A lot of people will chase an average heart rate or average power during a ride. However, averages don’t tell the whole story.

What is far more important is the amount of time spent in a particular zone. For example, let’s take a session designed to work on lactate threshold. A typical session may include a warm up, 3×10 minutes in zone four with ten minutes recovery between efforts, and then a cool down.

The periods of recovery are very important as they mean that you can hit and maintain zone four in the threshold efforts. Doing the recovery blocks in zone one instead of zone two means that when it’s time to start riding hard again you’re much fresher and can still put out the numbers you need to By riding easier in the recovery blocks you will actually get home with a lower average heart rate and average power, however, the quality of the session is likely to be higher as you will be hitting the correct intensity in the efforts. Don’t be tempted to hit the biggest numbers you can.

A good plan is to go out on each ride knowing exactly which zones you want to ride in. The same can be applied to events. If you know you can sustain 160 beats per minute for one hour then that is the heart rate you will need to ride at up a mountain pass in the Etape du Tour. Riding at 170 beats per minute for the first five kilometres will inevitably mean that at some point you are going to have to slow right down to avoid blowing up. Use your training zones to your advantage in both training and racing.