I must've learned all my Paulo lessons awhile ago, as I find myself completely understanding and agreeing with him.

Love the :-)^2.

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Ride more. LOTS more. 'Cause you know, like, "more is more."

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That's exactly way I'm training/racing this year.
I'm re-learning what it means to go HARD! :-)

I'll let you know how it improves my next IM.

It is well accepted that the power/weight ratio is more important in climbing than in TT. Wheras absolute power regardless of weight is best for TT.

Another factor to consider is the effect of momentum. If you are going up a steep hill, you cannot stop pedaling at all or you'll lose it. You have to apply pressure to the pedals almost constantly throughout the pedaling stroke. When You are on a flat course, you can let up on the pedals somewhat and the forward momentum of the bike will allow you to catch up with your pedaling. You can stomp away with the bikes momentum smoothening things out for you. There may be subtle differences in pedaling technique for a successful climber versus a successful time trialist.

Dev

There is some evidence to support a neuromuscular component of fatigue under some circumstances. Tim Noakes does a good job of discussing these ideas in the latest edition of "The Lore of Running." He also discusses a loss of muscle elasticity (...no spring in your step...) and biochemical issues relating to fatigue.


General thoughts and questions, not directed at you Dev, just some rambling thoughts...

I think what Paulo might be saying (correct me if I am wrong) is that when Friel (or another coach) says that you have a muscular endurance limiter, it is a useless kind of statement. Muscular endurance is a useless concept (too vague....meaningless) Muscular endurance at what effort level? You cannot talk about endurance without talking about effort level. It all comes down to endurance and effort (or power output). How long can you maintain a certain effort level...or what effort level can you put out over a certain time frame or distance. It would be more useful to talk about concepts like raising your functional threshold power. I guess what I am saying is that it does not make sense to use vague terms like "muscular endurance" when we have perfectly good concepts like functional threshold power, VO2 max, CP30 etc...that we can work with. Honestly, I just don't get, "we need to work on your muscular endurance limiter" but I do get, "we need to raise your functional threshold power."

Mike

"Strenghts and weaknesses can only be related to the three energy systems and how they are called into play in a performance situation" Does that make you happier?

It makes me happier, but it means you just said less, not more.

And you're the one that is saying that a 40km and a 100mi maximal efforts are different. In fact, they are much the same and the limiter for both is the same too.

That must be why the record speeds in a 40km time trial are in the 32-34mph range, but for 100miles they are in the 26-28mph range. And I guess it explains why all the 40km time trial record holders have gone on to stellar results at the 100 mile distance. It makes me happy to know that when I get my 40km time below 1 hour, I can expect to do a sub 4hr century. Its going to be quite a year, I guess.

I guess what I am saying is that it does not make sense to use vague terms like "muscular endurance" when we have perfectly good concepts like functional threshold power, VO2 max, CP30 etc...that we can work with. Honestly, I just don't get, "we need to work on your muscular endurance limiter" but I do get, "we need to raise your functional threshold power."

That's fair enough, except that it strikes me that if you accept that there are neuromuscular elements to fatigue (and this has been well demonstrated; there was a great article on this in the NYT last year that blended a study of RAAM rider Jure Robic with new research on the CNS component of fatigue), then the latter statement is also pretty empty, and you'd do just as well to say "we need to make you able to ride further, faster". which is about as vapid a remark as a coach can make, right? FTP is a limit value, it doesn't indicate performance on a given day under given conditions. What accounts for the difference between FTP and an actual performance (in which FTP should be a reasonable indicator) ? When you find the answer to that question, please let us all know! At a more prosaic level, when you wake up one morning and go to run/ride/swim and find that its just not happening the way it should, is that one of the "3 energy systems" breaking down? is it that your FTP has dropped overnight? are there other systems in the body at work too?

Maybe a neurologist can pipe in here, because to this point no one on this thread has made any knowledgeable comments on how well those electrical signals from the brain to the muscles are transmitting late in the day, telling the muscles to contract hard. For example do the impedence characteristics in those nerves change over the course of the day as blood PH and other things in the body change. Does the mylene that insulates the nerve lose its dielectric properties over the course of the day resulting in a lower magnitude signal at the nerve ending. We know this happens in babies before their mylene develops...does it happen to us late in a race? We also know the decision making (brain function) can be severely impaired as blood sugar drops. What happens in the rest of the central nervous system as blood sugar drops?

