RideFast Coaching has been going for over 10 years now. I’ve coached some amazing riders in that period, including nationally ranked time trialists, UCI Grand Fondo competitors and transplant world champions. It’s even gone international, coaching riders in France, Spain and South Korea.

This Trumpian takeover of the cycling world now continues with RideFast’s first foray into sponsorship. In 2026 RideFast will be sponsoring some of the Shropshire Cycling Clubs Association Championship events, notably the 10, 25 and 100 mile time trials and the flagship 4up Team Time Trial in August. 

We’re fortunate in the county to have a network of well represented cycling clubs who get involved in events throughout the year under the SCCA umbrella. Not just racing, but with club members supporting the organisation and running of races with time keeping, catering and marshalling. After 25 years of taking full advantage, particularly of the catering, it’s an overdue privilege to be able to give a little back.

So, especially with the growing popularity of the road bike category, let’s get those winter miles in and start looking forward to some warmer and lighter days on the bike. Look out for the RideFast Coaching tagged events on the SCCA and CTT websites and I’ll have a think about some prizes.

Of course, if you're interested in being coached by the RideFast MegaCorp, get in touch here. 
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And remember the sagacious words of Desmond Tutu - ‘Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring’. 

These guys have just finished a brutal winter circuit race. If established sports psychology is to be believed, they are having fun whilst engaging in an opportunity for social connections, fitness and competition. It is interesting to ponder what the response would be if, whilst bent over the handlebars gasping for breath, they were asked if they were enjoying themselves. Amongst racing cyclists there is a maxim attributed to Eddie Merckx that races are won by the rider who can suffer the most. Suffering is probably the best word to represent the physical effort required to reach a competitive level in any sport involving endurance or strength.

Embracing failure

Suffering also relates to psychic pain in pursuit of excellence in the absence of exhausting physical effort. Skill based sport requires the humility to repeatedly fail as an essential element of improving performance. In his book ‘Bounce’ Matthew Syed says, ‘progress is built upon the foundations of necessary failure’. None of this sounds like fun and it seems unlikely that money is the motivation. Professional sportspeople are paid for their work but the sacrifices they have to make over years to get that point are unrewarded. The dropout rate of aspiring professionals is huge, only a tiny percentage ever make a living out of it.

In surveys, the most common answers to what motivates people to play sport is a combination of fun, enjoyment, fitness and competition. These data are often analysed in light of social psychological theory like Self Determination Theory or Achievement Goal Theory that are foundational for sports and exercise psychology practice. These are well established theories but they are not sport specific. It is questionable whether they fully reflect the combination of effort, sacrifice and discomfort involved. Furthermore, they fail to capture any element of emotional satisfaction. The responses do not reflect the passion of the millions, for example, who attend football matches every week simply to spectate rather than compete. The shared extasy of wining or the devastation of losing is entirely vicarious. It is acceptable for a football supporter to say ‘we’ played brilliantly, without ever getting (at least legitimately) on the pitch. It begs the question are ardent football fans supporting their team for fun and enjoyment or because they feel compelled to? This is a challenging construction to capture within the confines of a psychological survey. Equally, it is a hard message that people are not cognisant of their motivations. However it may illuminate the reasons for the mismatch between prosaic explanations for motivation and the deep emotional engagement in sport.

Ancient history

Evolutionary psychology offers interesting insights into why it is so hard to express true motivation. It proffers sport developed because of the evolutionary pressures faced by ancient human ancestors to engage in small scale warfare, to choose mates or to assess the strength of others. Although now out of step with the modern cultural context, it suggest the unconscious drive to engage in these efforts has become innate and is now expressed as sport. Certainly, evidence suggests males, the principal protagonists in ancient fighting, are more likely to engage in sports where aggression, physical contact and competition are involved. The theory that males use sport to demonstrate their genetic fitness to females is less strong as the overwhelming audience numbers for men’s sport is other men. Mostly likely men are comparing others to assess threats and possibilities for making alliances.

