Bike Forums - View Single Post - Power issues after three hours

05-08-16, 10:28 PM

#29

Heathpack

Has a magic bike

Join Date: Aug 2013

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Quote:

Originally Posted by gregf83

There's an old adage that 'sprinters are born not made'. Sprinters have a higher % of fast twitch muscle fibers which work well for sprinting but are not as efficient for longer TT type efforts.

If you enjoy TTs it doesn't really matter as you can always enter a TT and work on improving your times. Not so great if you want to be a sprinter but don't have the genes as you will never be competitive and there are no solo sprint events except perhaps on the track.

But my question actually is: is it detrimental to improve short-duration power for someone who is only interested in holding power for long durations- like 1-4 hours?

The BF post that made me think about this was one in which the poster had noticed he had good power-to-weight at 20 & 60 min, but poor power output for shorter duration efforts. He wanted to become a more "complete" cyclist, so asked how to improve his sprint. He got answers about how he could improve his power on short efforts, up to 5 min. But he is a guy who rides long distances (like 100 mi), solo, on flattish terrain.

So I didn't see why he needed to improve those short duration efforts at all, it seemed like a waste of training time to me. But I also wondered if it wouldn't actually be counter-productive to work on these short-duration powers, because the more spiky his power is the more it degrades his ability to hold power for hours.

No one really seemed to see the point I was making. So now that I have your attention, what is your opinion?

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