McNulty - hitting it with precision
Had a look at his training maybe a week ago, it was interesting to see the year to year consistency in approach. There were quit a few workouts this December that he did identically in December 2021, intervals duration, number, even wattage was identical. Just a lot of solid work.
Looks like quite a few tempo/sweetspot efforts actually. Quite surprising for a ISM athlete (though I’m not sure if he is actually trained by ISM as well).
Yes, ISM coached.
Why should he not be doing tempo/SST? ISM style training is not just about riding around/at LT1/AeT all the time:
The ideal training plan should include 3-4 days a week of zone 2 training in the first 2-3 months of pre-season training, followed by 2-3 days a week as the season gets closer and 2 days of maintenance once the season is in full blown.
As alluded to before, it is remarkable that there are no (super-)easy rides. And no very long rides. No 6h endurance rides. Just saying … for all the zone2-confused folks out there.
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Thanks. I thought of ISM as more similar as Seiler, Z2 or Z4+. But 3-4 Z2 rides per weak leaves room for 3-2 higher intensity rides like tempo and threshold.
Definitely hard stuff. Those 2×60’ sweetspot rides look hard af. Can’t imagine the amounts of food he needs to eat to fuel all this.
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Where would you put his LT1?
290-310ish???
350 ish?
LT1 290-300
FTP around 400
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I would be expect his LT1 to be around 350w, no? He is an aerobic type rider, I would think that it’s pretty safe to expect LT1 of around 5w/kg for his level of rider. His FTP is probably closer to 420-430 as well. Obviously, both depend on shape he is in, but he looks in ok shape already.
If we look at workouts that he started doing at beginning of December, he was doing 1 hour intervals at 330w with avg HR of 160. Most recent session was 1 hour intervals at 350w with HR of 154 and 157bpms. Third most recent session was the same with HR of 146 and 152 bpms (there was two other identical sessions, but HR data was corrupt or missing). To me that indicates that he started off at slightly lower power, his fitness quickly caught up to a certain “base” level for him and changes in HR nicely show that.
[Edited few times as I missed two sessions in Jan]
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@sryke I figured 350 ish because of these efforts. But if his lt1 is 300 than these are 2x 1h SS efforts ?
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Why? Those are just sst intervals. 2x1h is nothing out of this world, and ISM athletes do also intervals like normal people. It’s not LT1 all week all days.
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I didn’t say that I find these efforts out of the ordinary… Ofc I know they don’t only do lt1.
just curious if my reasoning was correct with regards to estimating lt1 using this particular ride
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From ISM’s published data on pros:
Just recently I’ve listened to an interview with Suisse TT specialist Stefan Küng. Very heavy rider. He mentioned his endurance pace wattage at LT1 is ~340-350W. His FTP 480 or so. No way a skinny GC/climbing type of rider like McNulty has a LT1 at 350W. His Strava training zones would suggest ~300/400W too. But of course, they only hinge at one point.
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I just posted a critique on mcnulty’s jan 2022 riding. He had a 19 minute effort then at 465 watts and a 5 minute effort at 530. His over unders were at 390-400 for the under and 490-500 for over portion. Granted that was a year ago, but would be strange for him to be so far off from that considering it was the same point of year.
Yep, so seems like someone (likely ZNehr, the author), did the old:
465 x .95 = FTP. (465 was technically 19 mins, so shave a bit off)
Then…
FTP x .75 = AeT. (~330-340w)
Agree that his numbers are likely close to last year. Disagree with the characterization of those numbers. His AeT is not 330w. Yes, definitions, but isn’t that your whole point in the other thread?
FTP math gives different numbers than ISM measuring.
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I would say thresholds are best thought of as ranges, not a single point. That range would be first inflection up to +1 mmol. +1 mmol lines up more with vt than the first inflection of lactate if I’m remembering correctly.
So to me, it looks like the long ride at 300 watts is just below or right around first inflection. The description ism gives for his zone 2 target is ventilatory threshold since he describes being able to predict the zone just on how his athlete can talk. So those 2x1 hr efforts look more like his description than riding at 300 watts.
I do not think that we should use average numbers of the study to inform about LT1 about a single particular athlete. The same highlighted row in the first table also has Maximal output of 378.5w. Based on McNulty’s body of work we can safely assume that whatever ramp test protocol was used, his power was significantly (potentially around 100w) higher then that. If his power is as far away from the average of the study, then can we compare average study results to his?
Re King Küng, I would say that this would only strenghthen the argument of possibility for McNulty having LT1 around 350. Since McNulty is more of a climber/gc type of guy, one of key characteristics that he must posess is fatigue resistance. There are many components of that but one of them is being efficient at submaximal efforts and being able to preserve glycogen (what ISM preaches and targets with his training ideas). Küng on the other hand has mostly focused on TT stuff, so efforts on 1 hour or shorter. The weight differences is only about 14 kgs (per PCS, 69 vs 83).
Slightly offtopic: I really liked Küng’s last season in classics and I hope he will do them this year as well. Him and Madouas going 3 and 5 in Ronde was a result that no one probably ever even dreamed in FDJ. They look like a really good duo, as Madouas has some sprint on him and Küng can go long. I assume that the podcast was in german, so if you could share any details, that would be greatly appreciated.
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That’s why added the table where the standard deviations are presented.
?
I am definitely lacking in statistics deparment, but would not standard deviation mean that majority of values will fall within one standard deviation, 95% within two and basically everyone within three deviations? Does 341w in with lactate value of 4.9mmol and sd of 1.8 not indicate possibility of 95% of athletes having lactate values between 1.3 and 8.5mmol?
This is also what I was referring to by Maximal output. I tried looking up for the full paper but only found summary, so could not find the procol, however, I would assume that Maximal output would indicate the power of the last step in the ramp test. Now, without protocol details I am not sure what length steps were and whether it was continous or not. What it does show me is that these average values of study will not reflect values of McNulty since his Maximal output would be significantly higher, consequently I would make assumption that his lactate at those submaximal wattages would be lower than average values as well.