Durability
120 min
High intensity
Ride steady for over an hour to build fatigue, then do the threshold and VO2 efforts on tired legs, the way a race actually finishes. Durability in two hours for the time-crunched.
Michał Pustuła
Coach, MPCC
Durability
120 min
High
8 / 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.
Michał Pustuła
Why this workout
The breakdown
Inside the workout
Most races are decided late, with plenty of work already in the legs, and durability is how well a rider can still push when tired. It is one of the clearest differences between two riders with the same fresh threshold, and this session trains it inside two hours for riders who do not have five.
An hour at 65–72% of CP, lifting to 88% for eight minutes every twenty, builds the fatigue. Then the efforts: four four-minute intervals at 105% of CP with equal recovery, and three thirty-second bursts at 150%, close to how a race finishes. The tempo lifts in the first hour are what make the two hours count as more.
The durability view in Vekta places the late efforts on the rider's fatigue-sliced power curve, so the gap between the same effort fresh and at 20 kJ/kg is visible and can be tracked across a block. The efforts themselves are set against CP.
The long session of a time-crunched week, once a week, for road races, gran fondos and stage races where the move that matters comes late.
Durability
Stimulus
Intermediate
Workout level
Indoors
Best ridden
Road,
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.
Common questions
How much riding before the efforts?
Should I fuel differently?
How often?
Go deeper
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