Tempo
75 min
Medium intensity
Train pedalling control and composure at tempo: short blocks cycling through smooth, high, low and over-speed cadences, then long low-cadence efforts broken by spinning. Mentally demanding, not physically punishing.
Juliette Berthet
Rider, FDJ United–SUEZ
Tempo
75 min
Medium
6 / 10
Intermediate
Indoors
The session
The workout
Written as a share of critical power, so it fits every rider. In Vekta it becomes your watts, with the W′ cost shown before you ride.
Juliette Berthet
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
Not a hard session, a demanding one. Juliette Berthet uses it to train the focus and composure that holding position under pressure requires, by making the legs do something different every minute while the power stays at tempo.
The first set cycles through smooth, high, low and over-speed cadences inside five-minute tempo blocks; the second holds long low-cadence efforts at 60–70 rpm broken by a minute of spinning at 100. The cadence changes train pedalling control and muscular endurance at once, and the tempo power keeps it repeatable.
Vekta's structure holds both power and cadence targets, so the head unit prompts every change; the analysis afterwards shows torque and cadence side by side, which is where the low-cadence work shows up.
A mid-week session between hard days, or the day before a race, indoors or out. If the power drifts into threshold, the cadence work has been lost.
Tempo
Stimulus
Intermediate
Workout level
Indoors
Best ridden
Road,
DISCIPLINE
The stimulus
Tempo, explained
Steady work in the sweet spot, with cadence and torque as the second job.
What it is
Blocks of ten to thirty minutes at 76–90% of critical power, the range often called sweet spot, frequently with a cadence or torque constraint. Hard enough to build threshold, easy enough to repeat.
Why it matters
Tempo is the most time-efficient stimulus for riders with limited hours: it raises critical power with less recovery cost than threshold work, and it teaches the body to hold a working intensity for a long time.
These should feel like sustained concentration rather than suffering. Cadence targets are part of the session: low-cadence tempo builds torque, high-cadence tempo builds economy. Do not turn tempo into threshold.
The workhorse of a build phase, and the easiest session to overcook. Vekta's intensity score keeps it honest: a tempo session that scores like a threshold session was ridden too hard.
Written in % of CP with cadence targets in the structure, personalised on the athlete's device. The zones tab afterwards shows whether the block stayed in the intended range.
Free for coaches. Test with your whole roster during the trial.