While durability is key at really long events like Unbound, it’s absolutely a thing for shorter races as well. Prior to upping my volume, I would often struggle to hold high Z2/low tempo in the 3rd hour of some races when the first 1-2 hours went out really hard. That would often result in losing the group as the attacks picked up closer to the finish. Now, I’m one of the ones attacking and watching the group shrink around me. FTP hasn’t really moved, just dramatically better ability to hold high percentages and absorb surges.
Also, I think gravel racing rewards durability more than traditional road racing. You can absolutely be competitive in many road races (and certainly crits) by hiding/conserving all day and come to the line fresh without ever chasing a move or making an attack. You can also hide to a point in a gravel race, but it’s hard to do nothing all day like in a road race. Much more heavy pedaling and lots of time at tempo and sweet spot in most gravel races.
You are fine, just one of many with similar thoughts. It’s so easy to get caught up in chasing FTP, we are all guilty to a point. And everyone selling a training tool/plan tends to focus on how it’s going to bump your FTP since it’s the metric everyone gravitates to. And it can be motivating when you are starting as an untrained cyclist or have only been training for a year or 2. But at some point, you’ve got to start looking at the bigger picture or you are just setting yourself up for disappointment hoping for endless increases in FTP. Can’t get bummed out about a few trees falling over in the night when the forest is healthy and growing.
And another decent watch. Not so much about training, but some good insight to the mental side and dynamics that WT riders are dealing with. Interesting to hear mvdp’s coach say there are other riders on the team who can do bigger numbers than mvdp when fresh, but mvpd’s unique ability is putting those watts out after 5-6k Kj’s at the end of a monument or long stage.
Plus for most amateurs they can’t put out their FTP when fresh for more than 10 mins without complaining. Thus it’s not a good marker for what they can do in real life for the duration of real life events.
Agreed, though I’d say a person can still do a lot to improve durability in one season of training. I wanted to improve mine last year, did more volume and more long SS intervals, and noticed a significant difference during the race season. Many times I had more left to give and was passing people in the last third of events, and it was a noticeable difference from the previous year.
The difficulty is a little like getting aero gains vs lowering weight….FTP is easier to measure, whereas durability is still pretty ambiguous. It’s real, it’s important, but it’s hard to measure and get satisfaction from, until you’re in the last couple of hours and passing a bunch of people that don’t have it.
It’s funny I said the same thing over on Reddit. It was about this video. A guy was saying that he couldn’t hold his FTP for 30 minutes even when well rested and well fueled.
Yep, measuring it is a little harder, but I can definitely see it in my power/duration curve. Seeing those power PR’s tick up every year is pretty motivating even when FTP is pretty flat. Another good measurement/metric is a “tired 20”, where you do a 20 minute effort at threshold after putting ~3k Kj’s through your legs. But agree that it’s most obvious in racing situations deep into races (which can be harder to see in the numbers, but definitely shows in the results).
And absolutely agree that you can significantly improve durability in a single season by upping volume and pushing lots of sweet spot (if it’s a new stimulus). Improvements just get slower and harder after grabbing the low hanging stuff. I started the durability journey in 2020 and saw a big uptick the first year, but have really pushed the volume up the last couple years and I’m still seeing gains. It’s just getting harder and I’m not getting any younger.
A lot of the recommended ways for building resilience and fatigue resistance sound familiar: high training volume especially accumulated over years, regular long sessions with race pace intervals, and heavy strength training.
And how do you measure that? Yes, if you have raked in all the “easy” FTP gains, it makes sense to look at other metrics. But any metric beyond FTP is very, very specific, so you have to know what you want to optimize for, find ways to measure and train for that.
However, most people would be better served to re-invest the time they dedicate to the latest fad to recovery, nutrition and sleep. Especially getting quality sleep is such a major gain that it likely overshadows any marginal gains you get from e. g. picking a new metric and training approach.
This has been my experience. Once my CTL was near and above 100 (previously always in the 70s), I was a completely different racer and it showed in my race results. FTP stayed about the same, but my ability to express it was dramatic.
IMHO, when the popularity of longer races (gravel) overtook shorter races (crits and XC) durability became ever more important. On the road it’s similar as well. No longer is it sit in the bunch and wait for the final climbs or sprint. It’s more “racing” throughout.
How do you measure performance in real life? They give you a number corresponding to how you finish. Pretty easy to measure. Or segment times. Race times. Power curve PRs. Real life performance is probably the easiest of anything to measure.
How much does durability, whatever it is, play a role in crit races of hill climb TTs vs. gravel races?
In another discussion the word fragility was used to describe the opposite. If I can recall some argued that Jan Ullrich’s fitness was fragile when he battled it out with Lance Armstrong
Strava segments come in all flavors, short VO2max climbs, sprints, long climbs. You could refer to your ability to do long sweet spot efforts after riding in Z2 for 3 hours/after x,000 kJ.
My point isn’t that what you have in mind isn’t real, just that there are many different ways your fitness can be “robust” or “durable”. You need to identify what it means to you, find ways to measure it and then train accordingly.
To me robustness means not getting sick as often as getting sick and the resulting training interruptions have the biggest impact on my training. But I digress.
I still think that improving your sleep, recovery and nutrition is in all likelihood a better investment of your time.
Probably not a ton. Unless you’re doing 2 or 3 crits in a day. I race crits primarily and feel like repeated efforts over FTP are more important than FTP itself.
My point was that you asked how you measure performance in real life. And I think it’s pretty easy to measure performance in real life. Races have placings. Big ride events have overall time. Strava segments have rankings. Measuring real life performance is really easy in my opinion. It was just an answer to your question.
Which is my point: if you want to go beyond FTP as a measure of performance, you really need to know what you want.
Regarding repeated efforts over FTP, you’d still benefit from raising your FTP if that’s possible.
How many of those are a measure of your “durability”, though? I just don’t see such a straight line to durability.
What about factors like race craft and strategy, pacing, tech skills offroad, mechanicals, etc. How a race unfolds will also have a significant impact on the data/placement.
