I think the understanding of training has just evolved. And also the sport has become much more professional. Money has also something to do with it, not everyone used to be a full-time pro, and they might have just needed the off season to work.
no less a rider than veerbeek delivered milk for several years – and not just in the off season.
we’ve thankfully come quite a long way with pro salaries.
Was mine as well. Now that I’m an adult, not so much, but he is very perceptive on training, and he got a lot of grief for it by the euros who had their set in stone notions.
I like this idea much more than the one I came up with. 
Erm…I think the women’s pro peloton would disagree…?
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Even if you believe Kate is at least 50 kilos, she’s climbing here at nearly 6 W/kg!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Kate Courtney (@kateplusfate) on Feb 6, 2020 at 9:33am PST
[quote=“Captain_Doughnutman, post:401, topic:14046”]
women’s pro[quote]
another pro MTB rider out for 2020.
Tahnee Seagrave
Phil Gaimon on base:
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It sounds like 2 months and good to go. Easy…but for the 30 hr/wk part.
But that’s relative to him. My thought is that it would be more important to know what he did prior to going pro to get him to the 20-30hr weeks, instead of what he did as a pro. Since that is where most of us are now.
Speaking of pro base training, just got around watching this Van Vleuten video from the base training camp in Southern Italy. We had this here once when the monthly pro stats were shared.
This is not meant to be derogatory but I am sincerely surprised about the performance gap between men and women. The female world champion is struggeling to keep up with world tour pro base rides. This is interesting. Also speaks volume of how intense those base rides are.
I don’t really see the Phil Gaimon pro approach to base training in the selected Strava hacks. Most take a realy off-time until mid/end November. Afterwards they ramp it up but not with XXL volume. Mid/end December the usual training regime kicks in. And I don’t really see massive volumes either which seems to be a thing of the past. There was an interesting recent interview with Dan Lorang in a German online mag where they discussed “old school” vs “present” endurance training. Main focus was triathlon but cycling got mentioned as well. Clearly less volume theses days. And this is something I see on Strava as well. And those riders which I have on my list seem to upload most/all of their rides.
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Difference between the top men and women is consistently about 10% across a whole bunch of sports like running, cycling, swimming, rowing. On a climb that 10% is the difference between a relatively comfortable 92% which a pro can sustain for a very long time, and 102% which will have them blowing up in maybe 30-40 minutes. So yeah, I can see the women’s world champion struggling to keep up with male base training, particularly as I assume she is trying to build her own base and so will have some limits set on power rather than just digging herself into a hole trying to keep up with the men.
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Probably more than 10% on the flats as some guys have 400 watt ftps to motor along with
Absolute power of the bigger men is more than 10% higher than the women for sure, but they also have bigger profiles to push through the air, and the power needed to overcome wind resistance rises exponentially with speed. In terms of average peloton speed it therefore still ends up being about 10% difference from what I’ve seen.
Of course, due to drafting a pro woman would have no issue hanging with the male peloton on the flat. It would be the accelerations, the echelons and the climbs that would put her into the red.
His heart rate at 400 watts is mine at 200.
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yeah not sure if his HR is really low in general or something was off, even on an all out effort he did not go over 150.
He maybe have a super low max heart rate like Chris Froome
Lots of people at that level have low MHR and super low RHR.
Gaimon mentions ‘athlete’s heart’ in one of his books: Athletic heart syndrome - Wikipedia
When you are trained to that level and your stroke volume is a solid percentage higher than average humans of your same size, it makes sense that your working HR at THR is going to look abnormal, I think?
I was looking at one of Brad Huff’s rides during their training camp at Borrego Springs (mentioned in the podcast). There is a climb out of borrego springs I’m familiar with. It’s an HC climb and Brad was bebopping up it at like 120bpm.
My MHR is fairly low, 175 ish.
Coach says, “If you’re a pro cyclist you’re probably doing these thing every 6 weeks.”
True?? Seems like overkill considering a pro (LS) in a different endurance sport (Tri) has never even done one. Is this the difference between team and individual sports?