NAB777 wrote:
Really good read, and appreciated, thanks. The bit I've quoted interests me, because I recently spoke with a good friend (& long time very good cyclist). He had a heart scare this year, and as a result, had a multitude of tests. In his words, the Vo2 test indicated that he could go 3-4 times longer at Vo2 max than any other person they had tested (elite & non-elite). Have you ever heard of such a thing?
It's possible they did the test wrong or he's a genetic freak or both or somewhere in between. Most people are going to be able to hold a true vo2 effort for somewhere between 5/6/7 minutes and 10/11/12 minutes. I suspect the closer you are to a world class athlete the more likely you are to be able to go longer at well above FTP efforts and the more often you do such efforts the better you will be at such efforts, assuming your sport demands such a thing.
IMO the disconnect on the athlete level is they do a bunch of 2 -3 and maybe 4 minute long vo2 efforts, (it seems that's what a lot of online training platforms seem to push), and expect to be able to push their FTP up by gigantic watts. Then that platform has them do tests as short as 3 minutes and no longer than 20 min to determine their ability to do work for 50-70 minutes.
It's a short test (usually done well above FTP), your teaching to the test (lots of short, well above FTP intervals) then calculating FTP. Now said athlete goes out and tries to do intervals that are repeated 10-30 min blocks, race a 40k or try to throw down in a half and have failure after failure and they don't understand why.
Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta
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desert dude: Aug 11, 20 8:00