My name is Peter Paterson. I'm a 51-year-old with a full-time day job and an interest in staying fit, healthy, and enjoying life. I like to cycle and run when I can.
I developed an interest in Zone 2 training in early 2022 when I started training for a multi-day endurance cycling event. Having never cycled two days in a row in my life, I went on to complete a 1,500km cycle in 142 hours. I put that success down to Zone 2 training.
More importantly, I learned an enormous amount about training. Much of it was counterintuitive — and contrary to most of what I'd been told over 30 years of trying to keep fit.
What I learned that changed everything
The central insight is captured in a simple phrase: train slower to get faster. By keeping the vast majority of training at low intensity — in Zone 2, below the anaerobic threshold — you build an aerobic engine that can sustain effort for far longer than high-intensity training alone ever could.
Most amateur athletes, including me before this project, spend most of their training time in the middle ground — not easy enough to build the aerobic base, not hard enough to develop VO2 Max. It's the worst of both worlds.
Zone 2 training changes the approach: 80% of sessions at genuinely easy pace, with a small amount of true high-intensity work. The results compound over months in ways that feel almost implausible when you first hear about it.
The events that proved it
Between January 2022 and August 2023, I completed:
- The Fifth Continent 300km Audax — my first long qualifier
- The Wander Wye 600km Audax — my Paris-Brest-Paris qualifier, finished in under 34 hours
- The Paris-Brest-Paris Audax — 1,200km, completed in 88 hours moving time, within the 90-hour limit
I also took formal VO2Max tests and DEXA body composition scans at the start and midway through the project, giving real data to measure the physiological changes Zone 2 training was producing.
Why I built this site
I built this site to document and share everything I've learned. A lot of it took me a long time to find and understand. The research is scattered across podcasts, academic papers, and sports science literature that most people don't have time to dig into.
My aim is to make Zone 2 accessible — for people who aren't physiologists or professional athletes, who have jobs and families and limited training time, but who want to genuinely improve their fitness and health. It's an approach that works for everyone, not just endurance athletes.
"Much of what I learned was counterintuitive. It contradicted most of what I'd been told in the last 30 years. This site is my attempt to share it clearly."
Get in touch
If you have questions, feedback, or just want to talk Zone 2, I'd love to hear from you. Use the contact page below.
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