Going Long: Training Zones

In January’s issue of 220, Joe Friel’s ‘Going Long’ directed you to this website if you wanted more information on heart rate and functional threshold power/pace zones that Joe mentioned in his article, and here they are…

To find your heart rate (HR) and power zones for either cycling or running, do a 30min time trial at race pace. Go as hard as you can for 30mins, click the lap button on your heart rate monitor after 10mins, and the average HR for the final 20mins is your lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR). For power zones (cycling), do the same test, but take the average power for the whole 30mins as approximate functional threshold power (FTP). Pace zones (running) is the same again but average 30min pace is your functional threshold pace (FTPa). Once you know these, you can use the following zones when training:

HR Zones (run %/bike %)

Zone 1 <85% LTHR/<81% LTHR

Zone 2 85-89%/81-89%

Zone 3 90-94%/90-93%

Zone 4 95%-99%/94%-99%

Zone 5a 100-102%

Zone 5b 103-106%

Zone 5c >106%

FTP Zones

Zone 1 <55% FTP

Zone 2 55-74%

Zone 3 75-89%

Zone 4 90-104%

Zone 5 105-120%

Zone 6 >120%

FTPa Zones

Zone 1 Slower than129% FTPa

Zone 2 114-129%

Zone 3 106-113%

Zone 4 99-105%

Zone 5a 97-100%

Zone 5b 90-96%
Zone 5c Faster than 90%

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The 220 Triathlon team is made up of vastly experienced athletes, sports journalists, kit reviewers and coaches. In short, what we don't know about multisport frankly isn't worth knowing! Saying that, we love expanding our sporting knowledge and increasing our expertise in this phenomenal sport.