After training, what are Pro/Elite cyclists capable of? An upcoming paper has some interesting data:
Woman:
Men:
Read the Twitter thread for details/caveats/etc, ahead of the printed version.
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Interestingly, p10 describes my power profile extremely closely (in terms of watts, W/kg I am 2-3kg off).
So I could be the worst sprinter, puncheur, climber and TTer in the pro peloton 
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Lol…It describes mine too in terms of W/kg yet I am not even close to pro level…it’s shows again that pure power numbers are only a small part of what makes a pro a pro
The caveat is that these are not power profiles so basically person with the worst sprint could have p90 60 min power. But yes, there is a lot more than pure power numbers.
Don’t have access to the entire study but this seems to be pretty self evident without requiring much research.
Best take away is that the median (p50) male pro cyclist has 60min ftp of 5.15w/kg. Based on median 20min (6.04 w/kg), 95% is a poor indicator of 60min power. Also that the median male pro seems to be stacked towards lower duration power (sub 20min).
None of this is surprising since success in road cycling is about creating separation from the peloton. I got introduced to pro road cycling by watching the TdF (as I’m sure most of us do). This gave me the false impression that being a successful cyclist is about having huge ftp (bc GC contenders are stars of TdF). Now that I know more about pro cycling (watching classics, etc) it’s nice to see this data confirm my new believe that it’s about raw lower duration powers for the majority of events. Also about repeatability - these guys all are keeping >4 w/kg for many hours and I’m sure can repeat similar to max numbers for shorter durations many times within a race, or across multiple race days (subsequent days or many races within a short time period).
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I think hard to draw too many conclusions on the longer intervals as from the abstract it seems that they pulled this data from power files rather than actually testing the cyclists (unsurprisingly!). So potentially a significant difference between the highest 60 minute power they’ve done and the highest 60 minute power they’re capable of. Can’t imagine (m)any are doing 60 minute maximal tests. And even in races climbs that long are rare, not many riders would actually race them flat out, and they’d be part of a longer stage so still not maximal hour power.
20 minutes and less likely to be much more accurate. They’ll be testing over that kind of duration, and a much higher proportion of the peloton will race flat out over climbs of that kind of duration.
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Exactly my thoughts. There are hardly any real 60min all out efforts.
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@cartsman @bbarrera so yes, I agree with you here. But my point is there are hardly any 60min intervals period even at the highest level of sport. 60min max power is just not that important for performance - 20minute power is!
Dowsett talks over his prep for the hour record, shows the training peaks calendar from around August until now:
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This vid is another testament for how difficult macro level investigations of training is. The shear amount of racing is such a confounding factor, pro cyclists have to move from block to block. This is so complex, how could simple statements like “they train x% in zone y” or “they avoid certain intensity levels” describe this. Here we have folks with superior endurance genetics, blessed with huge engines by birth, finetuning them from block to block.
I wish more pros showed their actual session goals. We see a lot on Strava but the additional information provided by the TP diary gives it the context. I also found it interesting when Blummenfelt talked about is altitude training in one of the latest vids. Individual context!
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And AD’s openess provides a great opportunity to put Strava activites into context. This block in July for example. there is the eternal question, how intense do pros ride their endurance rides. We know, there are different philosophies out there. With AD it is clearly more around AeT and slightly above.
July 24th
this is at altitude! And only climbing. No I-have-to-pedal-throughout-otherwise-I-don’t-get-adaptions.
from what he said, these zones seem to be correct. However, at sea level, not altitude!
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Listened to the Fascatcoaching podcast, it was interesting to hear that AD considers the training as not so important for the prep. Yep, fine tuning, that’s it.
Just listened to a German podcast where they interviewed one of Bora’s coaches. I’m always surprised at how little they talk about actual training. However, one information nugget can be shared.
Q: what has changed in training compared to 20 years ago?
A: Especially with Dan Lorang joining the team there is more focus on vo2max now. In the old days it was just volume, volume, volume. Then, these days there is hardly any time for a solid aerobic build. Off season is too short. Therefore all these training camps at altitude throughout where the aerobic strucutures are built.
As we’ve seen before, it’s moving from block to block.
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Thats an interesting thought. Is volume at altitude more effective?
Sounds interesting.
Might that be due to the fact that their aerobic base has already been built so much during all the years in the sport that putting in insane amounts of hours for marginal gains is simply not worth it?
So they instead focus on doing “maintenance” work to keep what they have and do high(er) intensity efforts to build the top end?
I think the pyramidal approach is just unnecessary. Look at athletes the van der Poel, pidcock, or WVA. They race competitively year round. Adequate rest is all that’s required to continually improve.
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These La values, great vid
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McNulty back in training. Easy/recovery days, right at AeT days and … shocker … he even goes into no man’s land/black hole/boy-you-overtrain territory, the evil of all training zones: tempo! What is ISM telling this boy!
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