My Zone 2 Training Plan for 2023

While my overall goal is to improve my endurance in 2023, I’ve been considering a number of other factors when putting together a plan. Most of these factors are due to the results of my baseline tests that I carried out in December, you can read about them here.

The key think I’m thinking about around my health and fitness are:

• Increasing aerobic base for endurance
• Reducing body fat and visceral fat for general health
• Increasing bone mass for general health
• Increasing strength to reduce the risk of injury, improve overall health and help with fat loss
• Improve top end speed and power, for when I need it

That means that my training plan needs to consist of Zone 2 training to build my aerobic base, high intensity intervals to build my top end speed and power and weights to improve my strength and help reduce fat.

Outside of this I’m also looking at my nutrition. In particular getting more protein and fat in my diet and reducing my reliance on carbs for energy at lower intensities. I’ll save the details on diet for another day.

As well as the different types of sessions I also need to think about the seasonality of training. I read a really interesting book on this by Ross Edgley. The approach recommends spending Winter build your base. Spring is about getting specific for your sport. Summer focused on peaking for competition and autumn recovering and repairing your body. So the next few months will be about building the base.

On top of this approach I want my training to be agile. By this I mean I want to continuously review and adapt my training based on the progress I’m making and what I’m learning along the way rather than slavishly following a plan for the sake of it.

What that really means is that I’ll be coming up with a high level plan for the next 3 months. I’ll review progress every two weeks as a sense check of how I feel, and what progress I’m making. I’ll then adapt the next two weeks training if needed.

Every 4 weeks / month I’ll do a review of progress against key metrics to measure progress. I’ve documented these metrics in another article here. Depending on progress I’ll decide whether to change or adapt the next 4 weeks training.

Every 12 weeks / 3 months I’ll retake the lab based tests to get a full set of results as I move into the next phase of training.

Aerobic base building – January to March

The biggest focus here is to build out my aerobic base through Zone 2 training. I’ll be doing this mainly through indoor sessions on my bike turbo trainer. But to give myself some variation will also try and make one of those sessions either a run or hike outdoors. These sessions should make up 80% of my cardio training. I’ll be increasing the volume of these sessions throughout the phase. This will be done mainly through training rides outdoors of increasing distance.

In this phase I’m including high intensity intervals. Again these sessions will be on my turbo trainer. This allows more control and consistency, as well as allowing me to measure power each session. I will be doing some of the sessions as running intervals to give a bit or variation and push my heart rate a bit higher than is possible on a bike.

The final sessions in this phase will be weight training. To build my overall strength and help with fat burning. I’ll be doing at least one session per week. I may increase this to two, but will review as I get into training to see what impact it has.

So for this phase I have:

• Zone 2 for 80% of cardio sessions
• VO2Max once per week
• Weights once per week
• One longer training ride per week of increasing distance

The big test at the end of this phase will be my first 200km cycling event. This will hopefully give a good indication of my progress before I move into the specific training phase.

Getting specific – April to June

This is the phase to start moving my training towards my chosen goal of a 1000Km+ multi-day cycling event. I’ll therefore need to increase my volume on the bike. Ultimately to complete the event I’ll need to get from start to finish in the most efficient way, without burning myself out. For me this means travelling at the fast speed whilst maintaining an effort level that I can keep going for multiple days. To achieve this I’ll need to keep the Zone 2 aerobic training going as its so important for endurance.

On top of this I’ll need to increase my power output at a given heart rate, as this will increase my speed for the same effort. This means I need to increase my intervals. Again I’ll be doing these as VO2Max intervals, but will increase to twice per week. If I can I’ll take one of these sessions outdoors to give some variation and more real world experience.

I’ll continue with the weights sessions. These will be maintained at one or two sessions per week, depending on time available and progress in the base building phase

1. Zone 2 will make up 60 to 70% of my cardio sessions
2. Vo2Max intervals twice per week
3. One or two weights sessions per week
4. One long ride per week
5. Participate in a 300Km ride in April. A 400Km in May and a 600Km in June

During this phase I’ll be doing one very long ride per month, of increasing distance. This will be 300km in April, 400km in May and 600km in June. This will give a real sense of progress and preparation for my main goal which will happen in the next phase.

Peak performance phase – July to September

The event I’m targeting takes place in late August so this phase will actually be quite short. I’ll be pushing myself to continue or even increase the VO2Max intervals, whilst continuing Zone 2 at around 60% of my total cardio sessions.

I’ll continue to keep the volume up with long training rides, including one training ride or event that is in the 300km to 600km range. As I get near the event I’ll start to taper back a bit. For me this usually works best from 10 to 14 days before the event.

1. Zone 2 will make up 60% of my cardio sessions
2. Vo2Max intervals two to three times per week
3. One or two weights sessions per week
4. One long ride per week
5. One 300km to 600km ride in late July / early August

Once my main goal is complete I’ll look for a shorter event to complete in September. Potentially an end of season 200km ride. I’m mainly interested to see how I perform in this type of event after recovery from the main goal. I’ve never done this before so it will help me understand how recovered I am before moving into the recovery phase.

Recovery – October to December

October feels like quite a long way away, so its difficult to really say what this looks like. I expect to continue to use Zone 2 as the base of my training and will work on power and speed through intervals. I do expect to reduce volume significantly to allow my body to recover and repair itself.

I expect this means that I’ll pare back volume significantly. For power and speed I’ll move into maintenance mode with one session per week. For strength I’ll review what gains I’ve got from doing weights this year. Zone 2 will make up the bulk of the training in this phase, which Im thinking will look something like this:

• Zone 2 will make up 80% of my cardio sessions
• Vo2Max intervals once per week
• One weights sessions per week
• One long ride per week

Summary

Hopefully you’ll see that this training plan is more of a framework that allows me to change and adapt through the year. If something isn’t working for me I’ll change it. If my main goal changes I’ll adapt the plan. I think it’s important to have a dynamic approach to training as it allows me to adapt to get better outcomes if I need to and to react to things that might be outside my control.

To see how I’m bringing this to life, see my article on my first two weeks training in 2023 here.