How to Build Cycling Workouts (Most People Get This Wrong) | Ask a Cycling Coach 578
Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast - Presented by TrainerRoad
TrainerRoad
4.9 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 100 minutes
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Summary
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// TOPICS COVERED
(00:00:00) Welcome + Coaching Question on Endurance Training
(00:00:42) Best Books for Learning Endurance Training & Physiology
(00:05:16) Training Zones Explained (Power, FTP & Energy Systems)
(00:08:14) Why Training Zones Aren’t Exact (Stop Obsessing Over Numbers)
(00:10:06) Matching Training to Your Race Demands
(00:11:30) How Workouts Target Specific Energy Systems
(00:13:49) Active Recovery: When to Ride vs When to Rest
(00:19:07) Zone 2 Endurance Training: Why It Matters Most
(00:22:02) Aerobic Adaptations (Mitochondria, Capillaries & Efficiency)
(00:28:21) Why Endurance Rides Feel Boring (And How to Fix It)
(00:34:23) Nutrition Mistakes During Endurance Training
(00:41:05) Tempo Training: The Most Underrated Zone
(00:49:13) Sweet Spot Training: Benefits, Structure & Misconceptions
(00:53:08) Why Sweet Spot Should Feel Hard (Not Easy)
(00:57:46) Threshold Training: Building Sustainable Power
(01:01:11) Lactate Explained: Fuel vs Fatigue
(01:07:20) VO2 Max Intervals: How to Improve Oxygen Utilization
(01:21:32) Anaerobic & Sprint Training: When It Matters
(01:30:01) How to Build a Complete Training Plan (Big Picture)
(01:33:02) Race Lessons from Hannah: Focus, Mistakes & Strategy
In this episode, Coach Jonathan and Hannah walk through how to structure training across the full spectrum of energy systems, helping an athlete understand how to prepare for long endurance events without getting lost in the details. They break down training zones from active recovery to anaerobic work, emphasizing that zones are just tools to target specific adaptations, not rigid rules, and explain how different “engines” in the body contribute to performance depending on the demands of the event. The conversation highlights why endurance work should make up the bulk of training, how tempo and sweet spot build durability and efficiency, and how threshold and VO2 max intervals push sustainable power higher. They also dig into common mistakes like over-focusing on exact numbers, under-fueling endurance rides, or misusing recovery days, and explain how interval structure, consistency, and progression drive adaptation over time. The episode closes with practical insights on applying this in the real world, including race learnings, identifying weaknesses, and how experience, not just theory, ultimately shapes effective training.
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Transcript
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| 0:43.3 | Welcome to the Ask a Cycling Coach podcast presented by Trainer Road. I'm coach Jonathan Lee. We have Hannah Otto with us from Scott Bikes. Today we are going to talk about how to build workouts like a pro getting Hannah's tips on what she likes to do. I'm going to share my thoughts as well. We've had questions submitted from all of you that are watching or listening. Jump down into the YouTube comments and leave the questions that you have. You can also leave them at trainer road.com slash podcast. Or if you're listening on Spotify, you can drop your questions there. That's how we build out the topics that we're going to cover every week on this podcast. If you're listening to it and you enjoy this podcast, go to trainer road.com and sign up. It's AI cycling coaching that'll make you faster. But with that in mind, I want to go in and Hannah, I actually want to jump into this question and then I want to get catch up with your training after this question because I don't want to bury the lead for people. |
| 0:52.7 | Just want to jump straight in if that makes sense. This is from Jaden. Jaden says, hey coaches, I'm entering my first year of self coaching after graduating high school and moving on from NICA this year. |
| 0:54.8 | My goal and focus for the year is getting better at long endurance events. I'd be really interested in any books you can recommend, |
| 0:59.5 | but above all, I'd love to get a full deep dive into workout structures. Everything from duration, |
| 1:04.5 | intensity, and quantity of intervals, all the way up to when you should and shouldn't do specific |
| 1:08.9 | workouts, would all be really interesting for me. |
| 1:11.3 | And I hope interesting for the rest of the viewers as well. |
| 1:14.1 | This would probably be a long question, but hopefully you can fit it in. |
| 1:18.1 | And you know what I'm going to do with this too is I'm going to share my screen as we go through |
| 1:22.5 | this at different points too. |
| 1:24.2 | And I'll pull open like examples of, I think we'll have examples in our catalog of |
| 1:29.0 | basically every workout that we would bring up, Hannah, maybe not. But, uh, yeah, books first. |
| 1:34.8 | Then let's go into all, let's just go zone by zone and like profile within those zones. |
| 1:40.6 | And let's just tackle the whole thing. Do you have any books you recommend, Hannah, for this athlete? This actually feels like a hard question for me because we were talking |
| 1:49.7 | at this before the podcast. Like, people go to school for this. I went to school for this. |
| 1:54.9 | So go and get a degree. I have several certifications in this. So yes, there's many books. There's |
| 1:59.3 | textbooks, you know, and you're talking |
| 2:02.2 | out, well, do you want a physiology book where you're learning about the body's physiology, the body |
| 2:10.1 | processes, or do you want a cycling-specific training book? So it's actually a really hard question |
| 2:17.1 | for me. I don't have a ton of books to |
| 2:20.4 | recommend. I mean, something like training with training, what is it? Training with power or training |
| 2:25.9 | by power. Training and racing with a power meter. There you go. Training and racing with a power meter. |
... |
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