Tour de France at 58yo, Pro Cycling Nutrition, Pyramidal Training – Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast 464

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// TOPICS COVERED
(0:00:00) Welcome!
(0:01:13) Increased Training Load and overreaching
(0:17:41) 16wk Pyramidal Training with average cyclists
(0:42:18) Giro’s CRAZY new TT helmet
(0:47:23) Pro Cyclist Energy Availability during Spring Classics
(1:05:16) TdF Route data from a 58yo cyclist

// RESOURCES MENTIONED
– Why You ACTUALLY Need a Recovery Shake (and What SHOULD Be in it) https://youtu.be/bR2y3Q2a2qA
– Science-Backed Nutrition Strategy for Cyclists https://youtu.be/z2HXE1-il_Q
– How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off with Dr. Kyle Pfaffenbach – Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast 463 https://youtu.be/563mWgqvMZc
– Decreased energy availability during training overload is associated with non-functional overreaching and suppressed ovarian function in female runners, Schaal, et al,. 2021 https://trainerroad.cc/schaal2021
– Effects of a 16-Week Training Program with a Pyramidal Intensity Distribution on Recreational Male Cyclists https://trainerroad.cc/magalhaes2024
– Giro’s new TT helmet: https://escapecollective.com/there-are-no-words/
– Alternate-Day Low Energy Availability During Spring Classics in Professional Cyclists https://trainerroad.cc/heikura2019
– The Tour de France, also possible for mortals? A comparison of a recreational and a World Tour cyclist https://trainerroad.cc/barrancogil2024

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Podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist the ASA cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road today we have Sarah ly here from trainer road with us and our CEO Nate Pearson and we’re going to review more research that we’ve been covering Sarah last episode was super

Popular with people they really loved it uh we’re going to cover more of it studies from the tour to France studies from the spring Classics recent studies that have been published in the last few weeks uh really cool stuff Sarah let’s just uh get right into it and if you’re

Wondering who Sarah is go to our Instagram Channel you can see there go to previous episodes with that we’ll link down below to those uh you can find out Sarah’s background in terms of sports and education and everything else even in the research realm um but Sarah let’s just start off

With the first study unless Nate do you have anything to cover beforehand or should we just jump right in jump in all right I like it cool uh go ahead Sarah so we’re looking at sha and colleagues their paper published in 2021 and they were looking at female

Runners and whether their response to an increased training volume was related to changes in their their energy intake and their ability to maintain their energy availability um so they weren’t controlling for these variables they were um just observing um whether they did increase their energy intake um

Naturally and in response to hunger cues so um first of all they had them training um at Baseline for four weeks just to establish their normal training volume um that start on the first day of their menstrual cycle so just toine everyone’s Cycles so that they would be

Able to measure as well their ovarian function through their estoile concentration as well so see if their energy intake and training load had an impact also on ovarian function this uh lasted the Baseline period lasted the full length of their menstrual cycle then after that they went into their

Training overload meaning that their volume just increased by 30% um for 4 weeks I think it was yeah ouch yeah that’s hard yeah was some yellow and red days yeah well thankfully then after that four weeks because that’s not sustainable in the long run they had uh two we recovery period where their

Training volume decreased to 50% of their base line volume um so that was that opportunity to absorb all of the training that they had just took themselves through the researchers through this whole period they were looking at their energy intake and then their energy output including their non-training energy expenditure so

Whether that’s they’re commuting to work on a bike or just walking around um if they’ve got a job that requires them to be on their feet so they measured their respon response to training through performance so running performance I think it was a ramp test type uh running

Performance test so a test of failure where it increases in intensity every minute or so so they did I’m afraid to do a ramp test running on a treadmill by the way it’s hard like hard enough on a bike and a know you just you know you

Jump off and put your feet to the side but in really hard workouts on the treadmill and everything else I’ve gotten close to tripping in falling on my face before I’ve done before I’ve gone off the back of the oh no oh no yeah I don’t I I pity these athletes

You know and it was in a gym as well so I was just I was so that’s awesome did you get hurt at all or no I don’t think I even like gave myself a chance to like I just like go you know when you’re like so embarrassed

I was like got straight away I was fine I like had scrapes and stuff but you jump back on like it didn’t happen yeah exactly or did you run away which no I got back on but I think I knew like one of those stupid things that like you’re

Before you take action I was like this could happen and then it happened and I was like you know what it’s probably time to dial it down a little bit that’s good you have a you’re you have better ego management than me I think i’ just run away like I’d Sprint

Out of the gym like after that that was tempting for sure sorry I derailed us um so yeah so that was their measure of performance after the four weeks of overtraining and then as well after the two weeks of rest or decreased D Lo week or two weeks and they categorize them as

Non-functional overreaching or well adapted to the training stimulus and very interestingly the whether they were adapt whether they responded how they responded to the training was directly correlated to their ability to increase their energy intake and maintain energy availability so in other words the athletes who increased the amount they

Ate in response to their increase in calories burned um responded well and those who continued to eat the same amount as they did during Baseline didn’t respond to the training and actually got worse so so I think it’s just a really helpful reminder that one our hunger cues are working for us

They’re not working against us and I think that something even with the rise of zic is um people at least online people talk about silencing hunger cues and it’s absurd because that’s our physiology speaking to us it’s our bodies telling us what they need to work optimally and the idea of trying to

Ignore those is counterproductive to not only our physiology but our performance um and our health yeah yeah exactly um and interestingly oh sorry Nate no keep going keep going well I I was just going to say when they looked at their body composition as well the people that increased their energy

Intake did lose a little bit of body weight but the fat while there was like a downward Trend it wasn’t significant but that’s to say that basically there was no difference like the people who were in this calorie deficit didn’t lose body mass so it wasn’t as if they were

Increasing their power to well if you were recycling it wouldn’t be that they were increasing their power to rate ratio just they suppressed all the other systems in their body wow so they must have been training based on volume mhm well so the two ways that could happen

Is either they put out less power during the the rides or they’re like their neat non- exercise uh whatever activity whatever the calories you burn without just walking around and I know you said you measure for that they must but there’s even just like fidgeting in your

Chair and stuff um that’s a lot of it that’s it’s crazy I think I’ve seen some study where like some people do like 800 calories a day by fidgeting like in your chair um but that could be some other ways why they did not lose weight like lose significantly more weight because

You think if you had a calorie restriction and train the exact same power like 30% more power you would lose weight um at least different than the other group um the OIC thing too the interesting part about that is there’s different categories of people where sure the people training 30% extra

Listen to your hunger cues and a lot of times this category we’re purposely trying to like starve ourselves but there are also OIC people who they do listen to their hunger cues and their hunger cues aren’t really lined up with what you know reality needs for their

Body and that’s that’s kind of great Point yeah the benefit for them and that’s not you know anything their fault a lot of times that can be genetic too just your body is hungrier than it needs to be and that would have been amazing a few thousand years ago right but now

It’s with all the food availability it’s it’s not a a probably a good Gene to have you heard about OIC 2.0 they’re trying to do this is nuts tell me about it Gene editing where the thing that OIC does that makes you less hungry Perman

Like they’re trying to do it I know so be scary like what if they it’s beginning but what if it’s it’s edits it too much right and you’re like wow you’re not hungry anymore ever coming back to this study it was the difference between the two groups was that the