The brain’s chemistry set

One aspect of motivation overlooked by social and evolutionary psychology comes from Affective Neuroscience. Research has identified seven fundamental human drives arising from the subcortical brain that unconditionally (without stimulus) affect behaviour focused on survival and reproduction. In particular the SEEKING system, associated with the often misappropriated neurotransmitter dopamine. Experimental evidence shows when this brain area is stimulated electrically, in the absence of influence from the neocortex, it generates a feeling of excited expectation and intense enthusiasm inspiring movement and engagement with the environment. The researchers suggest this is the fundamental driving force behind all mammalian activity. In Darwinian terms, it is proffered as the psychological and physiological mechanism that underpins the evolutionary process in all mammals. Those with the genetic material best matched to their environment are more likely to survive and, through gradation, these systems become increasingly honed over time. It seems one way this SEEKING behaviour in humans finds expression in contemporary culture is through sport
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It is likely motivation for sport arises from a combination of brain chemistry shaped over millions of years in an adaptive evolutionary environment and finds expression in a modern social context. However, the powerful and unconscious subcortical root of intrinsic motivation requires no reward or punishment as stimulus, simply the act of being activated is satisfying. Consequently, it is unsurprising a simple answer to what really motivates such suffering in pursuit of sporting fun remains complex. 

Goal setting is Sports and Exercise Psychology's best stab at encourage athletes to adhere to a training plan when things get tough. If you're training for fitness and/or competition in 2026, now is good time to get clear goals established. 

Measurable targets are easy to set but if they're not meaningful to you as a rider, a person, and a fully paid up member of the human race they are pointless. I wrote about it at length here but the long and short is it's worth spending time thinking about why you are motivated to train and let your goals flow from that.

Get in touch if I can help.  

Rich Smith is a psychology 'weirdo', a fitness 'freak' and more relevantly a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He established RideFast Coaching in 2015 to provide effective training to all kinds of cyclists after years of eating the corporate shit sandwich. ​

It’s worth considering a few things before taking the plunge.

AI will have an incomplete data set

Unless you record ALL your metrics that have a bearing on physiology like walking, washing the car and gardening the data AI has to work with it is incomplete so, in the absence of complete knowledge, it cannot accurately plan intensity, frequency and duration of training.

AI only measures the measurables

HRV and sleep monitors are a poor proxy for recovery. Heart rate is useful but variable. FTP settings are critical for training zones but will fluctuate and will differ between turbo and road training sessions and between bikes, particularly aero, race, gravel, MTB and, if you use one, a winter bike. AI doesn’t know the difference. Additionally, none of these measurements tell AI how you feel. If you could find a way to tell it how you feel about your short term commitment, long term goals and what motivates you, it would not know what to do with the information. It has no way of interpreting it into a psychologically a sustainable training pan.

AI uses Training Stress Scores (TSS) to plan training

A 10 mile time trial is about 35 TSS. A 4 hour Zone 2 ride is about 210 TSS. If you did 6 10 mile time trials throughout a week, your fatigue level would be completely different from a 4 hour Z2 ride but the Training Stress Score would be the same. AI cannot detect the difference, but your legs would.     

AI cannot know you

Try as it might, AI cannot reflect individual psychology. It does not know your personality type, behavioural characteristics and what you do and don’t like. It does not know when your mind needs a break or what encouragement you might need to re-engage in training after being floored by something out of the blue.

AI does not ‘do’ accountability

You cannot be accountable to a machine and it cannot be accountable to you. Machines don’t care and they don’t understand. It’s not possible to develop a healthy relationship with computer code.

More often than not, any training plan is better than none so AI might be worth a try - it’s also going to be cheaper than hiring a coach. Or at least it should be. However, a plan tailored to your individual psychology and physiology, reflecting what you want to achieve as a rider is likely to be more effective, sustainable and satisfying. If you do decide to trust your training to AI, I'd be fascinated to hear about your experience. 

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​Rich Smith is a psychology graduate and a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He established RideFast Coaching in 2015 to provide effective training to cyclists after becoming convinced the machines are trying to kill us all. 

​If you’re aiming to be at your best for 2026, now is a good time to set some goals.
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Goal setting is sports psychology 101. Of the mental coaching tools used by sports psychologists it’s probably the most valuable and is usually framed around the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) acronym. The riders I coach who’ve achieved the most with their cycling are those who have a clear sense of why they train and set goals with a purpose clearly in mind. That is, they remain consistently committed to completing purposeful training by establishing goals that above all are meaningful to them.

