How do you train durability,
described in this infographic by knowledgeiswatt?
Lots of endurance with a bit of sweetspot/FTP added on.
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Velo just published a short article on the importance of durability. Alas, other than a passing remark that ātrainers now know what to do to dial it in,ā it doesnāt dive at all into how to train for it.
Iām 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 āunstructuredā outdoor rides (such as 3-5 hour weekend rides) integrated into a TR plan should be approached to help develop durability.
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Is durability the new Zone 2?
Edit: And from the article, it sounds like volume, volume, volume.
Edit: Just had another thought. There was a discussion a while back about this, on the structure of a sweetspot workout. Whether it was better to do your endurance tacked on to the end, or loaded up front. For example, if you had 60min SST planned, should you knock out the SST, then do 2 hours Z2, or do 2 hours Z2, then do your 60 min of SST?
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Perhaps Iām 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.
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I guess the question is ādo you get better at something by training that thing?ā.
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 canāt 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 Iām more inclined to put the hard work at the beginning. The main benefit for doing it at the end being largely psychological.
Durabilityā¦ sounds a lot like āenduranceā.
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You donāt, at least not separately, and ādurabilityā shouldnāt be on that slide, as itās 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.
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It seems to me that the current trend is to take something that has been around for years, change the name a bit, then sell it as the new magical training philosophy. Itāll be called āFatigue Resistanceā training next season and it will be the buzzword for all cyclists to aim for.
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Apparently youāre not the only one who feels that way:
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This is, in fact, one of the classic tools in the roadie hardmanās toolbox.* It can be very effective, but also carries some risk of overdoing it (ask me how I know). Physiologically, though, itās really just another way of enhancing muscular metabolic fitness, i.e., you arenāt 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 āstacksā. Again, though, donāt overdo itā¦ 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.
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This has always been most effective for me
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Iāve 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 hasnāt 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 canāt 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. Thatās 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 isnāt the case). Itās also why if somebody is"right sized", they will be good at both TTs and climbs at the end of longer races.
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I think Iām agreeing with @The_Cog here. Those two are basically the same thing. Almost everything Iāve read says that this ādurabilityā measurement is just a fancy way to say āEnduranceā. And by doing your efforts at the end of a long ride you are less ātrainingā durability as you are āpracticingā durability.
But when training those longer threshold efforts the benefits come from pushing your TTE to near itās max and if you do them at the end of a long ride you might not be able to do that because youāre fatigued from the previous 4 hours. So thereās probably additional benefit to being able to max out your TTE during the first part of the workout when youāre 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 youāre fueling during those long rides.
This is a phenomenon thatās been around endurance sports as long as Iāve been paying attention to training philosophies and strategies (which is going on 20+ years now). One very popular term most recently was āPolaried Trainingā which is simply another way of saying the classic āKeep your easy days easy so your hard days can be be HARD.ā Thatās been training mantra for as long as Iāve been alive, but if you put a cool name to it, it gets you notoriety.
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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 etcā¦ so I agree with you different words same connotation and outcome.
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