People that ate more they were hungrier so they did eat more whereas it I think a lot of us fall into this trap of intentionally eating less this wasn’t even intentional and it didn’t work in like you know like so if you were to do that as a cyclist

It would probably blunt your adaptations because you’re not fueling yourself for those to occur I think that this and and once again this is just like a single study so I don’t want to say that I’m extrapolating this out to represent everybody or anything else but this does

At least align with an observation that I have had with like certain athletes can’t tolerate a lot of training certain athletes can but just because you can tolerate a lot of training doesn’t mean that you can or I guess just because you can train a lot I shouldn’t say tolerate

But train a lot doesn’t mean that you will get faster there are certain athletes that are also able to eat more they have either an Intuition or a hunger queue or something else that is driving them to be able to fuel that training like Nate this is this kind of

Reminds me um man when remember when we were thinking about like making a nutrition product right and then we were like man what we could do is we could calculate an exact person’s calorie burn and we could send it out and they’ never have to think about it it’d be awesome

Right I still want to do it yeah I know right it’ be cool but when we were thinking about this like one of the main things we were talking about is like look like we want to make people faster that’s like what we care about and there

Are a lot of people they’re getting the right workouts but they’re not fueling themselves and as a result they are not getting faster and it is a problem that needs to be solved and we’ve talked about this a lot of the time even on the Forum when you see an athlete that like

You know when you look at their training everything should be fine but they’re plateauing or they’re tired or something else and if they’re complaining about something like that you always have to ask what are your what’s your fueling like what are you doing on when you’re training and off the bike because like

This study is showing just because you’re ramping up in training volume if your nourishment is not also ramping up to the point where it’s satisfying that increased load then what’s the point you know you’re just driving yourself down a hole Sarah did they say like the amount

Of calories they increase the two groups or or like the I guess it wasn’t two groups it was linear right was is there any like details about how much they increased the calories and how much they got faster or the relationship between the two um I don’t think so because I

Think they didn’t control for the amount so it wasn’t it was based on their normal training patterns so everyone was coming in with different normal training and so that 30% increase I’m sure would result in different increases in calories as well and because it is running as well I think that 30%

Increase and volume like they just increased I think it was was it volume or duration I need to double check that but it’s you know running is a little bit different to cycling too and that like you’re saying like that it could be if they increase 30% duration but

They’re not feeling that then it could just be slower miles and and you know is not um a super well-controlled study but I think it is applicable to us in the real world setting because this is what happens our nutritional status will impact our ability to put out power and

What our perception of increasing duration and volume is what about carbohydrate intake like how did they tell that one that a certain subset of these athletes ate more carbohydrates CU tracking all their calories right yeah they were tracking all their calories so they were able to see that the increase

In calories that was consumed by the people who did end up able to match their energy output were mostly coming from carbohydrates okay and did they measure that sort of Delta between like how many carbohydrates the non-responders or non- adapters I guess took in and how many carbohydrates the adapters did take in

Cuz a lot of the times some people are probably thinking in their mind that it’s like you know go they might be thinking that it’s going from 20 grams an hour to 120 grams an hour or something I yeah I’m sure they did I didn’t note it in my notes but I can

Check that afterwards and then we can add it into the show notes if that makes sense yeah we could splice it in too if we get the answer yeah John’s gonna edit this one so he can he’s he’s up for the sorry John Grace please everybody help be

Editing this one if John didn’t jump in uh they didn’t they didn’t show it but I think the the benef the thing is that when you increase your training volume if you eat more you’ll get faster and if you don’t you won’t which is like Yeah

In our in our heart of hearts people understand this but it’s nice to actually see it put to study right like that it happens and I think lot of us probably don’t I mean I don’t do it too I oh yeah you always you know I’m I’m since I’ve

Been weight training a bunch and I get in the same mode I increase strength a lot I eat more body fat goes up a little bit my belly gets a little bit bigger and I go you know what what if I gain muscle and lose fat at the same time

That would be dope so why don’t I just reduce my calories a little bit and lift weights and then I’ll do both at the same time it’ll be much better and then I don’t have as good of workouts and like in when in weight training what

Happens is like your pump’s not as big and then you you don’t like the last few reps you can’t really push them out and those last reps really really matter and that you then you do like a few sets L at the gym you get tired and the rest of

The day you’re tired and your whole life’s worse and you don’t get you don’t you don’t end up with your goal at all right which isff and you eat less eating so much fun and it’s a good opportunity too to eat uh vegetables and fruit and

Get all that stuff for a longer life like don’t eat I always saw a dune too last night and I ate like half a think on popcorn was it good yeah people say it was the best movie ever on Tik Tok it’s not the best movie ever I’m sorry

It’s good we rated an eight out of 10 my girlfriend eight out of 10 yeah that’s solid yeah thanks for moderating my expectations um so Kyle faen boach the podcast that we recorded with him last week we go into this like long-term Vision in terms of how you really can

Lose weight and keep it off sustainably and Nate I was thinking the other day it’s kind of like a GPS like when you have your location where you’re driving Ding and it’s telling you where to go and you’re like okay so my direction where I need to go is directly north

From where I’m at but because of streets and the way they are at certain points you’re going to have to go East you’re going to have to go west you might even go like South for a short period of time on your way to whatever North is and a

Lot of the time whenever we recognize that we’re not going directly north we go oh I’m going to take control here I’m going to intervene I’m going to do some sort of shortcut like you said like oh slight increase in body fatter or I don’t feel as lean today all right

Forget my original plan of going north and following this really well laid out plan I’m going to just manually decide where to go I’m going to drive through this park and through this person’s house and that’s going to get me back to North again right like it doesn’t work

Out it doesn’t end up well um there’s a long-term strategy for it and that podcast that we had really lays it out cool study Sarah yeah I sharing that one yeah of course and I just add one more thing I think it like you said Nate it

Is very simple and it makes sense like I think a 5-year-old will would be able to understand that if you eat more then you can do more and you’re going to respond better but I think it’s this and actually I have a memory I was with my

Little cousin one time and he was looking at the back of a cereal box and looking at the calories and he was deciding which cereal to eat based on the amount of energy he was going to get from the cereal and I remember just thinking in my head like that makes

Total sense and it’s actually very smart but the way that the cycling culture or endurance culture has added this like extra little Nuance but it just like it interferes with the overemphasis on leanness and it it interferes with basic logic that leanness should be a byproduct of us making smart decisions

About what’s going to make us faster but instead it interferes in that process and it can flip everything on its head so he wanted the most energy right he was like I’m GNA have a great day so which one has the most energy so I can

Go run around yeah and he was so young and I remember and this is probably when you know my brain was starting to get a little bit interrupted by these social factors and and I remember like I was probably 11 or 12 so he was maybe five

Or six and my mind was blowing I was like what like that’s such a pure way and like logical way of thinking about things so yeah yeah I love that good good good example of it uh my first study that I want to share I was looking through on

Recent studies like very recent studies this one’s from 2024 so fresh uh medium rare out of the oven um and this one says effects of a 16-week training program with a paramal intensity Distribution on recreational male cyclist by MCE at all in 2024 and this one caught my eye because it seemed like

When we’re looking at recreational male cyclist 16we training program I was like o I wonder what it was like this sounds a lot like the person that we’re speaking to through the podcast right now in terms of a recreational athlete right I’m going to break down the study

