I’m not even certain how you could make the case that is what I am saying….you’ll understand if I just excuse myself from the conversation.
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I’m really not certain why you feel the need to get so defensive or make personal attacks, but that is your choice, I guess.
I didn’t realize I was making a personal attack. I am questioning the concept that somehow these deeply obvious findings don’t apply to women and amateurs as well as pro and elite men.
The point is; we don’t know. Science is not based on someone guessing whether there is or isn’t a difference. It is based on someone finding out.
I think it is fairly established facts that:
- Most research in physiology and medicine are performed on male subjects
- Women are not just physically smaller men (metabolics, menstruation, contraception and menopause are areas where we definitely know there are differences)
Even if durability is a valid concept across genders (I think it is) quantifying durability in men vs. women would also help guide the discussion around the length of women’s races.
Including more women in studies is not an inconvenience. It’s an opportunity for better science.
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Alright so according to the TR forum “we don’t know whether or not women will produce less power when they’re fatigued”.
Same forum that also is a proponent of recovery beer. I guess I’m the one that needs to see myself out here…
P.S. Of course there needs to be more studies done with women but it doesn’t mean you can’t draw any conclusions, it is an obtuse way of thinking just the same as thinking men and women are exactly the same.
I know I said I was exiting the conversation, but I feel the need to respond to this….the fact that you continue to say this is what is being said simply indicates that you are not understanding what is being said, or simply acting in a bad faith discussion. 3 separate people have been making the same point, but you continue to mischaracterize it as above.
And now I really am out.
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Saw this when it was released last week, and my first reaction was that others call it FATIGUE RESISTANCE (not durability) and its been discussed a good bit over the years. Here is one from 6 years ago:
There are several other WKO webinars on how to improve fatigue resistance / stamina.
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I agree that ‘durability’ in itself is not something completely new. As cyclists - and people who follow pro cycling - we all have an intuitive grasp of it. We have all felt what it’s like to be more (or less) durable and we have seen pro riders fade in long races.
What I found interesting was that they are starting to quantify just how big an impact durability really has on race results. For me, that was the lightbulb moment.
I agree, that it is still not known how much the concept of durability should impact how we as amateurs train. Will FTP and durability increase hand-in-hand until we approach the upper limits of human performance? Or a specific training modalities better for improving FTP vs. durability? I would like to know 
That’s now what I read (and not what I personally wrote). I think we don’t know if the rate of decline in durability is the same in men vs. women. Should they train and race like men?
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There are key physiological differences between men and women that directly impact performance in endurance sports. We know that one of these differences is fat oxidation, which was specifically mentioned in the above article. Female physiology tends to favor fat oxidation compared to male (but again, more studies are needed around that as well).
“For women, normalised (per body weight) fat oxidation was higher at 75 % V.O (2)peak than at 55 % V.O (2)peak for both running (p = 0.02) and cycling (p = 0.01).”
IMO, it’s just lazy to not take some data from pro women’s tour races (same effort as collecting the data from the mens’ pro races) and see if there are any differences that could help us understand both a bit better.
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This why fast group rides should be part of anyone’s training program. That lightbulb went off for me as I got dropped on my first real spirited group ride! Fatigue resistance improvement is just about getting dropped farther into the ride each week. 
As for “Durability” I’d use that term to describe a different, but very real, concept as one moves up through the ranks in any sport. Some people are injury prone and others are bulletproof. This is true for both over use injuries and accident type injuries… Even when talking bike crashes, some folks have a knack for landing right and others can break a collar bone in a padded room. Where you fall on that line is your durability and as you move up the ranks, it does start to be one of the sorting mechanisms.
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If you read what I said, I said the premise would be the same but I’d guess women would be more durable than men. I’m not debating the % is different, the difference between individual men is even wildly different; my point is that in my opinion the same mechanisms are at play here and I can’t see how the results would be different enough to warrant… much of anything besides saying hmm guess it’s true.
Don’t they train and race like men? All the women I know do, and they have varying physiology just like men do (slow versus fast twitch type people etc).
Are there men’s and women’s workouts in TR??
100%….I have been preaching for decades. Nothing sharpens your blade more than holding on my your toenails at the end of a long, fast group ride.
Or even a short one sometimes!! 
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Right. And Coach Tim Cusick’s philosophy on improving fatigue resistance (from WKO webinars) is what worked for me. Lots of endurance and go long.
Leaving aside training, one could go so far as to argue that much of , maybe even all of, cycling race tactics and strategy is aimed at sapping your opponents’ durability/fatigue resistance while preserving yours.
this is why you are flailing around in this conversation. But you keep doing you.
Wouldn’t this be interesting to confirm? What about menstrual cycles? Might those have an effect? What about age? Do women age faster or slower than men in terms of fatigue resistance? What about watts/kg? Might women be pound for pound more durable than men? or less. I know plenty of women who probably have a watts/kg 25% less than me, but can still hang onto a long group rides and be fresher than me. What about metabolism? Or hormones? Or pain resistance? or probably a few other things that I could dream up and I have no idea what those might be, but I’m more sure there are some, than I am that there are not. And that is why you are faffing about.
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Missing the forest for the trees
Not to mention a lot of that stuff is way beyond even what they did in the men’s study.
If y’all are mad there aren’t more studies with women that’s fine and I agree. I don’t agree that this study is presenting a hill to die on tho.
Toughness, grit, guts… whatever you want to call it is a big part of success as an athlete. Probably second only to genetics.
I think it is so hard to test or train because of its complexity. “Durability” potential partly comes from our environment (how you grew up), part of it is learned (training & how hard are you willing to push workouts) and part is genetic (you got it or you don’t).
For whatever reason some will never go past being “comfortable-hard” and some are willing to really, really hurt. I think we can all train to be “tougher” but at some point our brains have a point where we go to survival mode and back off. (Though I have had one athlete who didn’t seem to have that trigger point and would push harder than anyone I have ever seen… who was female for those keeping track).
We all love the kid who is a hard worker but the genetic phenom will still win on less. Of course when you get that athlete who has the genetics, focus and has guts… well that is when you won the “genetic lottery.”
I didn’t win any athletic genetic lotteries.
Fatigue resistance is trainable, you can increase it just like you can increase threshold power.
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