SMART can be overdone. The mark of a successful goal is not whether it is ultimately achieved (if goals are ‘smashed’ then they’re too easy) but whether it is sufficiently meaningful to keep training on track when motivation dips. Coming up with something useful might involve a couple of deep breaths and allowing the mind to land on the real reasons why cycling has a value to you before putting pen to paper.   
For example, hitting 4w/kg at FTP by 4th Feb 2025 is a SMART cycling training goal but it lacks meaning. It’s a process target, not something that is psychologically connected to why you’re prepared to put so much effort and time into training. Your goals may be to stay fit, weight management, being in shape to do a week in Mallorca or something entirely different so it’s worth spending some time to frame something genuinely useful. Your targets may not have all the SMART credentials of a power to weight metric, but they are probably capable of being made SMART enough to be valuable. Pick goals that mean something to you not ones that fit conveniently in the box.

The right goal gives meaning to hard work, so you train with intent and purpose rather than just going through the motions. This makes training more effective, more consistent and ultimately makes you faster and fitter.

Above all, goal setting represents hope for the future. It demonstrates confidence and optimism about the ability to achieve continued enjoyment and satisfaction from cycling. This self-belief sits beside oxygen and carbohydrates as a vital training ingredient. Set your goals with this in mind.

If I can help with your training, get in touch here. Now is a great time to start the work for 2026. 

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​Rich Smith is a psychology graduate and a British Cycling qualified Level 3 Road and TT coach supporting riders nationally and internationally. He established RideFast Coaching in 2015 to provide effective training to cyclists after being sanctioned at work for proposing a goal of 'doing away with his earthly body and becoming a glowing nimbus of pure energy'.  

We all worship in different cathedrals, some of them built from medieval stone, others are the roads of France, the Crucible or Anfield. We suffer together and make our sacrifices in these places. And we all worship our own God’s, some wear a crown of thorns, others coloured shirts with their names inscribed on the back.   

Playing and watching sport is ubiquitous and engages us at an emotional and spiritual level. Any study of history, mythology, sociology, anthropology or psychology will throw up the reasons why human, particularly male, engagement in sport is endemic. Rules based low risk combat, territorial alliances and defence, shared suffering, family rituals, social bonding, sexual selection, the rush of exercise – the list is endless. Sport is an essential part of our culture and it is culture that separates humans from the other animals we share the planet with. 

I can think of a couple of football related examples demonstrating the cultural and emotional influence of sport, particular over men. First, I know that Trent Alexander-Arnold is not a middle aged, overweight white guy from Telford, yet I was recently in a gym with a man wearing a Liverpool football shirt with ‘Alexander Arnold 66’ emblazoned on the back. In what other environment would one man choose to celebrate another in this fashion? Where else would a male identify with another man so strongly he would wear his name? Secondly, there’s the old joke about a guy finding Alan Shearer in bed with his wife and asking him how many sugars he’d like in his tea. This touches on an ancient a taboo fuelled by eons old sexual jealously that usually inspires men to violence rather than laugher. Mix anything the power of sport and the shape of the world changes.      

However, encroaching commercialisation and mechanisation of sport represents the advance of the profane and a corresponding reduction in value. The amount of money flowing through a sport is not an appropriate measure of its success, it just demonstrates how detached it has become from its followers. Similarly, a mechanical approach to the application of sports rules and laws represents a retreat from the human and the humane. The introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology in elite football typifies the foolishness of applying empirical measurability to an environment where interpretation is essential. In an attempt to remove the frailty of human judgement and imagined or real bias, it has amplified it. Endless pouring over super slow motion reruns and the application of laser-like analytics to interpretative rules and laws has thrown up some ludicrous decisions. If anything, the red lines, multiple replays and refereeing reviews emphasise an even greater need for the interpretation of what amounts to no more than ‘data’.  This has certainly not improved the game for players or supporters, nor has it made it fairer. 

I was expecting the machines to take over by marching towards us firing laser weapons. And it looks like they have. We’ve just been lied to by our Sci-Fi movies about what the machines might look like. However disappointing it is that our robot overlords don’t look like the Terminator, we must still resist them for the sake of humanity.