And actually read a portion of the introduction because I think it’s really important to understanding the context of it so this is a longitudinal intervention study meaning that basically longtime course and they didn’t have any sort of control groups instead what they did is they just gave

An intervention to a group of people or in other words a training plan and they measured before and after to see what happened and it was 16 to 18 weeks long um so different duration for different people as to why it was 16 to 18 weeks

Instead of just 16 or 18 I’m not entirely sure and that’s a question mark I have at the end that we’ll cover in a bit but they had 14 male recreational cyclists their average age was 41 years old with a span of plus or minus 7 years these cyclists were

Yeah right there yeah as I’m reading through I’m like bingo card like I’m just checking off the bingo card right it’s sounded a lot like it they’re part of a Cycling Club they regularly participated in Regional and National competitions this also probably sounds like a whole lot of people listen to

This and then in the and then quote in the they were in the early stages of their training process following a period of infrequent cycling in other words this was after the offseason going into the early season so this was coming back after that offseason this is great

I love it that they’re like National and like Regional level Cy cuz it shows that they’re they’re probably pretty fast and well trained yeah and and when we say fast these aren’t Pro cyclists that are like you know 4.5 to 6.5 watts per kilogram but it looks like these

Athletes were coming back after their offseason it looks like they were anywhere from around three up to four and a half watts per kilo so again just like you said Nate right like these athletes are are they’re they’re trained but these aren’t Pros these are people

Like you and I listen to this it’s it’s it’s relatable now here’s an interesting thing and I just want to read this whole thing thing because I think it’s important to understand and this is from the introduction it says coaches and amateur cyclists have searched for the best training methods to improve

Physical performance in cycling with a limited weekly training volume of 6 to 8 hours per week an average cycling frequency of around three rides per week and an average weekly distance of around 163 km for Road cyclists and they found that train Road was the best the end wow

John that’s such a great study like like next one yeah please do more studies like this um it then says unlike Elite and professional athletes amateur cyclists normally have full-time jobs outside of cycling thus they typically have less time to devote to training and recovery and less experience with this

Type of structured training so it must be adapted to their reality naturally these athletes will complete a lower total volume of training in their programs mainly at lower intensities in fact professional cyclists ride a total of approximately 30,000 to 35,000 km per year with a weekly training volume of

700 to 800 km which or of which 77 to 78% is at low intensity now that is stated referencing a specific study recently and I’ll link will link to this episode it looked at a massive study of proc cyclists and looking at their training intensity distribution over

Years and it was not shown that they trained at 77 to 78% of low intensity there are specific studies that have been referenced very often from those tied into the The Narrative of polarized training that perhaps expanded beyond the actual research of polarized training that existed that have

Referenced this sort of thing that it’s always right at roughly 80% but that isn’t the case and for more information on that you can check out that episode and I’ll it on screen exactly right it’s actually the opposite they did a lot of Zone to yes and what we’re seeing here

With like uh this comparison is the 77 or this roughly 80% thing comes from small case studies where it’s basically looking at a small number of athletes typically less than 10 whereas this was looking at a massive amount of athletes over time and it was pro cyclist in the

Pro pelaton including World Championship winning athletes so okay with that out of the way they continue to say the main types of training intensity distributions used by Endurance Sports athletes are as follows paramal training polarized training and threshold training which honestly the whole threshold training thing I don’t know

Why that exists they talk about it like it’s a thing and typically they say that it’s just riding at like threshold the whole time and I honestly don’t know athletes that do that so I don’t know why it keeps being referenced but again it was part of that polarized narrative

That existed that expanded beyond the research kind of took on a life of its own right the literature suggests that polarized training may lead to Greater improvements in endurance performance than other intensity dist distribution approaches however this claim is not supported by all reports and again um

Like we covered in this previous episode and there’s a lot of other research that’s continually emerging on this that that disproves that um again it doesn’t say that polarized doesn’t work but to say that it’s the best um or the only way that you can get faster is inaccurate um according to the

Research therefore the objectives of this study were to analyze the effect of a 16we paramal training intensity Distribution on P4 and I’m going to explain what P4 is in just a bit basically actually I’ll just do it now it’s power at four four Millar of lact

Or M milles of lactate and then and also at power to body mass ratio at that same point in other words when your body reduces 4 Mill per lactate or of lactate in your blood per kilogram when it does that what’s your power and what’s your power to weight that’s what they

Measured they reasured that in recreational cyclists to determine the training Zone with the greatest effect on this change on P4 change in other words they wanted to see okay let’s see what changes their power and their power to weight at this point of four Mill of lactate and then let’s see if that

Coincides with a certain type of like time spent in in a specific Zone okay the The Narrative that exists that has expanded and kind of blown up and taken on a life of its own on the polarized side would absolutely say that that comes from Zone one and a bit of zone

Three but Heavens know zone two right because that was labeled The gry Zone and you avoid that at your peril because it will make you slow and burn you out that’s bur canel the zone three then right exactly right okay so with that understood here’s how it was structured

They had a preex test where they tested those exact things and they did that with a rather unique ramp test where they basically had six minute steps and they increased 30 Watts roughly per step and they were taking blood lactate values at the end of every six minutes

Whether you think that’s the correct method of testing lactate or not argue that in the comments and let us know so that’s what they did there the parameter training and density distribution they followed that the structure planning training plan for 16 to 18 weeks and here’s how they Define their zones which

I think is a bit of a a point of for confusion or perhaps debate down in the comments below as well Zone one was defined as anything in terms of their the power that they produced below 2 milles of lactate Zone 2 was 2 to four milles of lactate and zone three was

Anything above four milles of lactate and we’re going to get into why that might be problematic at the end here but let’s just take that for what it is now they’re training prescription here’s the breakdown Zone one they were they it was suggested to the athletes to spend

Roughly 60% of their training time in zone one then for zone two they would spend roughly 30% of their training time that was one workout per week was zone two intervals zone three they also had a workout that was just once per week and that would roughly constitute 10% of

Their training time then on the weekends and once again super relatable they had a free session where they were they were encouraged to spend their time in zone one but it sounds like the authors are like but they spent a lot of time in zone two because it was also often

Executed as a group ride so in other words it’s uh it it wasn’t this just easy ride so that’s what they had this free session on the weekends and then they had three or two to three workouts throughout the week sound familiar to a lot of us I’m sure it does right that’s

The sort of training plan that a lot of us working individuals maybe with other responsibilities in our lives like family or anything else end up doing so they ended up doing all that and roughly averaged out to around 7 and a half hours a week in terms of training and

Then they did the post test before and after that intervention and what they tested in these tests were body composition again power at 4 Millo power to weight at 4 Millo and then their heart rate at this same point of four mol or in other words of the power they

Were producing there okay wait I a question I think this makes sense but I’m make sure I’m clear on this so in the lab they measured where they were at 2 milles and four mes and then they gave these athletes a Power Range to go right outside for this time exactly right yeah

Okay exactly right that’s how the zones were defined and then they they had the power zones to be because they weren’t doing lactic on the Road no they were not I me I think that everyone that would be so cool though instead of power meters we just have like lactate readers

That are alive people would like that and I know they there’s been devices that have come out that have claimed to either test proxies for that without like without being intravenous but instead I guess not even subcutaneous but through the skin being able to use different light frequencies to figure

