I want to pose a question to the community on wether sprinters can be suitable for ultraendurance:
Backstory:
I am 33 year old relatively fit man, working out 10 hours a week, hovering at around 4 watt/kg. As a rider type I am definately a sprinter/puncheur, at 1.78m and 75ish kg, im not heavy, but not top climber material either. I am a muscular guy, even without any strength training, with ave-inspiring quads and calves. These “assets” however, seem to not give great rewards on threshold power.
After having worked out with relatively good structure for 5-6 years now, I find it really hard to actually increase my threshold any further, and have sorta accepted that this is the level i can realistically expect.
Over the last 2 years, i have performed well in sprints and punchy races, while climbing and TT-work seems to not be my forte. However, after recently having completed both a unltra endurance run and an extreme 70.3 triathlon, both around 7 hours, i find that i perform really well in these (top 3%).
I am wondering if you have seen any link between muscle strength/size and ultra endurance. My muscular build seems not to aid me significantly on climbing and threshold events, but on the ultra-endurance ones, competing over long durations at or below sweet-spot speeds, it seems I am able to better maintain intensity towards the end of the race.
Is it likely that this observation is due to my muscular build, or is it likely due to other factors, such as proper pacing, nutrition etc. In the world tour, i feel i see that the long races such as roubaix, vlandern, world champs often are dominated by rather muscular, punchy and robust guys such as Kristoff, Sagan, Cancellara, Van der Poel, where as strict mathematics on threshold power should theretically give the advantage to the timetrialers such as Dumolin, Roglic etc. Am i onto something?