VAR comes from a commercial pressure where winning is judged the number of football shirts sold or TV revenue generated, not by the elation or despair of the players and supporters. The financial implications of a loss or a win in professional sport can be altered with a few keyboard strokes by the club’s accountants but for the devout, the heroic triumphs and catastrophic losses are etched on the soul. The victories are remembered with a warm pride and the losses hurt at depth. They really hurt.  For the money men, a loss shows only on the balance sheet. This is superficial and essentially meaningless to the real value of sport and its multitude of worshippers who will suffer or rejoice at an emotional level.
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The rise of materialism has eroded much of what is truly meaningful for humans and sport has been just one casualty of this. The commercial evolution of rugby is an example where this is having real world consequences for the health of participants. Recall that the game came about by accident but developed into one that could be played by all shapes, sizes and ages. Train on Wednesday, play on Saturday. The infrequency of playing and the physical conditioning of players mitigated injury risk. Now there is a growing litany of young, permanently injured players, performance enhancing drugs and chronic brain damage sacrificed on the altar of those who wear blazers rather than shorts keen to make a few quid. By no measure does this make the sport ‘better’. And of course rugby is not alone.    

So, what’s the moral of the story? Firstly, don’t judge the success of a sport by how much money is involved in it. It’s a poor measure of real value at the best of times and debases sport to the ordinary, rather than the extraordinary. Secondly, however dweeby they look, we can’t let the machines take over control of rule interpretation. Mistakes and all, that needs to be done by humans who you be booed in unison. There’s no point in making up rude songs about machines, because machines don’t care.

The team are currently preparing for the 25th World Transplant Games to be held in Dresden, Germany from 17th to 24th August 2025. The Games, and GBTx Cycling team, exist to demonstrate the success of organ donation and transplantation and increase awareness of the importance of joining the organ donor register.

The next training session for this latest edition of the games will be held on Sunday 8th September 2024 at Stourport cycling circuit.

The selection criteria for the team (in addition to having a life supporting organ transplant) are as follows:

1. Performance against age group peers at British Transplant Games (and European or World Transplant Games if relevant) or demonstration of potential to reach a competitive level at European or World level.
2. Demonstration of relevant cycling performances outside of transplant related cycling competition.
3. Attendance at the minimum number of the Team Briefings for WTG (and/or attendance at Cycling Coaching sessions).
4. Remaining sufficiently fit and healthy and committed to regular training and racing.
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It is the intention the team time trial teams (2 riders for women’s teams, 3 for men and 3 for mixed teams) will be selected from those riders who attend the training sessions or have the known technical, tactical and physiological performance characteristics to compete for podium positions. It is likely the Games organisers will limit the number of team time trials teams each country can enter.

You can follow the team along the journey here, on X @GBTxCyclists or on our Facebook page 

​Rich Smith coaches and rides for the GBTx Cycling Team after receiving a liver transplant 31 years ago competing in 10 editions of the Games from 1999 in Budapest to 2019 in Newcastle, winning 15 gold medals. He never stops going on about it either. Follow him on X @ridefastcoach 

​If you think you might be suffering from a common mental health disorder such as depression or anxiety, consider this before hitting the pills.

Mental and physical health are inseparable. Similarly, the 5 pillars in the diagram are inseparable. Daylight, activity, sleep, purpose and food are human essentials although, because they are ubiquitous we fail to recognise them as such. A deficiency in one will lead to a deficiency in the others. Improve one, and it will positively impact the others. It’s a vicious or virtuous circle. The choice as to which way we spin it is ours.  

Daylight – It sets our body clock, our circadian rhythm, which governs everything bodily including physical and mental recovery, digestion, hormonal response, metabolism and mood. Exposure to daylight sets and regulates all our operating systems so getting outside for 30 mins per day minimum even if the sun isn’t shining is vital, better still take exercise outside because…

Activity – Humans have not evolved to be sedentary or spend most of their time sitting down inside. To be physically and mental well we need to build and use muscle and be aerobically fit.  The NHS recommends a minimum of 2.5 hours of exercise per week and there is a stack of clinical evidence on the efficacy of physical exercise on health.  The combination of activity in daylight means you’ll get to…

