stress and strain the body properly. Okay Now, what I mean by that stress and strain is you warm up, you do your efforts let's just call them high aerobic or anaerobic. That is stress and that is strain for sure. And you're pre-fatigued. And so when you ride aerobically afterwards those TSS points in the aerobic system, it won't be the same stress that you would if you were just to warm up and ride aerobically internally. We don't have all the tools to record how stressful and strainful that effort will be. But it will be more exponentially more after you've done some hard intervals. But remember, it's still aerobic. You're using oxygen, you're using glycogen, you're using fat as a fuel source. However, at that lower intensity it doesn't matter as much. So you actually get a little bit more of that total package of training when you're doing your efforts first and then your aerobic riding after, and that's what I mean by the best training effect. So when is this not the case?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so something called the specificity of training is when you're trying to mimic something in training that you'll be doing at a race or an event. So if you want to work on, say, sprinting or climbing late in the race and say that late in the race is at some point right, so maybe doing a 10-minute hill climb at the very end or working on your sprint when you're fatigued, doing some training sessions to mimic, that is important. But in order to maximize your anaerobic system or your threshold, you want to do the majority of your intervals in a fresh state to increase your performance or improve those energy systems. Then you want to work on these specifics, like I'm talking about the specificity of training about four to six weeks out from that main event or your race. And when you do that you also probably only want to have one session per week focused work on that. Because, again, if you can do more power when you're more fresh, you're going to have a better training outcome, better training effect. But when you want that specificity of feeling the effort and producing the effort late in the game, if you've never done it before and you know you got to do it in the race, you better do it in training a few times. You better do it in training a few times.

Speaker 1:

Now, one caveat here I should mention is in a scenario like if you live in a city, dc for example and it takes you 40 minutes, maybe longer, 40 to 60 minutes to get out to a good hill or get to a good area to do your efforts on and you have time to do this, okay, so for a time crunched athlete, warming up for 40 to 60 minutes probably not the scenario. We'll get there in a second. But if it takes you that long to get to a good hill climb, just keep it at the low end of zone. Two, don't drive the pace or hit it hard during that longer warmup time period. But if it's a good place to do your efforts, go ahead and do it. Okay, sometimes it does take a little longer to get to a good interval spot and so even on a three-hour ride you'll spend, you know, still like the first third of the ride getting there. Then you do your efforts in the middle of the ride and then you ride home and if you do that, maybe hit a gel just before you do your interval set, so you kind of top off on the glycogen. You have fuel coming into the system. But overall my recommendation is still there, because you still have to ride 40 to 60 minutes home. So nesting the intervals early on in the ride or middle part of the ride when you've expended as little energy as you kind of have to, that's my general advice.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what's another example of when this would not be the case? When you're working on fatigue resistance training or testing? I've done a few episodes on this, on what we call fatigue resistance training, and if you haven't heard those before, google it, read about it. I've linked to a couple good resources on this as well, from Dr Gabriela Gallo, and check out my episodes number 201 and number 207. So you would just search for time crunch, cyclist fatigue resistance and look at 201 and 207 to get the full scoop on what fatigue resistance training is. Okay.

Speaker 1:

But essentially in sessions like this there's there's specific parameters to meet and then test with efforts at the end after doing a bunch of work Okay, and typically doing a max effort at the end of a ride after you've done work like 1,500, 2,000 or 2,500 kilojoules. Before of mostly aerobic riding, I weave in some hard efforts. So you do a bunch of work, get that done and then do a max effort. The idea is you take your peak max effort that you do when you're fresh, you look at your peak max effort you do when you're fatigued and you try to minimize those. So again, it's a pretty specific scenario of testing and training where you'll do efforts when you're fatigued. But that is the point because you're investigating the fatigued status.

Speaker 1:

So again, that should make sense of doing your intervals late in the game. And why? Um the the the parts where I would say, um, you know very few times specificity of training, fatigue resistance training, or you know, you just you have to spend a little bit of time to get to a good interval um spot. That's when you do it a little bit more late in the game. So now what's my advice for this? On the time crunched athlete Well, typically time crunched athletes don't have a choice on this. You have very little time to train, so it's warm up, do intervals, cool down and you're done in 60 to 75 minutes, sometimes less.

Speaker 1:

If you need to work on fatigue, resistance or power production late in the game, like I went over in the examples of when my general rule would not apply, then I recommend doing some of your long rides where you do efforts late in the game. One of the examples I said before if you're training for something like a road race and there's a 10-minute hill climb at the end of a 75-mile race, then, yeah, doing some specific targeted work for FTP power production after two and a half hours of riding something like that, that's going to really pay off well from a training standpoint. But again, you want to do that four to six weeks out from the event and still do FTP training when you're more fresh so that you maximize your training effect. So, even though I'm mentioning that specificity of training for late power production in a race, please hear me on this and please don't do what most athletes do when they think that they are training properly for late power production, which is they only do their intervals late in a ride and they think that that is going to have the best result. Because it's not. It's actually. It's counterintuitive to some, but always hitting your intensity late in the ride can actually work against yourself because you could be getting more out of the training sessions by doing more power or more power for longer on fresher legs, getting more training effect and therefore improved performance in the long run. So, in summary, the majority of the time you want to do your intervals early on in the training session after a good warmup for best results. If you have extra time, ride endurance after your main set of intervals, as this will add more aerobic strain to the system and total TSS for the day. That combination is the best for maximal training effect and best training results.

Speaker 1:

That's it. That's our show for today. If you have a question about all things training, nutrition, recovery or anything else related to endurance and cycling, write into us by going over to trainrightcom backslash podcast and click on ask a training question. Submit your inquiry there and we'll do our best to answer it on a future episode. Thanks again for joining us today and don't forget to come back next week to check out more actionable training information. Thanks, folks. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.

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