Or: How Training Actually Works
Before you start executing workouts, you need to understand how training works at a mechanical level.
Not theory for theory's sake—practical understanding that changes how you approach every session, how you structure your week, and how you respond when your body doesn't cooperate.
This chapter builds from first principles: the adaptation cycle that drives all fitness gains, the zones that define intensity, the variables you manipulate to create training stress, the phases that organize your 12 weeks, and the philosophical approaches that match different athlete types.
Start here. Chapter 4 covers how to actually execute these workouts, and Chapter 5 covers the fuel system that makes it all work.
All training follows the same basic cycle. Understanding this cycle is the difference between training intelligently and just accumulating fatigue.
You apply training stress—a hard workout that exceeds your current capacity. This creates disruption: muscle fibers develop microtears, glycogen stores deplete, metabolic waste accumulates, cellular damage occurs. Your body registers this as a problem that needs solving.
Immediately after training, you're weaker than before you started. Your muscles are damaged. Your fuel tanks are empty. Your nervous system is taxed. If you tested your FTPFunctional Threshold Power — the max watts you can sustain for ~1 hour right after a hard interval session, it would be lower than your rested FTP. This is normal. Fatigue is the signal that triggers adaptation.
Given adequate rest, nutrition, and time, your body initiates repair: muscle fibers rebuild, mitochondria multiply, capillary density increases, glycogen storage expands, neurological efficiency improves. Timeline: 24-48 hours for muscle repair, 3-7 days for mitochondrial adaptation, 2-4 weeks for new baseline fitness.
If recovery is complete, your body doesn't just return to baseline—it overshoots. Your body builds slightly more capacity than it had before to handle similar stress more easily next time. You're now stronger than you were before the workout.
Once you've adapted, you apply a slightly larger stress. The cycle repeats. Over weeks and months, these small adaptations compound into meaningful fitness gains.
What happens if you apply new training stress before recovery is complete?
The Practical Rules:
This is the mechanism behind every training gain you will ever make. You stress the system, you let it recover, and it rebuilds slightly stronger than before. Skip the stress and nothing changes. Skip the recovery and you just accumulate damage. The athletes who get this wrong usually err on the recovery side — they train hard enough but never rest enough to let adaptation happen. Respect the curve.
What does 12 weeks of consistent training actually look like? Drag the divider to compare untrained versus trained physiology.
These gains are real and replicable. But they require patience and consistency. Skip weeks, train sporadically, and the before and after look identical.
Start with 3 rides per week. Two easy, one with purpose. Consistency matters more than intensity at this stage — your body is still building the aerobic machinery that makes everything else possible.
Build to 4 rides per week. Two easy spins, one tempo effort, one longer ride. You have the base — now it's about adding just enough stress to keep adapting without burning out.
Target 5 rides per week. Two easy, two structured intervals, one long endurance ride. Your aerobic engine is strong — now sharpen it with targeted intensity while protecting recovery.
Plan 5-6 rides per week across periodized blocks. Include two high-intensity sessions, two moderate volume days, and one long ride with race-specific efforts. Every session has a purpose.
Every workout prescription includes a zone target. Here's what they mean and how to use them.
Zones exist to quantify intensity and give you a common language for prescribing workouts.
But here's the paradox: the end goal of measuring intensity is to help you develop a feeling for intensity. You use power meters, heart rate monitors, and zone charts to develop an intuitive sense of effort. Because despite our best efforts, the human body remains too complex to neatly summarize with device-generated data. Your subjective feeling is infinitely more valuable than numbered outputs based on incomplete data collection, reductive models, and population-level assumptions.