Sleep - Ask yourself why we spend a third of our lives doing it, it’s vital for  creativity, trauma processing, brain cleaning, mood regulation and a myriad of other things. No animal, despite its potential survival advantages, has evolved the ability to do without sleep. Less than 7 hours per night sleep and you’re deprived, go without it for a month or more and you’ll die. It’s that critical but, like daylight, it’s ubiquitous so we don’t give it the prominence it deserves. Of course, creativity, problem solving and better mood regulation means we’re more likely to develop…

Purpose – There is a deep seated human need to be useful and to have a strong identity. Just ‘being’ isn’t enough for us. Cast aside the desire to be ‘happy’ – that’s the 2 minutes of emotion you get when the car passes its MOT. Aim for fulfilment, satisfaction and contentment, for that we need to understand who we are, what we stand for and what we have achieved. Doing something that leaves a legacy means we’re less likely to reach for life's harmful addictions, in particular…     
 
Food – The modern diet is laced with additive substances and chemicals that have cause the obesity crisis, notably added sugar, processed carbohydrate and Ultra Processed Food. 70% of the stuff sold in supermarkets, even bread, is made from ingredients you would not find in the home kitchen. The UN recognises the food industry is the new tobacco industry. A natural, varied diet with whole foods is essential to support the other pillars and promote, you guessed it, health and wellbeing.  
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The closer we get to these pillars, the closer we are to living to a point we have evolved too. It’s the best chance we have achieving mental and physical wellbeing without reaching for the pills because, as a wise man once said, ‘the drugs don’t work’.   

Not content with telling people how they should ride a bike, Rich Smith is now dabbling in mental health counselling as part of his MSc Psychology studies. Flush with meagre academic success, it seems he's now expanding his remit to tell people how to live their lives. No good can come of this. 

There has been a lot of noise in the cycling media about training at 'Zone 2'. Inspired by a question from one of my riders (thank you Rich) I thought I'd have a dig around to find out what all the fuss was about. This is what I discovered.

​Take away messages
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• The 'new' Zone 2 definition best equates to 70 - 80% of max heart rate or approximately 75 – 85% of FTP
• Zone 2 power is less intense than Zone 2 heart rate. The distinction between power and heart rate measurement is important because they do not equate 
• Rides of 60 mins to 2 hours in Zone 2 measured by heart rate, power or breathing should you wish to try that approach, remains an effective way to build aerobic endurance 
• The 80/20 principal is tried, tested and effective in terms of training load
• Zone 2 does not train the body to use fat as an alternative fuel source to carbohydrate and fasted training is a waste of time
• Zone 2 training is not new. The principles are tried and tested and it’s proved to be effective in developing fitness when augmented with high intensity efforts

Introduction

It makes sense to trust the training methods we know work, so novel approaches or new framings of existing training protocols should be welcomed but examined with a critical eye. Accordingly we should be rightly cautious about claims of efficacy of the latest training fad or the promise of quick fixes if they’re being sold without good evidence. Recently there has been a repackaging of ‘Zone 2’ training as all that is needed for race winning fitness. With training advice awash with ‘bro science’ this is, as you might expect, bollocks.

Tadej Pogačar’s coach, Iñigo San Millán’s message about the importance of Zone 2 training has been widely misinterpreted and misapplied. Whilst it is tempting to believe race winning performance emerges from a few hours of relatively easy riding measured by conversational breathing, it does not. However, Zone 2 is a vital component of a training mix to develop fitness but the nuance of the message has been lost. This piece will therefore address
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• Why the big fuss right now about Zone 2?
• How Zone 2 is defined in terms of intensity & what this means for duration and frequency
• What training in Zone 2 does and, importantly, does not do
• How it can be effectively implemented and measured

​Why the big fuss about Zone 2?
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Most of those involved in endurance training understand the value of longer endurance rides at relatively moderate intensities. Amassing base miles as part of periodised training over the colder months as preparation for cycling or racing in the warmer ones is not new so why the fuss now?
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• The celebrity of Iñigo San Millán, coach to Tadej Pogačar and other riders in the top 20 world rankings who is credited with the current hype around Zone 2. Cycling content creators have jumped on this and produced the usual ‘this is what you should do this week’ stuff
• A genuine counterpoint to the lack of performance gains from the Zwift generation characterised by short, hard training sessions and virtual races.  
• A questioning of whether the data produced by wearable technology is actually useful. Heart rate and power measurement is now ubiquitous but recently use of CGMs, HRV, sleep monitors and AI coaches has increased. The ‘Zone 2 by breathing’ message harks back to simpler days.   
• It sounds like an easy fix. By the time the advice has been filtered by the content creators and social media, the message is one of high performance without the hard graft of interval training.

