Durability
334 min
Medium intensity
A five-and-a-half-hour ride shaped like a race: VO2 efforts at the start, two long fat-max blocks in the middle, and 40/20s at the end, to train power production at 30 to 50 kJ/kg of accumulated work.
David Van Orsdel
Coach, Devo Performance
Durability
334 min
Moderate
7 / 10
Advanced
Outdoors
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.
David Van Orsdel
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
A five-and-a-half-hour ride shaped like a race: a strong start, a long manageable middle, and very hard efforts at the end. David Van Orsdel wrote it for gravel racing in particular, and its purpose is power production at high levels of fatigue, the part of the curve Vekta shows at 30, 40 and 50 kJ/kg.
Four two-minute VO2 efforts at 115% of CP open the ride. Two forty-minute fat-max blocks at 73–80% of CP sit in the middle, each side of an hour of endurance, and then, after nearly five hours, two ten-minute sets of 40/20s at 120% of CP. By that point the preferred fibres are exhausted and the body has to recruit the ones it normally spares, which is a durability and a neuromuscular stimulus at once.
Fuelling decides this session, and Vekta's carbohydrate recommendations scale to it. The durability tab afterwards shows the 40/20s on the fatigue-sliced curve; the intensity score should be moderate and the volume score high, which is what a race-shaped day looks like.
The long ride of a race-preparation block, once a week, for long gravel and road events. Not a session to attempt without the base to carry it.
Durability
Stimulus
Advanced
Workout level
Outdoors
Best ridden
Road,
Gravel,
DISCIPLINE
The stimulus
Durability, explained
Hard efforts after hours of work, because races are decided when you are tired.
What it is
Long rides with quality placed late: threshold, VO2 or sprint efforts after two to four hours and a set amount of accumulated work. The stimulus is not the interval itself but the state the body is in when it arrives.
Why it matters
Vekta measures durability as your power curve at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 kJ/kg of accumulated work: who you are fresh and who you are deep into a race. The gap between the two is where most amateur races and most WorldTour stages are won or lost. It responds to training, and this is the training.
Fuel these sessions properly; the point is to perform late, not to bonk. Expect the late efforts to feel harder than the same effort fresh, and expect that gap to shrink over a block. These are the longest sessions in the library.
Prescribe the late efforts by % of CP and compare the achieved power to the same effort fresh; the durability tab does the comparison across the athlete's history. A widening gap under fatigue is a fuelling or base problem before it is a fitness problem.
The session's late intervals are personalised in Vekta and the ride's kJ/kg is tracked live. Afterwards the durability view places the efforts on the athlete's fatigue-sliced power curve.
Free for coaches. Test with your whole roster during the trial.