You're a special snowflake. Learn your snowflake.
| Zone | Name | % FTP | % HRmax | RPE | Feel / Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Z1 | Active Recovery | <55% | 55-72% | 1-2 | Very easy, relaxed pace. Gentle spinning—feels like nothing. Full conversation possible. |
| Z2 | Endurance | 56-75% | 72-82% | 3-4 | All-day pace—sustainable and steady. Can chat freely. This is where you should spend MOST of your training time. |
| Z3 | Tempo | 76-87% | 82-87% | 5-6 | Comfortably hard. Breathing deeper but rhythmic. Talking in short sentences. Sustainable for 1-2 hours. |
| G Spot | Gravel Race Pace | 88-92% | 87-92% | 6-7 | Uncomfortably sustainable. Hard enough to hurt, easy enough to repeat. Where you'll spend most of a gravel race. |
| Z4 | Lactate Threshold | 93-105% | 87-92% | 7-8 | Hard, controlled effort. Only a few words at a time. 10-30 minute blocks. |
| Z5 | VO2max | 106-120% | 92-100% | 9 | Very hard, heavy breathing. Near maximum. 2-8 minute efforts. |
| Z6 | Anaerobic Capacity | 121-150% | N/A* | 10 | Sharp, explosive efforts—30 seconds to 3 minutes max. All-out. |
| Z7 | Neuromuscular Power | >150% | N/A* | 10 | All-out sprints. Pure explosive power. Lasts only seconds. |
Here is the uncomfortable truth: most of your training should be in Zone 2. Boring, conversational, feels-like-nothing Zone 2. The riders who train too hard too often never build the aerobic base that carries them through the final third of a race. Train easy enough that it feels embarrassing. That is the right intensity.
Your power-duration curve defines what you can sustain at different time intervals—from a 5-second sprint to a 6-hour gravel race. The zones are derived from this curve.
Training at the right intensity means respecting these boundaries. The curve bends sharply—even a small increase above threshold drops sustainable duration dramatically.
Zone 1
Active Recovery: <55% FTP. Very easy, gentle spinning. Feels like nothing.
Zone 2
Endurance: 56-75% FTP. All-day pace. Can chat freely. Where you spend MOST of training time.
Zone 3
Tempo: 76-87% FTP. Comfortably hard. Breathing deeper but rhythmic. Sustainable for 1-2 hours.
G Spot
Gravel Race Pace: 88-92% FTP. Uncomfortably sustainable. Where you'll spend most of a gravel race.
Zone 4
Lactate Threshold: 93-105% FTP. Hard, controlled effort. 10-30 minute blocks.
Zone 5
VO2max: 106-120% FTP. Very hard, heavy breathing. 2-8 minute efforts.
Zone 6
Anaerobic Capacity: 121-150% FTP. Sharp, explosive efforts lasting 30 seconds to 3 minutes.
Zone 7
Neuromuscular Power: >150% FTP. All-out sprints lasting only seconds. Pure explosive power.
Click a card to flip
We call it G Spot instead, and it's not just branding:
1. It's more intensity-specific to gravel racing — Sweet Spot (88-93% FTPFunctional Threshold Power — the max watts you can sustain for ~1 hour) is too high for most gravel races. Actual race data shows most gravel racers spend the majority of their time at 87-90% FTP. G Spot (88-92%) better matches reality.
2. It's better for training execution — Sweet Spot intervals at 90-93% FTP have a nasty habit of turning into threshold intervals. G Spot's lower ceiling (92% max) keeps you honest.
3. It's equally as scientific — Frank Overton pointed at a unitless graph showing two theoretical curves and called it science. Two can play that game. G Spot is calibrated to actual gravel race power data.
4. It's better named, objectively — "Sweet Spot" sounds like something your grandmother would say about a parking space.
Enter your FTP or 20-minute test power to see your training zones.
Spend 90% of your time in Zone 1-2. You're building the aerobic foundation that everything else depends on. High intensity too early is the fastest way to burn out or get injured.
Aim for 80% Zone 1-2, 20% Zone 3-4. Your endurance base is solid — tempo efforts teach your body to sustain harder efforts longer without blowing up.
Follow an 80/20 polarized split: 80% easy, 20% at Zone 4-5. Your gains now come from targeted high-intensity work, not more volume. Quality over quantity.
Periodize your intensity distribution across training blocks. Base phase: 85/15 easy/hard. Build phase: 75/25. Peak phase: 70/30 with race-specific intervals above threshold.
When you manipulate training, you're adjusting three variables: frequency (how often), duration (how long), and intensity (how hard). These create training load—the total stress applied to your system.
