Cycling Power Zones for Endurance Rides Explained

Do you have a weekend ride planned, but part of you wants to get a workout in as well, besides just riding with friends?

Are you trying to build strength and threshold power for endurance cycling? If so, it’s obvious that coasting during a basic endurance bike ride won’t give any significant physiological adaptations, right?

Do you want to increase your endurance bike riding, zone 2 power, and zone 2 training? You can probably accomplish this goal without even adding more hours to your training schedule.

You want to “just ride”—no cycling interval session—but deep down inside you feel that you need some type of structured workout.

Queue the Endurance Ride!

Zone 2 Training: What is an Endurance Ride In Cycling?

It seems like classic, long slow distance power zone training, would be the ride that athletes have the easiest time nailing down. It doesn’t have any specific intervals that one has to remember, it doesn’t have different wattage targets that you have to be able to recall when your eyes are popping out of your socket like in Zone 5 VO2Max Training, and it’s a really fun ride. An endurance ride is, simply put, just going out and riding your bike at a conversational pace.

After coaching athletes for over 15 years, I’ve seen that this has been one of the hardest portions for people to nail, and it’s one of the most important aspects in becoming a great endurance athlete. Whether the entire ride is an endurance ride, or there are intervals followed by the rest of the ride at endurance, athletes seem to struggle with this. So, I wrote a blog on it.

Related Post: Endurance Riding for the Time Crunched Cyclist

Power Zone For Endurance Rides

How do I calculate my training zone for cycling? While the point of this article is to focus on endurance power training and zone 2 percentage of FTP, this is a great time to go through and really define each cycling training zone. At EVOQ.BIKE, almost 95% of our athletes use power zones for endurance rides, so we are going to focus on those power training zones. The main benefit of a power meter over heart rate is that you will have an exact second by second diary of every ride that you complete, with second by second data! The data from a heart rate monitor lags for harder efforts, non-constant intervals, and really cannot capture the stochastic nature of power in cycling. That’s not to say the data from heart rate monitors isn’t useful, but the power meter plus heart rate is a game changer for your training.

Power Zones For Cycling

With different power zone training regimens out there now, you might be wondering what are the 7 power zones in cycling? Here are the classic ones:

Zone 1, Active Recovery: less than 55% FTP

Zone 2, Endurance: 56-75% FTP — where you will ride for longer training sessions and base miles

Zone 3, Tempo: 76-88% FTP

Zone 4 (90-105% FTP) is your Lactate Threshold or FTP Zone…however you might see it broken down like this below:

Zone 4a, Sweet Spot: 88-97% FTP

Zone 4b, Threshold: 95-105% FTP

Okay, now this is where things get a little tricky. You may only have two more zones:

Zone 5, VO2Max, 106-120% FTP

Zone 6, Neuromuscular, 121% FTP or more

If your coach is utilizing the most advanced data analysis software that is out, WKO5, you’ll be working with 9 power training zones, but he/she probably won’t get into all of that with you. It’s a deeper dive, and really not that important to know all of the time, but can be very beneficial when thinking of race type efforts that are above and beyond 150% FTP.

Some terms that get used by WKO5 are listed below. I find them a bit unnecessary, as we don’t need more names for Functional Threshold Power or VO2Max, but in case you come across them in a blog, here’s what they mean.

Extensive Aerobic – this is threshold that you can hold for long periods of time, like 35 minutes or more

Intensive Aerobic – f this is the threshold region for watts that you can hold for about 20 minutes

Max Aerobic: VO2Max, high intensity efforts

Extensive Anaerobic Capacity: the low end of your traditional Zone 6 (125% FTP)

Intensive Anaerobic Capacity: even harder Zone 6, around 30s in duration

PMax: an all out sprint, and in WKO5, it’s the theoretical best 2 crank revolutions.

Related Post: Cycling Training Zones: Which One Should You Use?

Power Zone Calculator

How are cycling power zones calculated? There is a power zones cycling calculator that can calculate these cycling zones for you. If you use TrainingPeaks, you can easily calculate your cycling training zones by plugging in your FTP. There are multiple different zone models to choose from and you can even create your own. If you don’t have TrainingPeaks, this is a nice cycling zones calculator that can give you the cycling zones based on FTP: Calculator

What Is A Power Zone For Endurance Rides?

As you can see from the power training zones chart from above, endurance rides and zone 2 cycling training should be between 56-75% of FTP. That’s actually a pretty big range for zone 2 power! Pull out your power zone calculator, 56% of functional threshold power feels a lot different from 75% of FTP.

While your power may fall anywhere in between this zone during endurance power zone training, you may want to ride at the top end or low end of the zone depending on your goal. Sometimes it’s good during the base season to go out and ride at a solid 70-75% of functional threshold power to rack up as many KJs as possible.