That out that sort of thing and I know that there’s wearable lactate monitors that are uh coming out and being tested as well right now and kind of like continuous blood glucose monitors that have existed yeah however those continual continuous blood glucose monitors in terms of their use in

Athletic and Active Endeavors a lot of that has come under scrutiny is they are not very accurate tools when you’re in an active State and that sort of thing in other words or perhaps best said not accurate for the needs that athletes are using them for and I don’t know what

That case would be with lactate but it would be really interesting Nate we’d still use power meters too just so everyone knows because the response is be kind of like a better heart rate almost I don’t I don’t know how yeah yeah it would be cool there’s a lot of

Tricks to it and and it changes a lot having done a lot of blood lactate tests on myself we have blood lactate testers here at the office and I take it home and I test myself quite regularly and I find it interesting to see and I I’m

Always going for like new high scores I know that people yeah I produce insane amount what’s your threshold lactate lactate threshold uh 12 12 most which is usually people’s Max yeah which is just crazy so and that’s why I mean we’ll get to this I think maybe this is AIT problematic so

Uh what what were the results from this so first of all just the overall what they did uh workouts roughly fiveish workouts five to five and a half workouts per week their training stress roughly 537 per week so that’s not easy training that’s like a lot if you can sustain

550 roughly or 500 to 550 TSS uh this is for 16 to 18 weeks it was the average and they didn’t graph this out week over week for the athlet so I don’t know what it looked like individ ually I don’t know if the averages really drug up or

Something I don’t know but with that in mind if he can do that that’s you’re going to get like really fast and if he can sustain that and to Sarah’s point if you’re fueling that you’ll be getting fast like that’s a lot of training volume I could uh John we should

Probably say this I could win cat 3 races 4 to 500 TS per week of trainer road so intervals isn’t like junk stuff uh consistently with recovery maybe some a little bit higher but I could never I could do like one 7 or 800 then I would like crash down

Right that that’s way too much but that would be like sustaining 4 to 500 is enough to win if you’re if you’re steady like a lot of people we’ve seen this too with um you’ve seen this with like national champs and World Champs right

Like they do way less I think a lot of us think we have to do 800 or something, yeah like you said before sorry some people can do that um and I don’t know what that’s not me though I bet rather do the intensity eat and then recover

Especially with time too like with kids and work that’s so much time like twice as much time time out on the road and it’s hard yeah and then in terms of what the training intensity distribution actually was we’re going to compare like Instagram’s whole like Instagram vers

Reality sort of thing remember Zone one was supposed to be 60% Zone 2 was supposed to be 30% and zone three was 10% so what was reality Zone one instead of 60% was 57% good job to them zone two instead of 30% was 31% good job again

And zone three instead of 10% it was 12% good job again these are arounded uh numbers there but that’s very impressive to see like uh pretty close in terms of whether they followed the exact interval structure I have no clue I also don’t know what the interval structure was that they prescribed to

The like we have no we don’t have any insight into that we just know that they followed this training plan that was the overall number so the results they had significant reduction in body mass they had a reduction in fat Mass they had an increase in lean mass a significant

Increase in power at 4 Millo a sign ific increase in power to weight at that same power no significant change in heart rate at that same power which is a good sign right because if the heart rate was really high then that had gone up and

That would be bad that would mean that they’re were probably working harder not necessarily yeah maybe they just had coffee or they were dehydrated or they raised their their Max right like that’s true yeah if you can operate at a higher percentage of your max that’s not a bad

Thing right um that’s a key thing okay then there was no there was then I’m going to quote some more things here the relative Improvement in P4 in other words that is their power at 4 Millo showed a significant correlation with time spent training in zone two so

That’s uh that should throw up alarm Bells okay everybody that the relative Improvement in P4 showed a significant correlation with time spent in training Zone 2 indicating this Zone’s impact on performance Improvement the relative Improvement in P4 showed a significant correlation and relationship mainly with training Zone 2

It seems that spending more time in zone 2 promoted an improvement in both somatic and power variables and recreational cyclist uh so some takeaways here wait cuz P4 that’s right above that’s like threshold right yeah yeah exactly I’m I’m I’m I know these answers I’m saying these so because it’s hard for everyone

Else to sorry inside baseball here sometimes I ask questions I don’t the answer to to help the story go wrong I think people know that after these many years but some people still are like you don’t know like it’s like yeah dude I’ve been this for like 15 years I um but

Sometimes I don’t know what that makes sense though right because it’s like the principle of specificity that if you do stuff around threshold you’re going to raise your threshold right above it right um and it makes a lot of sense but I don’t but it was contradict the

Narrative there’s I know but there’s a lot of research that says that it doesn’t show and you can raise it though with Zone 3 tooo it’s just yeah I know it’s it’s frustrating I’m smiling here on the CU it’s just like so silly that we get it’s it’s key that people take this

In the appropriate context this is not saying that because this worked in this one study that everything else does not work true that’s a huge misunderstanding that people have that like okay this works therefore it’s the only thing and that was the damaging thing and the damaging thing that will continue to

Happen when some sort of new trend arrives and it becomes hot people will say nothing else works this is what works and that’s that’s not true um instead we should always take research for what it is and view it within the context in which it’s appropriate and

Say that in this case this these were the findings and that those findings don’t necessarily disprove anything else narratives perhaps can be disprove but it doesn’t disprove research that existed before um I want to share some takeaways with this like one I want to see something else to that I’m sorry

Interrup you two just to show how on the side I am of that polarized is not bad we take the we took the polarized plans and our our regular like you know base build Special plans ran them through AFP detection and simulated like athletes would run these through them the

Predicted result on both the same it was in with like Plus or two minus Watts depending on like factors of people but it was basically the same when matched for volume uh great like TSS not not like time uh so do whatever fits best for you like that’s exactly it Nate I

Think that that’s the key is that athlet start looking for what is easiest to follow for me like what can I be the most consistent with and honestly if somebody gives you a hard time about that and somebody tells you like the way that you’re doing some things is totally

Wrong look like if it’s what you can sustainably do do it because that’s what’s going to perform the best and deliver the best training outcomes probably make you happier less frustrated um give you more time to be able to spend with the rest of your family whatever else like it’s just

Instead of finding ways just because it’s Trend just because there’s a Trend if it introduces a lot of other barri like barriers and complexity in your life it’s probably not worth it you know and it’s important thing to keep in mind and for a lot of people polarized

Training is really easy to follow because it’s like I only have two hard workouts a week and in some cases uh what you can do is you can follow like our master’s plans because they Implement that same principle and we found that a lot of athletes said I

Really like this because it helps me be consistent with my training so that’s one of the reasons why we did that with those Master’s plans is because it’s going to help athletes get more consistent With It While others say there’s no way I could do this I just

Simply don’t have the time to be able to put in the endurance sort of stuff on the weekends that would allow that so it’s just you know there’s options for everybody um another interesting part of this study is that they all lost weight and you know I’m thinking that if they

Came back from time off usually you know people can gain uh a little B more weight they’ll be higher than their natural like set point for cycling but what to Sarah’s previous study the idea that uh maybe if they all ate a little more they all would have got a little bit bit

Faster cuz they did improve lean body mass and lowered body fat and lost weight which makes me think that if they ate more could they have improved more lean body mass right at the same time and got a little bit faster especially if it’s so early in the season if I this

