As title. I’m plugged into 1/2 marathon low volume base training. Today was a prescribed 70 minutes of easy spinning in Z1. I synced the workout to my Garmin and let the Smart Coach choose which metric to work from (it chose HR). I did the ride as prescribed with no issues - obviously it was very easy - and then the feedback is that the load was way lower than expected (expected: 27; actual: 5).
Now, that load roughly matches the TSS, but the coach chose HR as the metric to follow. I’d have to have doubled my normalized power for the ride to achieve the target load.
Did I do the wrong thing here by following HR as prescribed even though the resultant output was super low? It certainly wouldn’t have been difficult to ride at the top of Z1, but I wouldn’t have maintained the very low HR zones prescribed.
I appreciate any advice as to where I may have gone astray here.
Hey! Are your bike zones correctly calibrated? Sounds like there is a discrepancy in the bike zone settings, which would give you a very little load. You did the right thing. We want to do our Z1 and Z2 efforts by heart rate. Do you have a bike power meter?
Hi! I do have a power meter and I have a recent 20 minute power and 20 minute HR plugged in (I’m riding indoors, but I have the same figures configured for indoors and outdoors for consistency while I troubleshoot). I don’t see anywhere else to put in heart rate or power figures, so I’m stumped as to where I’m going wrong.
Just updating here for others to see. Ohlylo’s zones were correct, and his recovery ride was done as prescribed, but since his/her (?) FTP value is quite high and he rode his recovery ride very easily (average power 48w), and HR low average of 106 bpm, (his zone 1 upper limit is 121 bpm), the load was lower than expected. I recommended up the effort a tad to match zone 1 upper limit, especially since he/she said it was a very easy effort.