​Defining Zone 2 – Intensity

How Zone 2 is defined depends on what is used to measure it.

The ‘San Millán’ definition of Zone 2

When interviewed San Millán defines Zone 2 intensity with reference to breathing, training whilst being able to hold a conversation or breathing through the nose. This is a very broad ‘measurement’ open to interpretation depending, amongst other things, on the nature of the conversation and the size of the nose. However, San Millán agreed with a question put to him by Dr Peter Attia that 70-80% Max heart rate is probably about right.

Zone 2 power

Andy Coggan (in Training and Racing with a Power Meter) who developed power zones based on a measure of Functional Threshold Power, defines Zone 2 as 56 – 75% of FTP. Joe Friel (in The Power Meter Handbook) says the same. Interestingly, Training Peaks rounds this up to 60-80% of FTP which, at the top end makes quite a difference, and Zwift in their Blue Zone 2, call it 60-75% of FTP.  

Level 2 heart rate

Peter Keen who worked with British Cycling and Chris Boardman in the 1990s who pioneered heart rate and power measurement for cyclists defines Level 2 heart rate as 70-80% of max HR. This aligns with Dr Stephen Seiler’s Green Zone training which suggests an intensity not exceeding 80% of max heart rate.

Lactate threshold

There are 28 different definitions of lactate threshold and it’s not something that can be routinely monitored outside of the lab although, as you can imagine, a ‘wearable’ is being developed. For our purposes, the body will clear the lactate it generates at an intensity below 80% of max HR.  Fundamentally, this is steady state riding and, for our purposes Zone 2.
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In summary, in my mind at least, San Millán’s breathing/metabolic measured approach translates better to heart rate (an effort metric) than power (an output metric) and his Zone 2 does seem to equate broadly to 70-80% of max HR. The distinction between power and heart rate measurement is important because they do not equate. Zone 2 power is less intense than Level 2 heart rate. 

Defining Zone 2 – Duration

Using power as a metric, it’s unlikely you’ll find cycling coaching advice that recommends more than 6 hours at the bottom end of the zone 2 in one single session or more than 4 hours at the top. The possible exception being Ironman distance related. Boardman reckoned he would spend no more than 2 hours at an intensity of 70-80% of max HR at any point. However, all training is on a curve and the lower the intensity, the greater the potential duration and vice versa. San Millan talks about rides of 90mins or so in duration being effective which indicates to me Zone 2 based on power measurement is likely to be too easy to match his definition.

For practical purposes, rides of less than an hour are likely to be too short, more than 4 hours and it’ll drift into Zone 1. It seems to me durations of 60 mins to 2 hours in Zone 2 measured by heart rate,  breathing (should you wish to try that approach) or power at 70-85% of FTP is an effective time frame.

Defining Zone 2 – Frequency  

San Millán talks about riding at his Zone 2 for between 2 to 4 days a week. 2 days a week in the cycling season (on the assumption racing or events are happening) and 4 days a week during the training phases of the year.  This is a repackage of the 80/20 rule. A 5 hour training week would break down to 4 hours Zone 2 and 1 hour at higher intensities. The intense hour may itself break down to 80% Zone 2 (warm up, cool down and rest periods) with 20% at Zone 5 during interval training.
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This makes sense but is nothing new. The 80/20 principal is tried, tested and effective. Most balanced training programs allowing time for recovery and ‘real life’ will broadly fit into this healthy mix. 

What Zone 2 training does, and doesn’t do

At its core it’s bike riding and is essential for all those adaptions, muscular, metabolic, cardiovascular, technical, tactical and psychological on which high performance is based. It’s base miles and you can’t build high performance race winning intensity without it. However, there are some misleading claims about what it else Zone 2 does.

