Training zones
A zone is a step on the effort scale, from very easy to all out. The scale is cut from your threshold. The threshold is the effort you can hold for about an hour. That is why zones are personal: the same power is a stroll for one person and hard work for another.
Five zones and three words
Internally TriCoo works with five zones. In settings, in the Thresholds section, you can see all five with numbers. The session card needs only three words.
- Easy is zones one and two. You can talk during this work.
- Moderate is zone three, tempo work.
- Hard is zones four and five. Work around the threshold and above it.
That is all you need to decide how to run today. Extra boundaries give false precision, because almost nobody has measured their threshold in a lab.
Zone boundaries as a percentage of threshold
Each sport has its own threshold: FTP on the bike, critical speed in running and CSS in swimming. The percentages in the table are of power on the bike and of speed in running and swimming.
| Zone | Bike, % FTP | Run, % CV speed | Swim, % CSS speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | up to 55 | up to 70 | up to 80 |
| 2 | 55 to 76 | 70 to 82 | 80 to 90 |
| 3 | 76 to 91 | 82 to 95 | 90 to 97 |
| 4 | 91 to 106 | 95 to 101 | 97 to 103 |
| 5 | from 106 | from 101 | from 103 |
Why the percentages differ. In water every bit of extra speed costs far more than on land. Swimming just a little faster than threshold is already very hard. So in swimming the zones sit close together, near the threshold. In running the cost of speed rises almost evenly. On the bike the percentages are of power, not speed. The same percentages would mean a different effort in each of the three sports.
Turning percentages into pace
In running and swimming people are used to pace, minutes per kilometre or per 100 metres. The faster you go, the fewer minutes. So the percentages work the other way round: divide the threshold pace by the fraction.
An example. Threshold pace in running is 5:00 per kilometre. Zone two starts at 70% of speed, which is 7:09 per kilometre. It ends at 82%, which is 6:06. So your easy running is from 7:09 to 6:06 per kilometre. You do not have to work it out yourself: TriCoo shows the zones in settings already as pace.
In the plan the session target is narrower than the zone itself. It sits near the middle of the zone, not at the edge.
While there is no threshold
This is a full mode. Sessions go by feel, on a scale from 0 to 10. Easy work on the bike is 2 or 3, in running and swimming 3 or 4. Moderate on the bike is 5, in running and swimming 6. Both scales are tied to one point, an hour of work at threshold.
Hard zones are not put in the plan without a threshold. They cannot be described precisely by feel. Instead TriCoo sets tempo work or gives the hard session to another sport where a threshold exists.
Sometimes a threshold comes from another service and you have not confirmed it yet. Then the session also goes by feel. The number only tells you not to go faster than that pace.
What about heart rate
Plan zones are based on power and pace, not heart rate. Heart rate lags behind effort: in a short surge it rises after the surge is over. Heart rate does not go into the copy of the plan for intervals.icu and your watch, neither as a target nor as a cap.
TriCoo shows heart rate in three places.
First. The session page shows time in heart rate zones. There are four, and they are based on your heart rate threshold and resting heart rate. Running and cycling have separate thresholds. In water heart rate is too unreliable, so swimming has no heart rate zones.
Second. Easy running has a heart rate cap. It is your resting heart rate plus 80% of the gap between threshold and rest. An example: resting heart rate 50, threshold 170. The gap is 120, and 80% of it is 96. The cap is 146. The cap appears only when your heart rate threshold is confirmed and your resting heart rate is known.
Third. On the session card, easy and tempo steps may have a hint in beats per minute. It only explains the zone, it is not a target, and it appears when your heart rate threshold is confirmed.
TriCoo does not use the 220 minus age formula. Maximum heart rate varies a lot between people of the same age, and zones based on it come out inaccurate.
Zones and load
Zones are there to set a session target and to show how it went. TriCoo counts load not from zones but directly from power, pace, heart rate or feel.
When your threshold changes, the zones change with it. Sessions already done are not recalculated. How to find your threshold is on the Threshold tests page. If you have no power meter, read Cycling without a power meter. Everything about thresholds is in the help article Thresholds and zones.
TriCoo builds a plan around your schedule and recalculates it after every session, missed day and bad day.
Build a plan around your weekRead next
- Threshold tests: bike, run, swimThree field tests step by step: 20 minutes on the bike, a 30-minute run and 400 plus 200 m in the pool. How each result is calculated.
- Cycling without a power meterHow TriCoo plans bike sessions and counts their load when you have no power meter. And how to find your threshold without watts.
- Brick workouts: bike then runWhat a brick workout is, why you run straight off the bike, how often TriCoo schedules bricks and how long the run is for each distance.