interview with Peter Attia<\/a>, Poga\u010dar mentioned that for his Zone Two rides, he rides at a power output of 320-340 watts and a heart rate of 140-150 beats per minute. These are frankly huge power numbers, and explain why on his endurance rides he can do 180km with 3000m elevation gain at 33-35kph.\u00a0<\/p>\nBut we can also use these numbers to get a rough idea of what his threshold power is. There are a few ways to display threshold power, but for these, we\u2019ll define it as the power sustained for one hour, or approximately 95% of 20-minute power.<\/p>\n
Generally, when riding at Zone Two power, what professional cyclists are really doing is working below the first lactate threshold (LT1). This is the turn-point where lactate starts to accumulate at an ever-increasing rate above the baseline, and where cyclists go from burning predominantly fats to using a higher ratio of carbohydrates and thus generating more fatigue metabolites.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In many highly trained professional cyclists, this turn-point occurs at around 80% of threshold power. Let\u2019s say that the 340w boundary is 80% of Poga\u010dar’s FTP, or that it\u2019s a little below \u00a0(75%) so as to avoid crossing that boundary, then that gives an FTP of around 425-453w.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That sounds like an astronomically high FTP for a General Classification rider who is roughly 65kg, but it tracks with some power figures released by Velon for Poga\u010dar’s in-race attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On stage 15 of the 2024 Giro d’Italia, Poga\u010dar attacked with 15km to go for 5min at a reported 450w (7 watts per kilogram). There have been some calculations that he did 7w\/kg for 20min at the 2024 TdF, again in that 450w region. Both of these are in line with our FTP calculation above, but both were well into a stage and the stage race itself. Add altitude to the fatigue elements and it\u2019s incredibly impressive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Looking back at those MyWhoosh sessions, we can take a good guess at the power being maintained for those efforts:<\/p>\n
The 4 x 3-minute VO2Max (110%) intervals, for example, are likely being completed 467-498w, while the Tempo blocks are comfortably at around 340-360w.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fortunately, when attempting these sessions, we don\u2019t have to do these power outputs, we can instead do an effort relative to our own abilities. It does, however, give you a great insight into the type of efforts and effort level required to train like a multiple grand tour and world title winner.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
(Image credit: MyWhoosh)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nRide with Tadej Pogacar on MyWhoosh<\/strong><\/p>\nOn December 12, 2024, Tadej Poga\u010dar will be riding on MyWhoosh via the Live Coaching feature for a 30-minute caf\u00e9 ride with fans.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nStarting at 17:00 CET, 600 lucky fans will get the chance to ride with and speak to the 2024 Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships winner.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nThe room opens at 16:00 CET, and access is on a first-come-first-serve basis.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\nCyclingnews created this content as part of a paid partnership with MyWhoosh. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of Cyclingnews.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any of us who have followed road cycling for the last few years will know the name Tadej Poga\u010dar. Since turning professional in 2019, he has won four grand tours, plus a further three podiums, seven monuments, a road world championship title, and copious other wins and accolades in cycling.\u00a0 In such a short space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":150425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-150424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}