Back in the 2010 and 2011 cycling season a very young cyclist won every single race he attended. He was so successful that stepping up to the junior ranks he just failed to win four out of all races he went for.
Based on his success in cycling he sets his sights on becoming a professional cyclist. There was no one stopping him. He was such a strong rider that he became the first junior to defend his world title in 2013. Stepping up to the under-23 ranks it all still went flawless for him. So flawless that just as a first-year in the under-23 he could seal his first professional win on the road in 2014.
From that point on it was clear that the now grown young men wouldn’t only be a professional cyclist but also set the base to become one of the most successful ones.
Nowadays he has achieved a portfolio that any other pro cyclist can only dream of. He won multiple monuments more than once, wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France and even became world champion on the road along the way.
His name is Mathieu van der Poel.
He has a special trait that lays the foundation for his huge race success. Van der Poel is very durable or fatigue resistant. According to his coach Kristof De Kegel, van der Poel doesn’t have the highest numbers. In fact, there are riders in his team with better numbers. But van der Poels numbers simply don’t drop-off as much during a race. What he can do in the first hour of the race, he can replicate in the fifth.
Durability is nowadays deemed the fourth endurance performance parameter alongside VO2max, lactate threshold, and efficiency.
Research has found that World-Tour pros are more durable than pro-tour or under-23 riders. Therefore, World-Tour pros can produce higher power numbers so late in the race and drop their competitors.
Of course, Mathieu van der Poel is an extreme example. He is one of the most gifted bike racers of his generation. But durability isn’t purely a trait reserved for the best. In fact, it’s not even a trait that requires fancy training or praised supplements. With the right approach you too can become more durable. But it’s a hard pill to swallow for many cyclists.
The Harsh Truth About Durability
If you aim to improve your durability and ride faster for longer, there’s one thing popping up again and again in the literature and across endurance sports.
Be it amateurs or professionals, high-profile or low-profile cyclists, runners or triathletes.
Those athletes who spend most of their training time at low-intensity below the first lactate threshold (LT1) show the fastest competition times or highest durability.
For example, research on recreational runners has shown that those runners who kept their intensity distribution closest to a polarized distribution, think 80/20, improved their 10k race time more compared to runners who spent more time above LT1 or the tempo zone. In fact, even in Iron Man triathletes research found that triathletes who spent more time at low-intensity showed faster finishing times compared to triathletes who spent more time above the first lactate threshold. And even in pro cyclists, the ones who dedicated most of their training time to easy zone 2 endurance rides had the greatest durability in pre-fatigued max efforts.
So no, maintaining a proper training intensity distribution isn’t only useful for pro cyclists but particularly beneficial for amateurs as well.
However, this doesn’t mean all you will be doing is riding around easygoing each day. For example, a cyclist training 10 hours a week might dedicate 8.5-9 hours per week to easy training, and the remaining 1-1.5 hours to intensive training. That simple is an 80/20 split. But the juice is so worth the squeeze.
How to Become More Durable
There are many complementing effects by simply changing this single variable that is intensity distribution. According to a 2010 review on training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes it’s the volume of easy training that builds the base for tolerating and responding well to high-intensity training.
But why are easy zone 2 endurance rides so effective? On the one hand, they don’t lead to substantial stress and fatigue, meaning you can repeat them very frequently and at a high volume without disturbing your critical interval work. On the other hand, the stress you provide is still high enough to make significant gains. Sport scientist and researcher Dr. Stephen Seiler divides the durability that low-intensity creates the base for into two components:
- Low-Intensity Durability: The duration your zone 2 endurance power can be maintained without significant increase in physiological cost, i.e. heart rate drifts upward for the same power.
- High-Intensity Repeatability: The ability to repeat periods of work above your FTP during training or racing without a loss of power.
This is the key for durability. If you can push similar watts above your FTP late in the race compared to early on you can increase your odds of success significantly. But to do so there’s no way around proper steady zone 2 endurance rides, done over and over again. You may ask yourself right now, “What is proper zone 2 pace?” I suggest you choose a power output of 50-60% of your FTP as a start. To double check if you are still below your first lactate threshold check your ventilation. If you can speak in full sentences you’re good, if not, well go slower. It’s really that simple.
Another big thing that focusing on low-intensity will change is the quality of your interval workouts.
Numerous studies discovered that two or three weekly threshold or HIT sessions are optimal and an increase in high-intensity frequency won’t lead to further improvements and only induce symptoms of overreaching and overtraining. In other words, you can just shoot two to three shots per week. And the best way to hit your targets is by taking it easy when you’re not shooting. In fact, a study on the coach-athlete relationship found that athletes ride harder than planned on easy days and easier than planned on hard days.
Flipping this approach can make the difference between a breakthrough performance and just trying to hold the wheel.
Measure Your Progress
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the way you can measure your progress for your zone 2 endurance rides.
No matter how trained you are, one phenomenon you will always display even in easy rides is cardiac drift. This phenomenon involves your heart rate gradually increasing during prolonged exercise without a change in power.
Now, what you are looking for is the depth of your cardiac drift. After a period of dedicated training you want to see a less rapid increase in heart rate over time for zone 2 rides of similar duration and profile. Essentially, you are improving your low-intensity durability. A lower heart rate increase indicates that your body is more durable in extended rides.
One easy way to track your cardiac drift is using the efficiency factor in TrainingPeaks. The efficiency factor is normalized power divided by average heart rate. So if your efficiency factor goes up, your absolute heart rate is lower for the same normalized power.
So as you can see it’s just with the combination of power and heart rate that trends of progress can be unfolded just by looking a little closer.
Two Steps to More Durability
If we want to break down the harsh truth about building durability for the long-term, we could simply say:
- Stick with your easy zone 2 rides and make them the bulk of your training.
- Measure your progress and track your intensity distribution.
Wanting to improve your zone 2 rides is easy. Sticking with it is a different story. If you want to improve your durability, throw your ego out the window and keep your easy rides easy, improve your low-intensity durability, and build that high-intensity repeatability with a higher quality of your interval workouts.
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Resources
- Oxygen uptake kinetics as a determinant of sports performance
- Power–duration relationship: Physiology, fatigue, and the limits of human performance
- Effects of Two Hours of Heavy-Intensity Exercise on the Power-Duration Relationship
- Dynamics of the power-duration relationship during prolonged endurance exercise and influence of carbohydrate ingestion
- Recovery from Fatigue after Cycling Time Trials in Elite Endurance Athletes
- Power Profiling, Workload Characteristics, and Race Performance of U23 and Professional Cyclists During the Multistage Race Tour of the Alps
- What is Best Practice for Training Intensity and Duration Distribution in Endurance Athletes?
- Training-intensity distribution during an ironman season: relationship with competition performance
- Does polarized training improve performance in recreational runners?
- The relationship between training characteristics and durability in professional cyclists across a competitive season
- Training Session Models in Endurance Sports: A Norwegian Perspective on Best Practice Recommendations