I often hear how Nate goes on about the amount of food he eats. It is not my place to criticize this but there are other aspects as well. Insulin resistance and diabetes are a real thing even in trained athletes. I have been working hard both on TR and on developing my fat burning. When you are young you get away eating all those carbs (which are often junk as I hear on the podcast). At my age of 50 I have to think about my health as well. I rather have a lower FTP and not cram my body with carbs. Yesterday I did a 120k ride with 2500m of climbing. I had four gels and one bar and three bottles of water and felt fine and was happy with my performance.
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unfortunately, diet has only a very small effect on your substrate utilization. Training history will be a better determinant.
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Nice article, definitely a good strategy for some ultra endurance athletes. Thereâs been quite a few guests on some of the podcasts Iâve got on rotation all talking about marginal gains, but this is quite significant.
Love that study. Crazy high fat oxidation, and the intensity-peak is shifted very far to the right. Implying carb, thus glycogen, only start to become major contributors at the highest intensities.
My (lchf) experience is that sweetspot workouts are easy, and itâs the anaerobic intervals that really kill me. Come cx season, it seems to get sorted out. I think since Iâm not hitting the glucose metabolism very hard during most of the year, it takes a little while to ramp up those pathways. A high-carb athlete will be hitting that system all the time for almost everything except the lowest of zone rides.
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anaerobic work kills anyone who hasnât been doing much of it lately, even if you are eating plenty of carbs⊠y
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Hi,
I have read some of the comments, there are too many to read. Maybe someone else wrote more or less the same 
I would say that @Nate_Pearson is too much focused on FTP. I agree that for the most cyclist that would be the most important marker, but there is MUCH more. As known, scientist have determined 2 turn-points (or regions). There is different terminology for the more-or-less the same physiological process/effect. I hope LT1 (VT1) and LT2 (MLSS, VT2, FTP) tells you something? In mine humble opinion the ultra-distance athletes should consider rising the power at LT1, and not LT2. The power at LT1 becomes more important longer the event. For professional cyclist is this ability of huge importance. We have heard so often from pro cyclist where they state: âyou can see very clear which cyclist have the endurance above the 200kmâ. If the race is 250km you know which cyclist are in the finale. That would be that huge base, that huge power at LT1. Power at LT1 is not just percentage of power at LT2. Often we use a percentage of LT2 to determine the LT1, but it is not right. Training status and the way somebody have trained have direct influence on both values (LT1 and LT2). Professional cyclist have a huge base and high powers at LT1, some even 300W. The gap to LT2 could be relative small, dependent how one have trained and dependent of his physiology (muscle type). The best way to look at this and to get the big picture would be to look to your CP Power profile that has recent valid data. LT1 is not so easy to determine without the lab (gas-exchange measurement) but could be estimated by RPE. That would be the âpointâ at tempo/power/speed where your breathing just becomes some more deep then when having a recovery ride. Your feeling is that you work but that you could hold that power for hours and hours. To summaries: I would say that there is decoupling between power at LT1 and power at LT2, and that those 2 abilities are trained more-or-less independently. Ultra-distance runners/cyclist should focus on power at LT1, and athletes that aim for a relatively shorter events (1 to 4h) should focus on power at LT2, and above of course (1min, 5min, N of repeates and so onâŠ)
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Approximation of the fuel usage. At this graph the fat combustion would be maximized at around 65% of VO2max. Say your P@VO2max is 350W the max.fat burn would be @228W.
Once again, this would be an approximation, tided to the VO2max. Probably just as wrong as tiding it up to FTP.
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Everything Iâve read suggests that the best way to focus on raising LT1 is long slow rides. Iâm sure that the TR guys would agree that if you have infinite time, that is going to be a valuable part of your training. However, TR is mostly concerned with people who are time crunched and donât have 10 hours a week to ride slowly, in addition to the high speed/power work. If you are time crunched, then surely the best way to ensure your LT1 is high enough is to incorporate intensity, tray to lift LT2, and hope that the rising tide lifts all boats? The side effect of raising LT2 is that on your long events, you can survive going above LT1 for longer periods without completely blowing up.
And letâs face it, many of us also donât do long events. Who cares what LT1 is if you are racing crits or 40kTTs or 'cross?
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I agree. But if you do not have the time to put into it, then it would not be very realistic to aim at the ultra-distance events. Maybe the Sweet Spot approach in that case would be a thing to try.
Love that Podcast!
I dunno, Sebastian Weberâs work seems to indicate otherwise. He also describes the mechanism in a way consistent with how we model long slow rides improving LT1. That is, if you do a long enough ride at endurance pace, you eventually exhaust your existing slow twitch muscle fibers, and the fast twitch fibers (which normally donât activate at such a relatively low effort, and hence donât get trained) are forced to participate, helping to train them into being more oxidative - which results in being able to generate more power aerobically (raising your LT1).
Sweet spot, on the other hand, is hard enough that your slow twitch fibers canât produce all the power, so fast twitch fibers are recruited; but over a long duration (10-30 or more minutes) and multiple intervals with little rest, your muscle glycogen is depleted and the fast twitch fibers are forced to rely on more oxygen, again training them to be more oxidative which raises your LT1.
