530 telling me to do low aerobic training

How best to train is a topic WAY too complicated to cover in a single post.

But most coaches agree that building your aerobic base is the foundation on which all other aspects on cycling training are built. 

Increasing your aerobic base means you can cruise efficiently for long distances, can go faster before an effort becomes "hard", and also recover faster from those hard efforts.

Up to about 70% of threshold, your effort is primarily aerobic using slow twitch muscle fibers. This is an effort level you can keep up for many hours at a time. As you go above 70%, much of the additional contribution comes from anaerobic fast twitch muscle fibers. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how long the body can maintain this anaerobic contribution, and the more you go above 70%, the faster you draw down on these anaerobic reserves. 

By training your aerobic base, you can go faster before you even start tapping the anaerobic contribution.

"Training slow to go fast" sounds counter-intuitive, but it works!!

Hard efforts and interval training are just the icing on the cake - sure it makes it look good, but if you don't bake a solid aerobic cake beforehand, it's just gonna collapse into a gooey mess.

Thanks for you clear answer.

Before i went hard mode, i did ride slow. I know i should build the aerobic  base. So i don't understand why that warning now. In fact, in strava, my fitness level is going up every month.

Now, OTOH, i have read somewhere that slow rides help build mitochondria. Is that the reason?

Maybe this fact is important, i only train 3 days per week. Till last week, i did have a slow/medium effort ride day. I substituted it by a interval workout. So even in the middle of a build period, i should keep having slow ride days?

I have read on here, that a single activity is given a single category.

This means that if you mixed a hard intervals session with some chilled miles it might class the whole effort as tempo (high aerobic). if you split into 2 you might get vo2 max and base as two categories (high and low) and therefore totally different summary stats.

This seems crazy to me, on an otherwise sophisticated suite of analysis that GC offers. I'm not 100% sure this is true but is is consistent with my history and stats.

I'm also not sure of the connection between balance and productivity. I've just had a couple of lighter weeks due to holidays after some heavier weeks. Recovery weeks are recommended, but this week when i cranked up the work again i just keep getting "unproductive" but i am "balanced". I'm not sure if this is a historical load type analysis (what strava and intervals call "fitness") or it's an actual analysis of your ride to see your efforts and PM / HR data - or both.

I think GC potentially offers a lot of analysis for free that others don't, but since i don't fully understand it i'm not totally sure of its value.

Sorry that my reply was more questions than answers !

MB

Well, i guess in the end, garmin only shows an estimate. If you keep feeling better on the bike, the numbers increasing,  that's what matters, no?