How do you train durability,
described in this infographic by knowledgeiswatt?
Lots of endurance with a bit of sweetspot/FTP added on.
Velo just published a short article on the importance of durability. Alas, other than a passing remark that “trainers now know what to do to dial it in,” it doesn’t dive at all into how to train for it.
I’m curious if any of the TrainerRoad staff can speak to which of their plans and volumes are best suited to train durability and how; and how ‘unstructured’ outdoor rides (such as 3-5 hour weekend rides) integrated into a TR plan should be approached to help develop durability.
Perhaps I’m incorrect but have been equating durability and fatigue resistance, my understanding of both would be the ability to do hard efforts after a kj expenditure. So therefore would think you would want to train with Z2 first and then the SST.
Myself I have been thinking 2 to 2:30 Z2 and then a 30 or 45 min threshold workout, would improve that capability in a manner that would be more realistic or achievable for me.
If I could do something like Pinaculo (Z2) and then follow it up with Penuelas (Threshold). I would think that would make me pretty durable or fatigue resistant.
I guess the question is “do you get better at something by training that thing?”.
The alternative is that doing the endurance at the beginning and the end are both exactly the same but by putting the work at the end you are just more tired so you can’t output as much (either watts or time) and so you are missing out on adaptations. Similar to doing a threshold workout after a hard weekend of training.
I think I’m more inclined to put the hard work at the beginning. The main benefit for doing it at the end being largely psychological.
Durability… sounds a lot like “endurance”.
You don’t, at least not separately, and “durability” shouldn’t be on that slide, as it’s not a separate thing.
it seems Hunter Alan/ peaks training did video on what he calls stamina, which is analogous to durability on youtube
I have not had time to watch it but it might help with this question.
do disaster every day.
Apparently you’re not the only one who feels that way:
This is, in fact, one of the classic tools in the roadie hardman’s toolbox.* It can be very effective, but also carries some risk of overdoing it (ask me how I know). Physiologically, though, it’s really just another way of enhancing muscular metabolic fitness, i.e., you aren’t training any unique property of muscle, just hammering on it another way.
Semi-related ways of icing the cake:
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do multiple longer TTs in a relatively short period of time, so that the stimulus “stacks”. Again, though, don’t overdo it… historically, I have found that my 3rd is the best, after which I would get a bit jaded and be unwilling to suffer as much as I should.
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do an extra long ride, not at touring pace but as if you need to get there in a reasonable time. E.g., I have done rides from north to south in Indiana, covering about half the state each time. Just make sure to consume enough carbohydrate afterwards.
This has always been most effective for me
I’ve been doing four hour endurance rides with a five minute threshold effort near the end of each hour. Seems to be good prep for stamina in long gravel races.
It seems like this is always the question that hasn’t been answered. If you have a 15-minute climb at the end of a 3-hour race is it better to have trained durability to put in a threshold effort, or have trained to maximize FTP so even if you can’t hold threshold you can do sweet spot that ends up being the same time up that final climb.
Again, these are just manifestations the same thing. That’s why, e.g., if you express, say, 5 h power relative to a valid and objective estimate of FTP, there is limited variation between individuals, spanning across TdF winners to cat. 4 masters and everything in between (and likely even less if all of the data at longer durations came from maximal efforts, which clearly isn’t the case). It’s also why if somebody is"right sized", they will be good at both TTs and climbs at the end of longer races.
I think I’m agreeing with @The_Cog here. Those two are basically the same thing. Almost everything I’ve read says that this “durability” measurement is just a fancy way to say “Endurance”. And by doing your efforts at the end of a long ride you are less “training” durability as you are “practicing” durability.
But when training those longer threshold efforts the benefits come from pushing your TTE to near it’s max and if you do them at the end of a long ride you might not be able to do that because you’re fatigued from the previous 4 hours. So there’s probably additional benefit to being able to max out your TTE during the first part of the workout when you’re fresh and getting the most of those adaptations and then following that up with additional volume.
But there definitely are psychological benefits to doing hard efforts at the end of the ride as well as possibly as a metric to test progress and to gauge how well you’re fueling during those long rides.
This is a phenomenon that’s been around endurance sports as long as I’ve been paying attention to training philosophies and strategies (which is going on 20+ years now). One very popular term most recently was “Polaried Training” which is simply another way of saying the classic “Keep your easy days easy so your hard days can be be HARD.” That’s been training mantra for as long as I’ve been alive, but if you put a cool name to it, it gets you notoriety.
How I came to see the video by Hunter Alan, was he posted in response to the Velo article, this is nothing new and that they had been calling it stamina for quite some time in their book etc… so I agree with you different words same connotation and outcome.
I do understand the point that @The_Cog is making, that general fitness is the big piece. However, we are trying to talk about the little things that can make a difference. While a 5wkg rider can beat a 4wkg rider in pretty much any event, what can a 4wkg rider do to beat other guys around the 4wkg mark?
Across my training, and riding with others I see clearly that there is something to this “durability”, repeating & recovering from higher intensity efforts over time versus a flat endurance profile. Like with two workouts at the same IF Percee versus Heseman. Neither is an intimidating workout, but you’d find people who would have a strong preference towards one over the other.
I’d say that for a lot of trained athletes who aren’t able to make large changes to their training while FTP increases might be limited, practicing durability can lead to better race performance even if they are missing 5w from more optimized training adaptation. Though a lot of that is the psychological benefit & fueling is a huge factor in my comfort zone of 4+ hours of gravel or mountain biking. In the mountains that usually means lots of sweet spot and lots of coasting.
When I first saw the new talk about “durability,” I immediately thought they were referring to repeatability, which is something that’s been discussed so many times.
I’m thinking of athletes like Alaphilippe during his '21 road worlds performance when he was able to lay out one attack after another on the final few laps until nobody else could go with him. 
It seems like these foundational terms keep getting rebranded to gain new followings and so many people are eager to jump aboard!