If your VLaMax is in the right range for your type of riding / racing, but you want a higher LT1, then the way forward is raising your VO2max. Now, sweet spot training does affect VO2max, but VO2max interval sessions (not surprisingly) have a bigger impact on your VO2max than sweet spot interval sessions. It makes sense to swap out sweet spot, but then you find yourself with a lot of free time, but unable to handle a lot of stress⊠so endurance rides (which also improve VO2max, but slowly) get added in.
So depending on where you are now, and how you are trying to shift your bodyâs performance, sweet spot or VO2max intervals can make a lot of sense both to increase your FTP, but also to improve your endurance power. In either case endurance rides, especially long ones, play a valuable role in improving your endurance power.
Most of this is pulled from Weberâs discussion in That Triathlon Show:
âŠbut a lot of the description of how long endurance rides impact your fitness also comes from Trevor Connor and Stephen Seiler on the Fast Talk podcast.
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While âthe best wayâ to improve LT1 might be long slow rides if you have 12+ hours per week, you can get a lot of gains on less time:
Yes 
First heard this from Coach Chad on the TR podcast.
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I think I recall Weber saying the doing low cadence at Sweet Spot intensity inhibits those fast twitch fibres from using glycogen those training their fat burning capabilities.
I believe he specified low cadence in order to increase torque, i.e., force applied, in order to better recruit fast twitch fibers. The duration of the interval should then be long enough that the demands for power continue after muscle glycogen is depleted, and the rest interval between intervals should be short enough that muscle glycogen doesnât fully replenish, which forces them to rely more on fat oxidation to meet the work demand.
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So, been thinking about this too. My take:
If youâre doing the TR plans straight up as they are written I agree it is over training glycogen dependence. Basically other than 1 ride per week youâre drilling it in tempo, SST, LT, or Vo2.
But,âŠI think there is a better way (if you have the time)
Do the Tues through Fri work that TR has scheduled and then do a 3-4 hour ride on Saturday with some intervals (if youâre feeling recovered) and a 2-3 hour base ride on Sunday.
This way youâre training your fat oxidation and LT1 on the weekends specifically and working on LT2 during the week.
Some of the other comments related to LT1 and LT2 not being tied together I believe is absolutely true. Doing the polarized model for 3 years I saw my LT1 and repeatability increase but my LT2 stayed at the same place. Basically I could ride for longer at higher âall dayâ power and then punch at Vo2 or higher more often but my sustained effort power stayed exactly the same. This type of training was 10-15 hours per week with structure like this:
Mon OFF
Tue Intervals
Wed Intervals
Thu Base Ride
Fri Base Ride with cadence work or short sprints (spin ups, 10s sprints)
Sat 3-4 hour base ride, sometimes with Intervals
Sun 2-3 hour base ride
Intervals consisted of ON/OFF style 20/40, 30/30, 40/20, 50/10 efforts at varying powers but all in VO2 or higher. Longest sustained effort was a 5 minute LT effort with 30s of Vo2 at beginning and end.
This type of training made me a better road, crit, and CX racer but did nothing for my MTB racing.
So in summary I think using those weekend rides to work on your LT1 and fat oxidation can help with getting the best of both worlds.
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âA good plan violently executed now is better than the perfect plan executed next week.â
Do your intervals. Think about it later.
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I think the only athlete on the list you mentioned that shouldnât care about power at LT1 is the 40k TT rider, since that is 100% right around LT2. In my experience, really working at and around LT1 this year has made me quicker to recover between hard efforts. Iâm not doing more hard intervals in training either, but when I do some hard 5 minute segments or tempo style rides on my MTB, my HR recovers really quickly. This pays dividends on single track, as many people can relate to redlining, not recovering, and then wiping out. You can also think of trying to do multiple attacks in a crit, being able to hold on in the draft and FULLY recover, then being able to lay down a maximal effort. Probably more important as the crits get longer, as in a 30 minute race this is probably not quite as important. My LT1 is somewhere around 220-240 watts when properly rested, that is still pretty fast on a singletrack flat section and my HR will recover back down to about 130-140. So even sweet spot/tempo power in 260-270ish range, my HR still recovers down to about 140-150 or 5-10 beats below full on race pace. So now I can do a few harder anaerobic efforts, deeper ina race. The caveat though is that my full on anaerobic power is not as high as someone with a greater anaerobic capacity, so I need to make sure that I donât get dropped early and need to come on strong later in the event, but in an Xterra we use the swim to grab the holeshot so Iâm pretty good in that aspect.
So I tested today - got threshold where I predicted, i.e. 240W, but I stayed fat burning for longer. I think he said I peaked at 195W which is higher than in the past. This bodes well for Paris-Brest-Paris next month - the long outdoor rides have paid off.
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When tested before my peak fat burning % was at 150W, with a higher threshold. Now it occurred at 195W, but with a lower threshold. So I should be able to sustain a higher steady power for longer.
Iâve not got the full report yet, that should be tomorrow.
Thatâs a lot of time out of someoneâs weekend who is likely doing TR plans because they donât have 6 hours every weekend to train? I think your completely changing the dynamics of someoneâs training week, ethos and mentality here to get your point across. I donât make you wrong, but itâs not a solution that fits?