Thanks to really smart people we can quantify training stress precisely:
| Metric | What It Is | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| TSS | Training Stress Score — quantifies total stress of a workout | Lets you compare workouts. 90-min tempo and 60-min VO2max can both = ~80 TSS |
| CTL | Chronic Training Load (42-day average TSS) — your fitness | Higher CTL = more fitness. Builds slowly (up to +5-8 pts/week inside a loading block, netting about +10/month once recovery weeks are counted) |
| ATL | Acute Training Load (7-day average TSS) — your fatigue | High ATL = fresh fatigue. Responds quickly to training changes |
| TSB | CTL minus ATL — your freshness | Negative = building fitness. Race day target: +15 to +25 |
The PMC is not a toy — it is the most powerful planning tool in endurance sport. When CTL is climbing steadily and TSB turns positive 10-14 days before race day, you are ready. When CTL flatlines or TSB is deep negative on race week, something went wrong. Check your chart weekly.
Establish aerobic foundation. 70-85% volume in Z1-Z2Zone 2 — easy aerobic pace, 55-75% of FTP. The foundation of endurance. CTLChronic Training Load — your fitness trend over 42 days rising steadily (+5-8/wk in loading weeks, netting about +10/month after recovery weeks). TSBTraining Stress Balance — CTL minus ATL. Positive = fresh, negative = fatigued slightly negative (-5 to -15). Week 4 = recovery week (60% volume). Feels boring but doable—you should finish most rides feeling like you could do more.
Layer intensity, develop race-specific fitness. 60-70% Z1-Z2, 30-40% Z3-Z6. Two to three quality sessions per week. The magic happens here: deliberately dig a fatigue hole (TSBTraining Stress Balance — CTL minus ATL. Positive = fresh, negative = fatigued goes to -25), recover just enough, then dig another hole. This is where fitness sharpens.
Shed fatigue, maintain sharpness. Volume drops 30-50%. Intensity stays high but duration decreases. Week 11: TSBTraining Stress Balance — CTL minus ATL. Positive = fresh, negative = fatigued rises to +5 to +10. Week 12: TSB targets +15 to +25 for race day. Fitness doesn't improve—the goal is to remove the fatigue layer so you can express the fitness you've built.
Notice the shape: volume peaks early, intensity peaks late, both taper together. Base fitness takes weeks of accumulated volume to build but decays slowly. Race sharpness takes hard efforts to develop but fatigues you quickly. The taper strips away the fatigue layer while preserving both. Every serious training plan follows this arc.
Zoom out further and the same periodization principles apply to an entire season—multiple race targets, off-season base, and strategic recovery blocks.
Plan backwards from your A-race. Everything else—B races, training camps, recovery weeks—serves that primary goal.
Your 12-week periodization looks completely different for a 89-mile festival atmosphere vs a 200-mile Kansas sufferfest. Match your training block to your target race demands.
A simple 8-week build is enough. Four weeks of gradually increasing volume, one recovery week, then three more weeks building toward your event. Don't overcomplicate it.
Plan a 12-week block: 4 weeks base building, 4 weeks adding intensity, 3 weeks race-specific work, 1 week taper. Each phase builds on the last.
Use a 16-week periodized plan with distinct base, build, and peak phases. Include a mid-plan recovery week and a proper 10-day taper. Test your fitness at a B-race mid-plan.
Structure your season around A-races with 20-week macro cycles. Include base, build, peak, and taper mesocycles. Schedule B-races as training stimulus. Plan recovery blocks between peaks.
Structure: Big aerobic base → add tempo → add threshold → add VO2maxMaximum oxygen uptake — your aerobic ceiling, trainable by ~15% → taper
Distribution: ~80% Z1-Z2, ~15% Z3-Z4, ~5% Z5-Z6
Best for: Finisher Beginner, Ayahuasca Beginner (with endurance background)
Conservative, progressive, teaches proper training structure. Low injury risk. CTL builds gradually and steadily.
Your plan already incorporates the right philosophy for your category and level. You don't need to choose—it's built in.
What you need to do now is execute.
Training for something? Leave your email and tell me the race — I'll help.