1. It trains the body to burn fat as an alternative energy source. Sadly not. The claim is the body is being trained to use fat, as opposed to glycogen, as a fuel to spare glycogen stores for later use. However, it has been demonstrated that any type of aerobic training, including HIIT, increases fat oxidization at a similar rate.
2. It helps as part of ‘fasted training’. It doesn’t. Fasted training is an uncomfortable waste of time. Carbohydrate is an essential fuel for endurance training and is readily available even on the move. Training without it on a regular basis is ineffective and potentially dangerous.  It’s ‘bro science’ at its worst.
3. Fat burning for weight loss. No, again it doesn’t work partly because exercise in general doesn’t support weight loss but also because more fat is burned as higher intensities only the proportion of fat to glycogen changes.
4. It generates high performance. Not really, at least not in isolation. It’s an essential component but it needs to be supplemented with a mix of high intensity training or one becomes adapted to Zone 2 and nothing more.   

How Zone 2 training is implemented and measured 

When asked ‘how much should I do?’ San Millan is cautious, with good reason, about being too specific on intensity, duration and frequency. Of course, each athlete is different so maybe it’s an impossible question, but it also maintains an air of mystery. Bringing together what I’ve heard him say about intensity, duration and frequency, it boils down to 2 to 4 days per week at 90 mins per session with conversational breathing as a measure of intensity. In fairness to him, I think this is about as close as you can get to saying something helpful and it's more informative than 'it depends on the individual'. However, it raises as many questions as it answers about how precisely it should be applied.

Conclusion

For what it’s worth, I think San Millán’s Zone 2 definition equates broadly to 70 - 80% max HR. This is a really effective training zone and, however measured, we definitely need a proportion of it and 80/20 is not a bad starting point for mapping frequency and duration. Precisely how much, when and how often is going to depend on the goals and physiology of the individual rider. 

Whilst it might sound like pedantry, the subtle differences are important to get the benefits of training at Zone 2. Undercut it and it’s ‘junk miles’, overdo it and it risks over training and fatigue. Heart rate and power zones don’t match well but, using power as the measure, I think it equates better to 70-85% rather than the standard parameters of 56 to 75% of FTP. This is over the mid-point of Zone 2 power potentially merging into sweetspot (88% FTP) for a duration for 60mins. For rides up to 2 hours in duration 70% of FTP feels about right. Heart rate and power measurement used in tandem provide powerful metrics so try it and see? Do a 20 minute warm up and an hour at 70-80% max heart rate and see what Normalised Power is produced. Also, see how it feels and be conscious of your breathing - it's not easy riding. 

If you’ve fought your way through all this (well done and thanks) and have come to a big ‘so what?’ that’s pretty much where I got to too. To get fitter, doing a proportion of training at Zone 2 is great advice but it’s nothing new. That it needs to be programmed carefully and sustainably in combination with more intense work should come as no surprise either.
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Good old Zone 2 has just had a glow up, it’s been framed with a little mystery and accelerated with a sprinkling of celebrity stardust. The risk is that it is misinterpreted as it’s all that’s needed to generate high performance. I don’t think Tadej Pogačar is getting race fit with 6 hours a week riding whilst chatting and his coach does not make this claim. However, the power of his message and its attachment to Pogačar has become amplified by celebrity and distorted by influencers.

A casual flick through social or main stream media will leave the reader in no doubt the prevalence of mental illness is on the rise in the UK. It’s hard to avoid news and commentary programs on television that don’t frame stress and anxiety as part of the ‘permacrisis’ that seems to be integral part of everyday life. Indeed, a survey carried out by the NHS in 2014 revealed 1 in 6 people in the UK are experiencing a common mental health disorder, most commonly anxiety or depression. Now, NHS figures show this has risen to 1 in 4. 

The figures are alarming. Ironically stressful and depressing in fact, but they do require a certain amount of unpacking before they can be unquestioningly added to fuel the bonfire of worry engulfing the UK. In particular, questions about how anxiety is defined, about how it is experienced and about how it is treated both by health care professionals and addressed at a policy level by government should be addressed.  
 
The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology defines anxiety as a feeling of dysphoria (unease and dissatisfaction) together with symptoms of tension such as elevated heart rate, a tightening in the stomach and a dry mouth. This is a useful start, but it does little to explain the emotional impact and crippling dysfunction this can have on individuals and how it can make everyday life an insurmountable challenge for some.