Is this is Up For Debate people but I if I am going to turn my body composition and change my weight I’d rather have it be a slow thing all the way to my aace then have it be a big thing in the winter or like early winter and then

Stay lean the whole time although my beach body rather have be lean the whole time my weight liting but the like that slow kind of change where I’m really fueling and getting the recovery would be best and that’s I love how those two that thing that Sarah said is man I

Preach this so much about eating and then I fall in the same trap all the time I’m going to I’m going to hit like 4,000 calories for 16 weeks once just in a row to wait gain like 10 lbs and just see what happens uh anyway go ahead you feel amazing yeah nothing

Takeways uh we don’t know the exact interval structure anything regarding the subjective feedback of the athletes like who knows maybe these athletes were like this was too much training for me maybe it wasn’t we don’t know any of that stuff we don’t we don’t know we don’t even know compliance rate or

Anything else we also don’t know what their free rides or group rides were actually like in terms of training stimulus looking at it it seems that it largely contributed to a decent amount of zone or like Zone one and zone two time is what the Searchers say is what

It was mostly spent as um but we just don’t know and then maybe one of the biggest ones to me the demarcation of these zones are commonly referenced and suggested as the default for three Zone models but using like such strict parameters it does not apply equally to

All athletes um I I figured that the first time I took a lactate test the reason my lactate numbers were so high is maybe I was just like pre-diabetic and I was honestly pretty scared at first like after like yeah I don’t I I had like I was what’s going on with my

Body right um and even some doctors I remember like reached out after the podcast with the best intentions but they’re like you know chronically High lactate is like a very dangerous thing and a thing that ties with morbidity and I know that I understand that sort of measurement when you’re talking about a

Person that’s you know even like end of life patience and everything else that’s a that’s one of the things that they measure I’ve since just learned that some people are higher producers than others and there’s a lot of different things that can influence this and Dr Tim poar we’ve mentioned him many times

We’ve had him on the podcast before uh he’s in the lab doing the research so so this is the person like the man in the arena so to speak and what he does for fun if you can believe it or not is research and view other research like

That’s like what he that’s like what he does when he has like free time and this is a common thing that he brings up that that if you define thresholds strictly at four Millo or two perhaps that’s not the best approach rather than looking at what is their maximal lactate steady

State and you can test that through many different options and figure out what that is and if that number is four if that’s three if that’s 12 whatever it is that’s what their maximal lactate steady state is and I think that that’s an important thing for athletes to keep in

Mind and it’s also now granted it does seem like the majority of athletes do seem to fall close to these sort of numbers but it’s kind of like heart rate you know like you can kind of do the 220 minus your age and it’s probably pretty close uh then there somebody that’s

Going to be a Hummingbird at 220 and there’s somebody that’s just going to be you know huge stroke volume maybe but their Max is like 140 150 it’s it’s different for individuals so it’s just important not to look at lactate as something that’s so harsh but anyways

The main thing though is that it does seem to contradict the two main narratives of the gray Zone and anything but polarized is the best so hopefully we’re now reaching this era where the initial hype around that is has allowed us to has kind of faded to allow us to

Actually look objectively at things here and and there’s more and more research on this constantly you can use Google Scholar it’s a free research or free resource for all of us that we can all use and you can look at different research there and read it and I really

Recommend it and it’s it’s really cool to see all this research coming out in response to how popular that narrative became and we’re getting a lot more insight into it it’s really cool I really like this John because you said this study and it shows that uh it kind

Of get pushes something we’ve been saying that you know three Zone does work but you also just said hey there’s some flaws with this but these zones might not be like exactly correct so that let let’s look at other research and too and that’s what I love about

Like the scientific mind on that cuz we could have you could have left that part out and just been like this is what it is yeah right and you it wasn’t even a study you like you brought up from other stuff you knew and then uh took apart

The not took apart but you just qu you know said there could be these issues and that’s what every study should have there could be these issues and just no disrespect to these scientists they’re like every single study especially with the human body is so so complex uh there

Are things study doesn’t exist yeah so you look at the the body literature right you look at a bunch of things measured a bunch of different ways and see what the whole literature says in general moving towards a certain way correct yeah it’s always very tempting

To the part of any person inside to look at research through their own personal lens and become incentivized when you review it and everything else instead I encourage people to look at everything with curiosity and diligence and if you do that and for our like uh for our own

Interest if there was a study that came out with like a Training Method that was far superior you know how fast we would Implement that like yeah totally that would be we would make so much money if there’s something that made you like twice as fast have as much of time we

Would do that so fast and want to be the first people on it we wouldn’t just sit here and be like no that’s awful uh and put all this money against it like we’re way better at building things than marketing things so it would be easier

Just to uh to build it and and do it yeah so we’re designed to build that’s our incentive yeah yeah uh so anyways I thought it was a really cool study and thank you to the researchers for for carrying that out it’s really cool and thanks for sharing all those learnings

Sarah you have an X study that actually looks at athletes from the spring Classics which is going on right now um which like by the way it’s been probably the best season of racing that I can remember so far already in terms of what we’ve been seeing in race results Nate

Have you seen the sorry have you seen these new TT helmets yet I don’t I don’t know if you have I have not I’m about to blow internet show me jro yeah so jro has yeah jro has a new TC helmet it’s called the arrowhead 2 and the UCI is

Moving to ban it already it is wild it is pointy in the front and super long and then it drapes quite low over to the shoulders oh my goodness Space Balls next level oh yeah um oh Siri’s even chiming in on it but it’s it’s insane uh to see it looks otherworldly

When you see yonas vingard in in and viago in particular in position with with it holy cow does it look fast it’s amazing to see and I simultaneously hate it because of the Aesthetics and love it because I think that this is really cool to see jro and visma Lisa bike those two

Teams work together to make something where they’re just like we don’t care what it looks like we care about speed and we care about data and that’s super cool and I hope the UCI doesn’t ban it it makes sense cuz like the width is making it so that it goes to the

Shoulders so instead of having like your shoulders be this uh this blunt Edge it kind of tapers them that the front of the helmet all the way to the shoulders and then the nose instead of coming straight down it goes way farther almost down to the like it it goes like a kind

Of a straight edge almost down to the chin and touch yeah and it should touch it’s kind of like designed to close off that frontal area between your your chin and your hands right It’s cool cuz what happens is instead of the the visor being right in front of your eyes it

Looks like it’s four or 5 in out and even the forehead it’s farther away than the nose so it really pushes it forward and you know I actually love the coverage of the helmet too I don’t know where it’s sturdy and stuff but the fact that it uh doesn’t look like you’re

Going to smash your face cuz you hit the nose of the helmet before you hit your face or a lot of times you you tilt up that helmet right that people do to try to and then you’re going to smash your face oh that being a person who’s hit

Their face on a rock mountain biking at 24 I don’t it always goes up 29 stitches in my head when I do I have 36 it hurts so bad and it was that I don’t know if I sell have symptoms but it was like over a year of symptoms on that you

Don’t want to smash your face in the pavement like put your helmet down people it’s not worth the 5 Seconds you’re going to save oh yeah and TT helmets in particular are so dangerous with this um like they’re typically very minimal in terms of protection and it’s all about aerodynamic performance and I