The same factors that cause you to fatigue on a 40km tt are present on a 100mi tt. Doing well at both is a matter of endurance. I see both in their similarities, you see them as a completly different thing. I'll let you figure out on your own which one is right. It's the whole Bjorn vs Lance argument.

So two guys do the same identical training, same nutrition, same first half pacing, identical technique. One guy always wins at 40K, another always wins at 160K. Are you saying that they should have identical results?

I am saying exactly what I am saying. If I wanted to write what you wrote, I would have. I didn't.

dev, here's a "reprint" of the NYT article i mentioned on CNS factors in long term muscular fatigue (its also a great article on Robic).

http://www.triscoop.com/...cle.php?article_id=6

there is also:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...22&dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...55&dopt=Abstract

along the way, i found this curious and not terribly rigorous abstract about the impact of music, which i am still trying to fit into paulo's worldview:

http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/...onresults,1:100184,1

Crikey! First you confuse strength and power, then you compound the issue by defining "muscular endurance" as some combination thereof.

You seem to think that I negate the importance of neuro-muscular fatigue as a component of general fatigue. I don't. However, you seem to think that component is absent from a 1-hour effort, when it isn't. A one-hour effort is as "prolonged" as a 4-hour effort.

Thanks Dawhead...I guess in Paulo's "study based" world view, the impact of the digestive system does not come into play. Some might have organs that can process nutrition at a higher aerobic performance level than other. This clearly has no impact on 40K performance, but would at 160K...

I don't personally care if "muscular endurance" is a real concept or not...it means something to me. When I think of muscular endurance I think of sustaining sub-threshold output...the ability to generate moderate power for reasonably long periods of time. 1/2 marathon is an example where you're running a bit below LT but it still takes a good deal of strength\power to maintain race pace. Maybe strength endurance is a better term. It seems a bit simplistic to reduce everything down to just endurance. By that logic we could also say that the 200m sprint is an endurance event. I can run fast enough to break the world record in the 200m...but I can only hold that speed for 50m so I simply need to work on my endurance, right? In a sense that is true...if I can sustain a given output for a longer time (endurance) I'll be faster at that longer distance. From that perspective do I need to generate more power? No, I need to sustain my max 50m power for longer...endurance. Translate that over to cycling and how does it apply to riding 112 miles faster? It suggests that there is no reason to be concerned with increasing FTP, we just need to sustain FTP for 4-5 hours. I think that is contrary to what most of us believe...raising FTP is a key aspect of becoming a better (endurance) athlete. So I guess I'm not disagreeing with anyone here...just trying to point out that we are all getting at the same things from a different perspective.

Why not just say "we need to work on your endurance"?

With that level of detail, the same factors that cause you to fatigue at 5km are present on a 40km tt. If you're going to group everything that isn't anaerobic fast twitch effort into "doing well is a matter of endurance" then fine, but once again, you're saying less, not more. And you know what they say about "More" around here .....

Moreover, the contribution (if any) of non-muscular factors to fatigue is all the more reason to prefer the simpler term "endurance" over the more specific term "muscular endurance". That is, if fatigue is multifactorial (which it practically always is), why profess to know more than you really know by being so specific?

I am speechless...

Two words: hell no!

"You seem to think that I negate the importance of neuro-muscular fatigue as a component of general fatigue."

I was just working from your statement: "Strenghts and weaknesses can only be related to the three energy systems." Since I don't see the CNS as one of the 3 energy systems, I assumed that you were excluding the CNS from playing any role in strengths and weaknesses.

Fair enough :-)

well, one reason to be more specific might be to distinguish between different manifestations of fatigue (and thus, reciprocally, other manifestations of endurance). When I collapse at the end of 3 mile tt effort having done my best to stay above 300W for the entire duration, the state of fatigue I am in seems very, very different from the condition I reach at a certain point in the evening.

endurance has a number of senses to it and "my quads just can't generate power any more" from "i'm so tired i'm going to fall over" seems to me to be a notable distinction. one of them gives a strong sensation of muscular endurance (or the lack of it), the other feels like the presence/lack of something entirely different.