Sweet Spot or Sour Spot?

Since you and others have said this several times now, I’m wondering on which data this is based.

Looking at the few studies out there and comparing it with what we see on Strava I don’t really see this to be the case.

The study by San Millan offers some great insights. 22 world tour pros (UAE):

FatMax zone - however we define it - goes up to ~300W. This will scale with weight but the standard deviation gives an idea of the spread.

They did not measure VT2 or so but from Strava we know what they put out on 20-30min efforts. Of course, this will scale with weight as well but what we see is something like 370 - 420W for many pros. This is already the FTP estimate.

~300W for the lower boundary, ~380W for the upper boundary may describe an average world tour pro quite well. Of course, these are just rough estimates but illustrate nicely that there is stil plenty of room for no-man’s land training. And I must say, these values fit well into the different sessions I see on Strava.

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