Will say the cool part about this Juro one even though it looks like it’s shooting off like a rhino horn in front of your head uh when you can see underneath it’s all foam it’s helmet foam like the sort of foam that is a helmet is made of

Instead of it just being like a shell that’s sticking way out there it actually seems I don’t know across the board I haven’t seen the helmet but it seems like this might actually be safer than most TT helmets if at least for no other reason than how you wear it

Because like Nate said and I’ve done this too and it’s dumb but I get on a bike where I look at the ground and I don’t even look up and the bike doesn’t handle and the brakes are terrible and on that one I take my helmet and I slide

It back as far as I can so that my forehead’s basically entirely exposed but this is when I don’t need that way it’s more aerodynamic you know so the most dangerous position I’m in like for just slipping out right where that front helmet slips out and you go down your

Collar bone face and helmet that’s so sketchy yeah so I I and UCI if you ban this because apparently jro did their homework and it’s like pushed to the absolute limits in terms of size and position and all that stuff but it looks like it’s safer and if the UCI bans this

I’ll be so sad like why they got to ban cool stuff I know would they effective or why would they what’s the motive to ban it yeah everyone can buy it right so well that they will be released it’s not released yet but it’s been approved by

The UCI so first of all it’s been approved and now they’re saying we’re going to revisit the regulations they Bann specialized has one with like a sock that you wear over your head and that’s supposed to make like slightly increase aerodynamics and stuff and they’re banned the sock now and they say

They’re going to possibly ban this one and I think that they just ban it because um number one there are people saying like how is this safe but really honestly let’s all step back a lot of it is Aesthetics people don’t like the way it looks and that’s that’s gotten a lot

Of the purists very upset and that’s why they are even entertaining the concept of looking at this thing I would assume so it’s frustrating uh for sure I wish the UCI was like and honestly I wish they were pushing the envelope and encouraging Brands to innovate you know

And I think the TT should be like those like human powered machines where in the shells yeah like let’s see them go like 95 mph right like as fast as they can and be technology driven too that would be really cool and the regular s can be other stuff TR athletes will hopefully

Be able to wear this though yes I think they will yeah um which is super exciting so I’m sorry Sarah we totally derailed it just really exciting racing season this year um but spring Classics and back to your study sorry go ahead yeah oh sorry Sarah well we were wanting to look at

What these professional writers are eating um during these spring Classics cuz when the tur to France was going on uh last year we looked into what was it that was fueling these athletes to do these crazy Feats like you know Racing for 3 weeks but then the spring Classics

They’re probably more similar to the races that um people like us might find ourselves doing um which are really long single day races um where there might be um quite a few in a short period of time but we’ve got those rest days in between to recover and replenish glycogen stores and

Everything else so we were looking at a study by hiura and colleagues I’m not sure if that’s how you use say her name but she’s everywhere and she’s done some really interesting research on things like energy availability and in professional cyclist so um which if you’re hearing this Dr hakira first of

All uh if you’re hearing this we would love to have you on the podcast it’d be great so if you if you’d be willing to be F because you have done so much interesting research so definitely so they had six male professional cyclists during the 2018 spring Classics and they were

Looking at how much they ate pre- during and post race and to see basically if they matched their energy output and energy intake and whether there was any impact on um certain hormonal uh markers as well this was just over 8 day uh an 8 day period

Um there were four separate um single day races and what they found was that energy availability was low on Race days but they manag to recover that then uh during rest days but on race day so if we’re like thinking about energy availability in terms of the calories

Per kilogram of fat free Mass which I know you guys talked about last week on the podcast um with Dr faff andback and there’s debate around a video have a video that will link to that guides people through how to calculate that yeah yeah and there’s uh optimal

Threshold Jonathan do you remember what that threshold is that yeah it’s measured slightly different in terms of the context that we’ll be looking at here because it’s talking about calories not grams of a specif of like carbohydrate but it’s typically somewhere around 35 grams per kilogram is where you’re

Going to start to lose weight and somewhere around 40ish is where you’ll start to stabilize it’s recommended in a lot of the research that athletes consider 45 to 50 if they are trying to get faster and then if they are trying to optimize their body composition that

They can consider going down to 35 to 30 below that and you increase the risks of running into low energy availability in a critical situation uh you you increase those risks a lot yeah so they found that on Race days they had 14 kilo calories per kilogram of fat free Mass

Which is so low very low yeah and even within that 8-day period and having those recovery days in between they found that there was detrimental effects on testosterone and I think it was just testosterone but there might a couple of other hormonal markers so just a even

Just those one or two three four days to have those significant effects is um worth bearing in mind and for people like us too what was that Jonathan yeah and and I just want to like the context is really important here if anybody has tried to calculate their energy

Availability rate like this in terms of calories per kilogram of fat free mass that you have if you have a big day spring Classics are huge days it is near impossible to fuel at 45 50 or even like 35 it’s so hard especially with these athletes the amount of calories that

They are burning when they are riding out there that’s why we’re seeing these numbers so low because Sarah you pointed out that before the event they were actually taking in what seems like a good amount of calories right it’s just probably the hole they put themselves in

Because of the racing that’s why the day ended up being at 14 calories per kilogram of fat-free Mass right and when they break it down and the study it is interesting because while it is very difficult to hit those um targets we can see where they could have improved so in

The pre-race like Jonathan said they were able to hit those targets which is around 3 G and this is specifically referring to carbohydrates because that’s kind of where the emphasis should be on when we’re going through a race period like this and so the target pre-

Raise should be 3 G per kilogram um of body weight which for the 75 kilogram rer is around a th000 calories um of just from carbs yeah just from carbs before the race um interesting big breakfast yeah definitely that’s hard um and within roughly 3 hours of the race

But I will say that it is interesting that they were able to hit that and I think I can relate to being really dialed in before a race and then once the race starts kind of it being less of a priority which we see from in these

Cyclists as well and this is their job this is to um race and perform so and look after their bodies but they during the race were only on average hitting around 51 grams an hour yeah czy this is 2018 this is 2018 yeah I’d be so curious to have them

Do this study again this year what the difference is I guarantee you it’s so much higher CU it wasn’t ago that that sort of narrative was like eating is cheating I want to see a 20 24 Rider eating 160 grams go against the ones

Going one or 50 56 or 54 on a 7h hour day yes that’s going to be such a huge difference by the end of the day yeah oh yeah definitely and I think it feels almost like the research is a little bit lagging behind on the athletes at this

Point um so even when those recommendations are you know still I see it pop up and the it might be yeah from like 2020 still This research that you see the 60 to 90 grams on our recommendations but as you guys have said we’ve had people on the podcast

Telling us that they’re pushing that envelope and benefiting from it um so it’s a good reminder for all of us as well your body will be unique and if you can figure out what works for you then do that as opposed to um following guidelines specifically all the time and then post

Race again they weren’t very good at hitting those targets um so uh immediately after or within the 3 hours after the race they should be kind of consuming similar amounts of carbohydrates as they were before the race so for that 75 kgam Rider again should be roughly 1,000 calories and

They were you know not it was just a little bit more than half of that in the 3 hours after the Race 24 hours after the race that’s the time where we need to be replenishing those fuel sources especially if we’ve got another race coming up in the next day or two and

