Threshold
70 min
High intensity
Lift the pace you can hold on a long climb or in a time trial: three nine-minute over-unders of two minutes at 96% and one at 106% of CP, so a ceiling becomes a pace you can sit on.
Michał Pustuła
Coach, MPCC
Threshold
70 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
Threshold sets the pace a rider can hold on a long climb or in a time trial, and this session lifts it with over-unders: a couple of minutes just under CP, a minute above, repeated. The pace that used to be a ceiling becomes one the rider can sit on.
Three nine-minute blocks, each three rounds of two minutes at 96% of CP and one at 106%, with five minutes between blocks. The minute over produces lactate; the two minutes under make the body clear and reuse it while still riding hard. Seventy minutes door to door.
In Vekta the boundary the session targets is the rider's current CP, derived from their rides, so the session moves with them. The W′ trace afterwards should show three tidy sawtooths that do not touch the floor.
A build-phase session, twice a week at most, indoors or out. Michał Pustuła's intent is a higher threshold and the strength to hold off a chase.
Threshold
Stimulus
Intermediate
Workout level
Indoors
Best ridden
Road,
Time trial,
DISCIPLINE
The stimulus
Threshold, explained
Sustained work at the edge of critical power, to move the edge.
What it is
Intervals of eight to thirty minutes at or just under critical power, the highest intensity the body can hold in a steady state. Over-unders, stochastic threshold and long sustained blocks all belong here; what unites them is time close to CP without draining W′.
Why it matters
Critical power is the number every other target is written against. Raising it by ten watts raises the ceiling of every climb, time trial and breakaway, and it is the adaptation that responds most reliably to structured work.
These sessions feel controlled rather than desperate. If you are gasping in the first block the target is too high; the goal is to finish the last interval at the same power as the first. Two a week is plenty.
Threshold work is where an accurate CP pays off: a stale CP makes the session either a tempo ride or a VO2 session. Vekta recalculates CP from every ride, so the targets track the athlete's current state rather than a test from spring.
In Vekta the intervals are set as a percentage of the athlete's live CP and converted to watts on their head unit. After the ride the session is classified, and the CP model updates if the effort showed a new ceiling.
Common questions
What is the difference between threshold and FTP work?
How long should threshold intervals be?
Can I do threshold work on consecutive days?
The Next workout
Workouts to pair with this one
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