 
How anxiety is experienced in the real world, and why it is a problem unique to humans is helpfully illuminated by Mark Williams, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Oxford University. He asked an audience to imagine a scene from a wildlife documentary where a lion was circling a herd of gloriously oblivious impala. Gazing calmly, seemingly without a care in the world, when the impala become aware of the lion’s presence, they stop grazing and look up to locate the danger. As the lion charges, their natural ‘fight or flight’ instinct kicks in. Eyes widen, heart rate increases, muscles tense and the impala run flat out to escape unenviable prospect of being lion lunch. However, whether the lion is successful or not, it is only a matter of minutes before the impala resume their calm grazing. Seemingly oblivious to the recent attack and unconcerned about its inevitable reoccurrence.

​​Thankfully, most humans don’t have to deal with lion attacks but they do have to deal with attacks of different kinds all the time and, unlike the impala, have evolved a mind that is capable of remembering past traumas, projecting future ones and conjuring up the prospect of imagined ones, however fanciful, and adding them all to a complex social world. It seems humans don’t have the luxury of returning untroubled to peaceful grazing.  
  
This raises the question of whether anxiety, however unwelcome, is a natural and necessary state, an essential survival mechanism and something that should be accepted and managed as part of being human.

For those dealing with intrusive anxiety, a visit to the GP is often the first, and entirely sensible, point of call. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a doctor is likely to frame this as a pathological problem – an illness that needs to be treated and will respond by either.
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• Prescribing medication –The drug most commonly prescribed for anxiety is an antidepressant. The guidance used by doctors for diagnosing mental illnesses via symptoms described by patients, DSM5 now has 12 competing definitions for various types of anxiety and contains a list of symptoms open to interpretation. Psychoactive drugs alter brain chemistry to suppress symptoms rather than address causes and whilst they can be effective, challenges have been raised about their long term efficacy. 

 

• Recommending a talking therapy - Most commonly a type of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This aims to investigate the underlying thinking and feelings generated by anxiety and take practical steps to address any resulting unhelpful behaviours. Talking therapies for anxiety have been shown to be effective. However, questions have been raised about whether short course psychotherapy is really focused on making people economically productive by returning them to work rather than dealing with underlying problems

Importantly, the prescription of drugs, psychological therapy, or a combination of both, treat anxiety as a problem or deficiency centred in the individual. This frames the experience as a personal failing of biology or cognition and, by extension, something that is the responsibility of the individual to address, albeit with help.  

However, there is a growing recognition that humans are social animals and, unlike impala, live in a very complex social world. A study in evolutionary psychology indicated, when compared to other primates, a disproportionately large part of the brain has evolved to deal with negotiating our social structure, thinking about others, what others might think, what others might think about us and even what others might think about others. It’s perhaps unsurprising that, although our minds are adept at dealing with the social affairs of those we are intimate with, when faced with multiple social triggers, often delivered with urgency implicated in the bleeps and flashing lights by a treasured hand held device, we struggle to cope. We live in a world where it seems everything is after our immediate attention.

There is a body of evidence suggesting that poor mental health generally, and anxiety specifically, is influenced less by biology or cognition and far more by our social circumstances. Particularly relevant in a post Covid, cost of living crisis dominated world, studies have shown inequality, characterised by a growing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, together with increasing individualism and materialism have significant negative impact on a sense of well-being and a healthy mental state.

The medicalisation of anxiety (and depression) also sidesteps a growing body of evidence showing that training and physical exercise is effective in relieving the intrusive symptoms of both. Simply, a daily 30 min walk outside can help but weight training and cardiovascular training is even better. However, drug companies don't make money by telling people to go for a walk. 

Arguably, against a background of the breakdown of the family and the erosion of trust in institutions, it is reasonable to question whether anxiety really is a problem that can be solved by medics, drugs and therapy or whether changes in public policy would be more effective. Whilst medical professionals should be the first port of call for those struggling with serious mental health problems, including anxiety at a debilitating level, it is inexcusable to ignore the evidence of a strong societal influence and the positive benefits of reconnecting with our environment through exercise. 

Rather than drugs and therapy, perhaps a more equal and accepting social landscape coupled with a daily walk would be more likely to support our return to peaceful grazing.