Fat utilisation of up to 1.5g per hour or even 2g/hr are reported. Sources: 1.5 @ 75% VO2 AACC pod 205. 2g is a Coggan quote, somewhere on this forum. So that’s potentially 206-281 watts supported by fat alone.
Where fatmax sits in relation to LT1 isn’t consistent, person to person. So we can’t infer anything from these observations. I don’t want to comment on the portion of fat to carbs at fatmax or LT1. But I’ll add the following frustration. Often the graphs I’ve seen have been of grams of fat vs grams of carbs. Which underplays the energy from fat by a ratio 9/4. So if you were to eyeball such a graph, you could easily overestimate the portion of carbs at a given intensity.
Human body efficiency at converting food calories to watts (metabolic efficiency).
Glycogen stores
Neither is a fixed constant. They vary person to person (genetics) and also are trainable. Part of the effects of training such high volume is improving both factors. Winning Grand Tours are as much about fueling and recovery as they are about ability to put out the watts.
So we should expect any GC contender to be good specifically at putting out lots of power after already outputting a lot of kJ. In fact, we should expect every pro (even sprinters) to look superhuman in these respects compared to age groupers. GC riders are just another rung higher.
If there is one thing the history of this sport has taught us, it is that if something is too good to be true, it is because it isn’t.
I have zero idea if Pog (or MVdP or Wout) are doping or not….i will take it at face value for now that they aren’t. But if it is someday revealed that they are, it would not surprise me in the slightest.
As fans of the sport, we have earned the right to view the performance of dominant athletes with a degree of cynicism.
White Mamba, yep he was the 12th man on a roster who rarely got minutes. But, even better than the quote is him dusting up some casuals after he retired from the NBA.