Writers were hitting 7.4 G per kilogram of body weight as opposed to the 10 G per kilogram of body weight that they should be going for um which is a difference of about calories so it’s significant yeah um and to give you an idea again for the 75 kog

Ryder it would be around 3,000 calories that they should be getting within that 24 and this is from carbohydrates alone again within that 24 hours after the race 10’s hard to do 10 is really i’ I’ve done it you got a A lot of juice um

I think I’ve seen you do that before it’s disturbing to watch it is should live stream it um there’s my own twitch you guys uh do you have problems eating after a race the day after a race a hard race yeah it’s hard man it’s hard you

Feel awful Nate you know how like for so long there was this narrative and I’m not saying that this is just because of nutrition but there’s this narrative that like you couldn’t do more than two Iron Man’s a year do you remember that like like that like we’re talking did

Well yeah yeah and then now you see a lot of athletes that can race like many like eight ir and still perform really really well and they can Peak get one of those and I wonder you know cuz nutrition has changed so much since 2018 in terms of practically speaking what it

Seems the Riders are doing has changed a lot and one of the things that I hear really commonly with like t uh pogacha is that people say like from the outside in he races too much and like he’s racing too much and that’s why he’s not perform and that’s like why he didn’t

Win the Tour to France when in reality winning the tour to France is insanely hard especially when you’re going against a team that Jonas vingo has and an athlete like Jonas vingo right so it’s like the super team and T still almost is is like right there I wonder

Though like the reason that like number one t loves racing and if anybody watched the Strat of bian this weekend he bab rued it he shot called it he was like yeah 80 kilometers to go more than halfway through the race I’m going to attack and that’s what he told people

Beforehand and everyone was like ha haa that’s so funny and he attacked and the best riders in the world were with him and he just rolled away from them and he went solo and pulled a 4-minute gap and it was and he held it for the whole race

These sort of performances like he is able to do pretty consistently throughout the year and I would love to know like how much of this like I know taty’s really excited Tat’s really excited race but he probably feels like a beast so he when he’s done with the

Race I bet he’s consuming more right after and more the days after than what these athletes were in 2018 as a result that’s why he can come back and that’s why he can race and race at a high level and race for a win again we used to see

Athletes having to really pick their days to like no I’m not peing for Flanders I’m peing for Ru and Ru is the one I’m going for but now we have pidcock vaner Vanderpool pater all these and all these athletes they’re like no I’m trying to win as many Classics as I

Can so they’re racing as much as they can and they’re doing it and I wonder if nutrition has enabled this you know to a certain degree to be able to rebound cuz Sarah this is like lower than what you’d expect for like these sort of athletes that are outputting so much power you

Know yeah definitely but yeah interesting that um yeah they did experience those hormonal disruptions in that short period of time and yeah it’s a good reminder to us as well that we can really either work to our physiology in a good place during these like hard rcing even training periods or we can

Not pay attention to the details and let things slide and ultimately our performance slide so yeah I would really be interested to see on the women’s side of things if we could get this study same race but like men’s pelaton and then women’s pelaton that would be fascinating because I

Think the additional societal pressures that we’ve mentioned in our podcast also are likely having a great impact on these professional cyclist women athletes too and what I would love to see is if these athletes are able to push those cares aside and able to operate in their own realm like with

Nourishment if they are that would be it’d be so cool to see and I wonder if that’s why we’re seeing now with the pro women’s racing like Str biani and everything else that we just had it’s insane like the the parody is so high like there’s so much battling going on

And the paces also are faster than they used to be and everything else I you know fueling it’s just yeah changing everything the record now but like even just it’s important though seeing the the information like it is definitely something that I still struggle with but it pops into my head

Multiple times a day and it I think it’s not U putting the cares aside type thing I don’t think it’s as simple as that but it is something that can like slowly help you to change behaviors and habits over time which when it pays off it’s like oh that it reinforces is the

Behavior um so hopefully with the us sharing this information as well well too it’s a lifetime of one kind of programming and then especially for women there’s like the whole society programming of like leanness and thinness and then cycling on top of that or like running or Triathlon that’s like

Two different layers where men we don’t have you know they’re like oh Dad bod is is good or something like that we don’t we only have it’s not the same right and it’s not really tied to our masculinity or something like that where it might be on the woman’s side of femininity or

Something you know like the patriarch you all that sort of stuff but it’s it’s extra hard so I think that it is although we do say it a lot it’s even like I said for myself it’s hard for me to deprogram myself and I’m hear this probably more than anyone else uh

Listening to this podcast one of the besides you know you you to um yeah and I and I know better but it’s just tough yeah yeah so it’d be really cool Dr haura maybe you’re working on this uh on This research right now that’d be super cool if you could share something with

Us so oh John okay uh yeah I want to pop into something really quick you uh you talked about this with your lactic threshold I was going to mentioned this but I was uh listening to Dr Peta aa aa aa I never say his name right AA righta

Yeah he’s actually a trainer Road user super cool um super high in cyclist I mean sorry uh scientist and cyclist yeah yeah he um but he was saying how uh you know what’s the biggest correlation for uh longevity is V2 Max pretty much and you know I don’t know if

That’s correlation or causation right but basically of all the things you can measure the best correlation is having a high V2 Max and the fittest people live the longest compared to not that makes sense right but it’s that’s so interesting and you know that’s really your power to weight ratio and how much

Again the power side is the easier one to raise usually but also lowering your your weight if you’re you know very high percent body fat but you can do that we talk about that over time not really fast uh it just really interesting to think about that rather than so so I

Think John has a like you’re about like what 76 VO2 max when we measured you yeah something like that that’s I was 74 and and I was and I want to do another test if anybody local to our region or anything else has a met cart let me know

I’d love to do it that is really really high especially for an amateur and uh so when John was talking about his lactic threshold or his blood lactate the V2 Max is extremely high John’s going to live forever thanks Nick yeah yeah speaking V to Max and before I get into the last

Study that I want to share here that really dovetails well with Sarah’s but uh there’s a lot of whispers about Christian blumenfeld’s recent V2 Max test and it was in the Norwegian Method video and basically they were like we think the equipment’s broken we need to

Do a full tear down and we need to look at this thing there’s no way it can be that high everything else there’s rumors of it being like that he’s hit 100 um we’ll see uh the guy’s I mean I think if anybody I’ve ever seen an athlete have a

High VO2 max that would be the one uh he’s like seems to be the most powerful gifted athlete I’ve ever seen in endurance sport but that’ll be really interesting to see if and if and when that comes out so I think the previous high was also if I remember correctly a

Norwegian athlete a cyclist a young one and I believe it he scored 98 and they validated the equipment and they went through and tested the whole thing and then he took another test where he was I think 94 or 96 but if you look at the

Body fat that he or body weight that he lost which was mostly I think from body fat or something but if you look at the body weight he lost it’s effectively like yes it checks out his like he should be able to score a 98 so that was

Years ago and he didn’t end up actually continuing in his career of professional cycling um but if we have Christian who scores a 100 that would be amazing I there’s a book uh faster I think it was in this book and they’re talking about the genes that it takes to like have

Some of a high VO2 max and there’s so many of them and it’s so like unlikely for them all to be like maxed out but if were I want to say like the estimated V2 Max was I want it was either 250 or 800 or something like something incredibly

Hard but no one it’s like you know the the the trillions or something the amount of that would a human would actually have all of those genes together but the so when somebody does come along with the billions of people that come up and there’s that one person

