Durability Insight

Where to Start

With lots of information, and emerging research, we want to add our touch and the reasoning behind this and what the research says. We want to give you the insights into certain charts but how to effectively use them to analyse a file. How to make informative choice with your training.

Remember the context

Remember, this are just tools. It is just one option, one way to do things out of many. Go into these with an open mind. You are an athlete, or working with an athlete. Don't forget the individual.

Cycling is such a data driven and date rich sport. The very essence of performance analysis is to aid the development of performance, to make informed decisions, actionable decision that will help optimise the understanding of racing and facilitate the direction in training

Durability, sometimes termed as fatigue resistance. The ability to prevent a rightwards and downwards shift of the power duration curve after accumulated work. In simple terms; to what magnitude does your power capabilities deteriorate after accumulated work. Most of the research is done on U23 Conti, Pro Conti and World Tour riders.

We will have a more in depth article here - which dives into the research.

But for now, lets dive into some good old content, and how we can use certain tools and charts to analyse a race.

Understanding the race

Context

This is on the athlete work our level. A lot of this is simple, but that often means it is overlooked. lets understand the race. The description on the right will report back in WKO5 how much work was done in kJ. The bottom box well calculate how much work was done above CP/FTP again in kJ.

sum((bikepower*deltatime)/1000)

sum(if(bikepower>bikeftp, (bikepower-bikeftp*deltatime)/1000))

That gives us [1] total work [2] work above CP/FTP. I want to see the time course of the accumulated work above FTP/CP which is represented by the graph below with the grey line. It's clear here that in the first 1/2 there isn't much work done above CP/FTP then at 01:30:00 it accumulates faster. i.e it is now more intense.

I have highlighted where certain peak durations occur, it picks the top 6 in this instances, which you can easily change to suit you and elevation for my own use. This just gives an idea of where certain peaks happened. Importantly they let you know when they occurred inline with the total work above CP/FTP at that point.

Remember, each race here is different. Your role is to make informed choices, with this we need objective data to support this. So look for trends, what are your typical demands, do you see trends happening over multiple races?

Understanding the race

Patterns

That gives us [1] total work [2] work above CP/FTP. I want to see the time course of the accumulated work above FTP/CP which is represented by the graph below. It's clear here that in the first 1/2 there isn't much work done above CP/FTP then at 01:30:00 it accumulates faster. i.e it is now more intense.

This is why I like the chart below. It also tells me the value of the peaks I have chosen, so I can compare to % of best If I wanted to. I can also see how they change as well, is there a pattern here?

meanmax(if(cumsum((bikepower>bikeftp)*(bikepower-bikeftp)*deltatime/1000)>100,bikepower))

Then I can plot this, again on a work out level to look at the peaks during the race and after a set amount of work. Consider the race circuit, where you or your athlete placed to provide some context to the power duration curve above. This is where we can start to look at trends. Do we consistently so an inability to produce X power after a set amount of work?

If you can identify the trend, then you can go back into the data and start to unpick why. Don't just assume we need to do X amount of kJ above CP then these efforts. Your job now is to unpick this, this where a coach can really come into it, not only is it interrogation of the data, but having a good race debrief so the coach can understand what happened.

Understanding the rider

Trends

Next, lets now go to the athlete view and take a look at this chart below. Its has multiple elements here. your PDC based on your MMP data, it then has three different measures assessing durability, which you can easily edit to suit your needs and trend that you have identified, as like I said this is where context really applies. Each athlete is different so don't generalise.

We have [1] total work done expressed in kJ often used, but this gives you know idea of intensity, as such using this will actually give you poor information. If you fuel well, keep it nice and steady there is a good chance if you do a maximal effort after X amount of kJ it won't be to impacted. This has been the case for my self and large number of athlete I have worked with. It gives you a nice starting point though.

Next [2] we have work above CP/FTP in kJ, this gives you an indication of how the intensity impacts your MMP values, this is far more representative of the demands of racing in terms of its impact on your MMP values. Different countries and categories have different styles, this is why its import to understand your athletes racing demands. See this research paper for context https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsc.12077 From Spragg et al., (2024) The intensity rather than the quantity of prior work determines the subsequent downward shift in the power duration relationship in professional cyclists.

[3] Finally we have kJ/Kg a fair bit of research has looked at this see Van Erp et al. (2021) Maintaining Power Output with Accumulating Levels of Work Done Is a Key Determinant for Success in Professional Cycling and more recently looked at kJ/Kg above CP as well from Leo et al. 2024 (The Inﬂuence of High-Intensity Work on the Record Power Proﬁle of Under-23, Pro Team, and World Tour Cyclists).

One of the advantages of having them overlayed, so you can start to compare the differences, to assess which one is having the biggest impact.

What you decide to do now, is up to you. These are the tools, here is some insight. We will have amore in-depth article on durability, but these insights sections are provided to help you learn, understand, so can ask better questions with the data.

The Charts

Time to Analyse

This takes you to a G-Drive folder so you can download them