However, other times, an endurance ride should leave you feeling fresher at the end of the day than at the beginning. I like to think of these as “bridge” days between harder workouts. Perhaps you’re in the middle of a training block and had a hard workout the day before, or you’re still tired a couple days after some big weekend rides. Going for a couple of hours at 60% of threshold power will still keep the training load up, but most likely make you more tired after you get a good night’s rest.

During the racing season when you are racing a lot or doing intense interval sessions, you still want to keep the volume up, but a 75% average power for an endurance ride might leave you too fatigued for your weekend races and hard sessions. Riding on the lower end of your cycling power zones will help you maintain that base but leave the legs fresher for anaerobic capacity or VO2max work.

In short, depending on the time of year or your training goals, power zones for endurance rides can fall anywhere along this continuum.

Not an endurance ride, but those rides make big efforts at Tour of the Battenkill possible!

Not an endurance ride, but those rides make big efforts at Tour of the Battenkill possible!

Enhance Your Endurance Bike Rides

Many athletes look at their Zone 2 Cycling Training ride on the calendar and don’t give it much credit. They think it just means that it’s an easy cruise and they can do whatever they want on it.

“It’s not an interval.”

If you look at it as one long interval, and give it the credit which it deserves, you will make massive aerobic gains on these “easy rides”.

Avoid Zone 1 On Your Endurance Cycling Ride

Fartlek rides accomplish the goal of training metabolic systems without structured intervals…go hard on the hills, steady on the flats, but here’s where you get the MOST BANG for your buck…aim for less than 10% or less total time in Zone 1 while training your cycling endurance.

On paper, this sounds easy; in reality, it’s not.

🚨If you live in a mountainous area, don’t kill yourself on the downhills; you’ll naturally have more Zone 1 / Recovery Riding than in the flatlands, but you get the idea.🚨

It’s common for riders on group rides to spend up to 30-45% of their time in Zone 1! Wasted time.

Now I get it—some people are riding more for a social aspect and WANT to coast. That’s fine! This blog is to help those trying to maximize the most out of their training sessions beyond just the fun, social aspect, of riding.

Sitting in the pack to conserve is a great strategy for race day. But to maximize training your metabolic systems, minimize the amount of time in Zone 1 (which induces very little in the way of fitness gains). So keep those legs pedaling in Zone 2, and you’ll greatly increase your aerobic capacity while teaching yourself to stay on the gas, even though it’s not full throttle.

The duration of the ride will get challenging over time, especially as you lengthen these rides to 3, 4, 5 or 6 hours! There is no need to go harder on longer training sessions, which is actually not advised if you really want to make it a classic long slow distance ride.

UPDATE to the 10% Rule

I’m writing this update in 2023. When I wrote this article, I was living in Memphis, TN where it was very easy to get out of town quickly, so you didn’t deal with city lights or traffic, and there terrain was perfect for staying on the gas. It wasn’t pancake flat, but it was rural enough and you could just GO.

I would now change the rule to 20%; keep your Zone 1 riding to 20% or less. Here’s why:

  1. Riders were gritting their teeth to hit their Zone 2 percentage of FTP, especially later in the ride for very long workouts, and this isn’t really necessary. If the RPE is more Tempo/Threshold, then it isn’t endurance anymore anyways. At this point, ride Low Zone 2 average power or even High Zone 1; look at your heart rate, and you’re still getting a great aerobic workout even if your watts drop out of Zone 2 power.

  2. Zone 2 percentage of FTP is a range, and you don’t need to be PEGGING it at the high end of your cycling power zones to ensure you don’t have 10% of Zone 1. This goes hand in hand with the #1. Don’t ride tempo watts so that you can ride easier later, only to have a “Zone 2 average”. That’s riding Zone 3 and Zone 1!

  3. Some athletes were stopping their Garmin 3 miles from their house because there were stop signs or lights, and they didn’t want to accumulate power output in Zone 1. You missing the big picture of the whole idea of 10%, and taking it too literal. It’s good to be precise, to a point.

It would be better if I’d say “Keep the coasting below 10%, maybe even 15% on crazy mountain days; watch your heart rate and keep it in the endurance zone, don’t lolly gag around and waste time (if you’re going for optimal training performance), use the range of the power zone to your advantage, AND HAVE FUN!

When Do I Ride In Zone 1, Active Recovery?

If you’re on a Zone 1 or Active recovery ride (same thing, just different wording), probably after a long weekend of riding or after a long week of training, then you should ONLY ride in zone 1, and get passed by nearly everyone else riding their bikes. Riding in this power zone will keep your muscles loose and a good warm up for some stretching or yoga, and the blood circulation from riding EXTREMELY EASY will help you recover from your training.

