your zone 2 primer
You’ve heard us talk about it over and over and over again: Zone 2 is where we want you to spend most of your training minutes (and hours). But do you know why we want you to spend so much time training in Zone 2? Coach Alison’s recent Triathlete.com article provides a deep, deep dive into the physiology of Zone 2 and why a large volume of training at this effort level will improve your speed across all effort levels. Give it a read – maybe it’ll convince you to finally stick to those prescribed long run paces.
why consistency beats the weekend warrior
Coach Julie
The temptation is real: you’re slammed all week, so you bank everything on Saturday and Sunday. Long, hard efforts to “make up” for lost time. It feels productive. It’s not.
Cramming your training into two days asks your body to absorb massive stress without the recovery infrastructure to handle it. The result is fatigue, degraded workout quality, and over time — a plateau or breakdown.
Chronic Beats Acute. Every Time.
Fitness is built through consistent, repeated signals to your body that say we do this regularly, adapt accordingly. Four 60-minute structured rides will build more fitness than two 3-hour sufferfests — and you’ll actually recover between them.
For masters athletes especially, this isn’t just good advice — it’s essential. Recovery windows are longer, and the cost of excessive fatigue is higher. Regularity is the variable that drives long-term fitness. Not volume alone. Not intensity alone. Showing up.
Stack the short sessions. Protect the recovery. The unglamorous Tuesday ride is where fitness actually lives.
the sucky rotation schedule
Coach Alison
Back in my early years of long-course racing, I read a blog post by Meredith Atwood, a.k.a., Swim Bike Mom, titled “The Sucky Rotation Schedule.” She proposed an approach to time management / prioritization that revolved around the The Suck Line. It works like this: You list everything that has to get done in a day or week in order of priority, and then figure out what lives above vs below The Suck Line. What’s above is what you’ll get done, and what’s below is what you acknowledge you’re not going to do. What’s key to this approach, though, is that what falls above or below the line changes – hence the Sucky Rotation Schedule. Some things like work and family pretty much always live above The Suck Line. Some things, like laundry and cooking dinner, can float below The Suck Line when the list gets too long. And hopefully training is generally above The Suck Line, but sometimes there’s so much else above The Suck Line that it may have to fall below. But the key here is to lean into Sucky Rotation Schedule – nothing lives below the line permanently.