That does inch it up a little bit like hey that could be a that could be a thing and I just dream of the day that somebody has yeah like this Superman type of Superwoman person who comes yeah hopefully it is a woman right that be so

Dope like that would be amazing I think that uh during the last episode that you us three recorded together I was blown away because I learned that the V2 Max of dogs and that they can operate at 220 and it’s like chill for them which is

Just like crazy so that’s why they run around you right like just over again when you’re running on the trail they’re back and forth back and forth back and forth exactly triple the distance okay my next study it’s called the tour to France also possible for Mortals a

Comparison of recreational and a world tour cyclist from uh bar Heil in 2023 a journal of Applied physiology a super cool observational case study that looked at a 58-year-old recreational male who rode the whole tour one week before the tour to France he’s 191 CM or

6′ 3 in 96 kg or 21 PBS and had an estimated V2 Max of 45 so this is not a super athlete like we were just talking about this is a very average a like uh cyclist right if you’re listening to this this guy is proof that you could

Ride the tour to France which is pretty crazy so I read this one because I thought it’d be really interesting but I didn’t know if I get a good takeaway from it um I want to compare the pro cyclist as well really quick 180 cm so we’re talking like roughly around my

Height so like a 6 foot athlete and then in this case this athlete being 67 kilograms so that’s what like 45ish pounds and then an 80 V2 Max so very very fit person um yeah the recreational is 80 uh this is no this is the Pro was like yeah yeah if they’re recreational

They need a career change yeah um so uh okay the measures that this is where it gets really interesting to me and it’s going to prove a point that Nate has mentioned about aerodynamics before with amateurs or quote slow people if you consider yourself like into this group

This is really interesting so the time of completion I’m going to give two both for the amateur athlete first and then the pro athlete second for all of these numbers okay time of completion amateur athlete it took them 158 hours to do the tour to France it took the pro only 87

Hours so that’s nearly double the time which is pretty crazy when you think of that average power the amateur did 144 Watts while the pro did 232 Watts so again I’m looking at probably some sort of like a maybe a domestique roll or something else um who knows it might not

Be but this is just me I’m always really curious the was in the tour so they had like the Pelon correct yep yeah uh average intensity factor for the amateur it was 65 for the pro it was 74 so in other words lower intensity for the average athlete I don’t think this

Average athlete by the way was like I’m just going to Pace myself I’m sandbagging myself I think he was from what it sounds like it was extremely hard to just get through this thing uh total TSS this is where it gets interesting remember I said one had a

Lower intensity factor the amateur did 694 TSS over the period of three weeks whereas the pro did 4753 so the amateur did substantially more TSS I probably should have prefaced this whole thing with like a fun game question of two athletes do to the tour to fronts one’s a recreational athlete

One’s a pro athlete which one burns more calories right um average watt kg for the amateur athlete 1.5 watts per kilogram for the pro 3.45 watts per kilogram now here’s the interesting thing for the average to Total daily energy expenditure the amateur burned more calories 8580 calories per day insane whereas the

Pro was roughly 7,98 calories per day so the amateur was burning about 4.3 times their basil metabolic rate while the pro was burning around 3.8 times their basil metabolic rate the the they didn’t have the Pelon right so the the amateur go in the wind yeah which is rough that’s part

Of it the biggest thing is time and this is huge like uh Nate remember when specialized started coming out and they started talking about aerodynamics and everyone was like and they had the wind tunnel videos and everyone was like oh yeah whatever that’s for the fast people

I don’t need that but actually if you’re out on course longer it’s crucial and even more impactful in many cases to have the aerodynamic efficiency gains on board because you’re spending more time on course right so even though you may be a person that goes out and you have a

7h hour bike split at an Iron Man really it’s beneficial for you for all seven hours it’s not like you know you’re going super slow as long as you’re going above like 13 M an hour that the threshold for aerodynamic efficiency then it’s it’s benefiting you and this

Is the interesting thing a lot of us athletes we sign up for something like a big uh like Unbound or something else and we go oh yeah those pro athletes are probably taking in a huge amount of carbs and it makes sense because boy they burn a lot of calories but you are

Also burning a huge amount of calories by the end of that race because you have to ride the same course and it’s going to take you way longer and in some cases you might be burning even more it’s a really important thing to keep in mind

The time is probably not it it’s the probably just the pellaton because they’re going the same distance uh yeah that the time though look at the time time of completion 158 hours versus 87 hours that’s different that’s a massive amount of time we’re nearly dealing with

Double the amount of time that a person is out being active pedaling a bike versus not right yeah but it’s it’s pelaton all the time I think no I can show you later the pelaton does account for the fact account for the fact that an athlete that does have such

A high level is 232 Watts why their power is lower so perhaps if you’re looking at it from the pro athlete side you could say oh this is why they weren’t higher but this athlete they still it sounds like this athlete wasn’t entirely alone I think that they had

Three to four other people with them so it’s not like this athlete was just never getting a draft the whole time it’s also worth noting different circumstances right if these athletes this athlete wrote it a week ahead maybe they had terrible headwinds or maybe they had wonderful Tailwinds the whole

Time like you know we don’t know what they had and we can’t compare it in that respect we turn this into an algorithm helper everyone in the comments tell us who’s right and then discuss and comment as much as you can yeah I think time is way underappreciated in terms of why you

Need to make sure that you’re fueling a lot of athletes is saying well I’m slow so I’m fine with just not feeling very much and it’s you know I don’t have to do a lot because I don’t burn a lot again going back to it if riding at like

140 Watts for an hour you’re burning 80 or 90 grams of carbs per hour right there just you know I know you might be burning fat too but man it’s uh it’s pretty substantial in terms of the impact that your time has out on course in terms of how many calories you burn

You have to be a very very small person to be able to eat more than you expend like oh yeah especially to be fit enough to do a big ride it’s very I’d have to do some math but you have to be very very small like probably

Under 100 PB I’m guessing yeah and here’s the other part of this too that you have to to keep in mind um this athlete in terms of them doing like 144 watts is what they average for that entire race and this is not a small athlete but 144 Watts again if you’re

Riding at that sort of level that whole time you’re burning a huge amount of carbohydrate over the course of that whole time when you’re out on course good way to look at this look at your train of Road training or like look at a workout and then look at the 60 versus

90minut version of your workout and look at how many more calories you burn when you add 30 more minutes to your workout when it goes from a a threshold workout that was going to be 60 Minutes versus 90 minutes you burn a lot more calories and here’s the other interesting thing

Is you can look at like a a Tempo workout that’s 60 minutes and a threshold workout that’s 60 minutes and that Delta is likely going to be smaller between those two workouts than it is when you go from a 60-minute to a 90-minute workout just that time really

Does add up so that’s my my message to all of you here if you’re listening to this and you have big rides coming up don’t under fuel because you’re not pro uh you have other reasons also that are going to drive up the need for you to be

Able to fuel so it’s it’s really important key thing and tell me that Nate’s wrong down in the comments that’d be great I appreciate that so if you have questions for the podcast or topics you want us to explore let us know down in the comments Below on

Spotify you can let us know directly there it’s super easy you can also watch us on Spotify and you can submit your questions at trainer road.com podcast uh we’ll talk to you all next week thanks everybody take care byebye