If you are working on Max Watts Intervals, where you’re trying to hit all out maximum wattages, you’ll want to fully recovery between these efforts, and therefore be in Zone 1 for a bit. This is especially true when you are working really hard anaerobic efforts, anything 2 minutes in duration or less; you want to full on recover between the efforts, for at least 7 minutes, before taking another crack at it.

If you are in a bike race, your power output in Zone 1 as much as possible!! You don’t want to work in a race if you don’t have to, so most races should have a TON of zone 1, as you conserve, follow, and only expend energy at key points in the race.

It’s not who pedals the most, but who pedals the hardest when it really counts, that wins the race.

Examples of an Endurance Bike Ride

It amazes me when I look into an athlete’s account to ensure that they did an endurance ride and this is what I see: Zone 2 Power and every other zone!

This is not endurance.

This is not endurance.

This one is better, but there’s still 10% at Zone 4 or higher.

This one is better, but there’s still 10% at Zone 4 or higher.

Power Zone Cycling

The first one is really nothing near an endurance ride, and many times the endurance ride gets sabotaged by their friends. I get it. You’re out riding with your friends, and people that are either on a free ride or don’t seriously train, are going after every townline sprint and Strava KOM/QOM.

You stick to your FTP power zones for the first few surges, but then you figure, “A few high intensity efforts won’t KILL me”, and that looks fun, so you join in. Instead of maintaining effort in the power zones for endurance rides, you end up with what are just some half assed sprint efforts and maybe a KOM. You’re tired, so it feels like a great workout. In reality, you’re just tired.

Your coach had the endurance ride down for a reason, or she simply wanted to keep your legs fresh to really crush the next high intensity efforts later in the week.

If you want to get better, you have to go easy sometimes. Ride slow to ride fast.

Sometimes that easy means NOT riding at all, or sometimes it means you need to maintain effort in endurance training zones. Here’s the thing, sometimes endurance feels hard, because you’ve trained a lot and you’ve really squeezed the last bit out of every interval during the week. On those days, you’ll gladly stick to endurance, and it may even be hard to HOLD endurance for 2-3 hours. Those days make gains!

Here is what your very long workous should look like. I’ve included screen shots from WKO, Strava, and Training Peaks, so whatever cycling software you are using, you can take a peek.

See Also: Gran Fondo Training Plan

Zone 2 Ride in WKO4

Zone 2 Ride in WKO4

Zone 2 Ride in Training Peaks

Zone 2 Ride in Training Peaks

Zone 2 Ride in Strava

Zone 2 Ride in Strava

Power Distribution Charts for Endurance Rides

Another thing that you’ll want to take note of is the amount of time that you spent in zone 2. Another mistake that athletes make when going out for an “endurance ride” is that they totally miss their training zones and spend a massive amount of time in zone 1; oftentimes over 30%!

They see “endurance” on their calendar and they don’t give it the respect it deserves. Go out and ride endurance for 2 hours straight. It’s not that easy. Try to keep your zone 1 watts to about 10-20% of your total ride time. I recommend aiming for the higher end of your zone 2, so you will get some tempo (zone 3) wattage in there.

Since most of us only have a max of 2 hours per weekday to train, I’m okay with an athlete throwing more tempo in if they don’t have a big race coming up. You’ll induce significant physiological adaptations similar to zone 2, but be careful, because too much tempo will generally place greater stress on the body and is a recipe for cracking. I call tempo the silent killer, but it’s an effective training tool.

Great Endurance Ride: Very little time in Zone 1, All of it in Zone 2

Great Endurance Ride: Very little time in Zone 1, All of it in Zone 2

Tempo Ride in WKO4

Tempo Ride in WKO4

The Problem With Cycling Group Rides

Many group rides end up giving riders a massive amount of time in zone 1, simply because there are times when you aren’t pulling and you’re towards the back of the pack.

Being on a group ride is just that, a time to ride WITH others, so don’t be the guy trying to dictate intervals to do, unless that was previously stated.

So, how do you get the most out of this group ride or solo weekend ride? Focus on making your endurance bike ride an amazing aerobic workout. Try to stay towards the front, where you won’t get as much draft. If you’re strong enough and people allow you to stay there, stay on the front and pedal your bike! AVOID ZONE 1! AND DON’T COAST! #NoCoast

All that said, check out this post on when you should hit a group ride.

Conclusion

Give endurance rides the respect that they deserve and you will continue to build up your aerobic engine and become a faster and stronger cyclist whose body can handle harder and harder intense training sessions as you mature as an athlete. You shouldn’t feel wrecked after EVERY workout! 

If you enjoy these posts, will you please share with one cycling friend? We greatly appreciate it!

Thank you to everyone for your comments and questions, let’s continue to foster a constructive conversation about cycling. Contact us today to learn more about our cycling training programs.

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EnduranceBrendan Housler