Time to check on our pros. Still off-season? Seems for most. Typical “bubbles” for the last 4 weeks:
But NOT Thomas De Gendt 
I guess his daughter enjoys this too much:
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I was reminded of the article about Will Barta and this line in particular today:
4 hours at 4 W/Kg with less than five percent heart rate drift is a gold standard for general aerobic capacity at the U23 European level
I did a long aerobic ride indoor today, with basically no breaks, which was around ~4 hours at 3/wkg and I feel like a shell of a man.
Really reinforces just how much better the aerobic engine is on some of these pros.
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From the article, and no idea what his weight was but using his currently reported weight, 61kg, gives us Barta’s 2016-2018 U23 4hr power numbers:
3.9w/kg; 72.5%FTP
4.3; 75%
3.8; 65%.
His 2018 crash obviously skewing those numbers.
One more example of why weight becomes so important in the pro ranks.
A coach on Training Peaks recently did a nice breakdown of research on various FTP tests vs another, and how well they truly predict 1-hour power. Essentially, your predisposition of slow vs fast twitch muscle and all the blends between the extremes make a huge difference as to how accurate a particular test is for you. The accuracy of standard discount factors applied to the different tests varies greatly depending on your muscle fiber blend.
If you have a naturally high peak, 1-min, or 5-min power, you will be able to “borrow” that strength in any FTP test and, the shorter the test, the more you can borrow. The more you can borrow, the more likely the standard discount factor will be too low. Purer slow-twitch athletes will get better correlation between shorter test protocols and their true one-hour power.
If you have a naturally high peak, 1-min, or 5-min power, you will be able to “borrow” that strength in any FTP test and, the shorter the test, the more you can borrow.
I think a good rebuttal to this would be the standard, ‘it depends’.
I’ve done ramp tests when my 1-5min capabilities were undertrained, didn’t like my result so did a longer threshold-based protocol test…they both turned out very similar numbers. I’ve also done both ramp and 20min tests when I was nothing but 1-5min power with the same result, very similar numbers. Maybe this just means I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. 
Any link to the TP article?
I won’t name the rider but i’ve had the opportunity to race against and view the training of a young rider who is making his attempt as neo-pro this year. Given the riders team location there is not a lot of “team” training, most of his work is done solo. They did do two training camps earlier in the season to get everyone together for rides.
I’m always amazed at a few things;
- the overall duration of all of his rides - currently on over 680hrs of riding this year and 20,000km.
- how much of that is done at ~200w - recent ride this weekend was 5hrs, 4.15 of 200-220w and then 40min of SST to finish. But just so much z2 riding, but not how a lot of regular people ride around. This is consistent, pinned at target wattage, minimal power drops and surges, but just consistent pressure on the pedals for extended hours of time.
- the hard work is HARD. some of the interval sets make me want to puke just looking at them.
- overall volume - his base period was 20-26hrs/wk for 7wks leading into early march, every week is 5-6 days on the bike consistently. No big gaps in training.
already discussed in various forums, fits in here as well, Kenyans vs Europeans:
“Tempo” is up to marathon pace, translated into our world: SST
Kenyans simply do more overall. Growing up barefoot, walking/running to school, all these may have contributed to resilience (my take). And since trainable volume/week is such a key factor, they do have an advantage. Adding chronic exposure to altitude and motivational factors (escaping poverty).
And as we can see, they spend plenty of mileage in the “grey zone”/no man’s land.
In the end it’s probably this resilience which allows them to train more/harder than the Europeans.
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I just like doing a 40-45k race on Zwift. Makes life easier. 
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Um, it’s comparing Kenyan World level vs Spanish Euro and national level. That’s a bit skewed? The higher level athletes do more.
Exactly, they do more. If you did the same comparision for cyclists, pro tour or conti level vs WT level, you’d probably end up with similar training volumes. Running with all its loading is a different beast, being able to do massive volume without breaking makes you world class.
I just don’t get the relevance of the world-level athletes being Kenyans. Wouldn’t a better comparison be world-level Spaniards vs euro-level Spaniards? Or national-level Kenyans vs national-level Spaniards (that might be skewed to though, maybe the competition is higher in one of those countries). It probably makes sense when you read the whole paper, lol.
Well, probably because there are no world-class Spaniards/Europeans. According to the methods section of the paper:
world class → medallists at Olympics/Worlds or race times accordingly
Euro-level → medallists at Euros or race times accordingly
National → medallists at Nationals or race times accordingly
Same dataset (as it seems) but a different analysis. The pooled all runners and built a regression model. I really like this “Practical applications” box at the end of the article.
The title says it all: do a lot of volume, train all intensity levels (yes, also tempo). That’s it.
Here 3 Euros level runners:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335582522_Three_Norwegian_brothers_all_European_1500_m_champions_What_is_the_secret
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Wow!
Average cadence is interesting.
From everything I’ve seen from pro files they train at a much lower cadence than the current conventional wisdom among amateurs.
Assos just did a spot with Pippo Pozzato about time crunched training. His recommendation was 3 minutes hard at 40 rpm intervals.
That sounds as though it’s designed for strength training. In Joe Friel’s Cyclist’s Training Bible he also advocates similar drills.
Yes!
However we don’t know if zeros are included, or not. Hmm.
You could probably figure that out just from the known data fields…but that’s a lot of math I’d rather avoid.
Short answer: doesn’t matter, that’s a heck of a ride!
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It’s December, let’s see what some World Tour pros are up to. Let’s start with a German.
- Mainly zone 2 but with lots of very short efforts/sprints. Dan Lorang! Make your base rides more efficient, recruit those fibres! Frodeno/Buchmann style.
- with and occassional detour into tempo/SST (this guy is on the heavier side for a WT pro)
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