Road Cycling Academy Podcast

Summary:
Do you know your best five-second, one-minute or five-minute power, or are you basing almost all of your cycling training around FTP?
For many recreational and amateur cyclists, FTP becomes the number used to set training zones and measure progress. But one number can't necessarily tell you where your strengths and weaknesses sit across everything from a short sprint to a sustained effort.
In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA head coach Ryan Thomas to discuss the cycling peak power curve and why Ryan considers it one of the first things worth examining when assessing a cyclist.
Using a power meter and platforms such as TrainingPeaks, cyclists can look at their best power across durations ranging from a few seconds through to longer sustained efforts. Ryan explains how those numbers help build a picture of the rider's physiology and why simply relying on an estimated FTP can sometimes lead to inappropriate training intensities.
A major issue is whether the data actually contains maximal efforts. A cyclist who mostly completes structured workouts in ERG mode, for example, may never have produced a genuine all-out five-second sprint, one-minute effort or five-minute effort. In that situation, a model trying to estimate fitness from existing ride data may be working with an incomplete power curve.
Cam and Ryan discuss how critical power testing can provide a more useful picture without requiring cyclists to test every individual duration. Ryan explains the RCA approach, including a 10-second sprint, a three-minute maximal effort and a longer 12-minute effort, and why shorter and longer efforts can be used to help model critical power.
They also discuss why two cyclists with a similar threshold may need very different VO2 training prescriptions. One rider may have considerably more capacity above threshold than another, meaning a standard workout based purely on a percentage of FTP may be too easy for one cyclist and unsustainable for another.
Ryan also introduces W prime as another useful, although not perfectly precise, way of thinking about a cyclist's capacity to repeatedly work above critical power.
In this episode:
What a cycling peak power curve actually shows
Why Ryan looks at the power curve when assessing a cyclist
Five-second, one-minute, five-minute and longer-duration power
Why FTP doesn't describe every aspect of cycling performance
Why you need a power meter to build a meaningful power curve
How racing and bunch rides can produce different power data from structured workouts
Why ERG mode may leave gaps in your peak power data
How to tell whether your existing power curve is representative
Why you don't need to test every point on the curve individually
How critical power testing works
RCA's 10-second sprint and three-minute maximal test
Why Ryan uses a longer 12-minute effort
When a five-minute maximal effort can provide additional information
Why estimated or modelled FTP can sometimes be misleading
How incorrect threshold settings affect your training zones
Why VO2 power can differ substantially between riders with similar thresholds
Why fixed percentages of FTP don't suit every cyclist
What W prime can tell you about work above critical power
How TrainingPeaks and Strava can help you examine your power data
Why tracking more than FTP can provide additional ways to measure progress
For recreational cyclists, the practical takeaway isn't that FTP has no value. It's that FTP is only part of the picture. Understanding how your power changes across different durations can help identify strengths and weaknesses, make training targets more appropriate and give you additional ways to recognise progress.
Road Cycling Academy helps recreational and amateur cyclists train smarter, improve their performance and get more from the limited training time they have available.
One-to-One Cycling Coaching
For cyclists who want ongoing, personalised guidance, RCA coaching can help interpret individual strengths and weaknesses and use that information to make training more specific to the rider.
#CyclingTraining #CyclingPower #PowerMeter #FTP #CriticalPower #VO2Max #TrainingPeaks #CyclingPerformance #RoadCycling #RoadCyclingAcademy
Transcript:
Cam Nicholls (00:02) Welcome to the RCA podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. Today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas, and today we're going to be talking about, we believe, the most important graph for any cyclist, definitely more important than FTP.
And I think, well, you would know because you coach a lot of people, that not many people know what this is, or they don't spend a lot of time looking at it when it tells them a lot.
So much. If you're a rider wanting to be better, you should know this, shouldn't you?
Ryan Thomas (00:58) 100%. Yeah. The context, we onboard members all the time doing off-the-shelf programs.
And first thing I would go into is the TrainingPeaks dashboard. I'll go in and I'll look at the peak power chart and I'll say, oh yeah, looks good. Compare it to this year versus last year, and then go in and look at threshold and see if threshold's right.
Measure it, like see the zones. But the first thing is look at the peak power chart.
Cam Nicholls (01:21) Okay. So for those out there that don't know what a peak power chart is, I know we're going to go into a fair bit more detail here, but just at a high level, like what is it?
Ryan Thomas (01:30) It's essentially, you can choose the date range, but it's...
Cam Nicholls (01:30) You need a power meter.
Ryan Thomas (01:30) You need a power meter. And it's the, in TrainingPeaks, it's the peak powers that you have produced across their ranges.
So five seconds, 10 seconds, 12 seconds, 20 seconds. And it's not every, it's not very specific. It's like one minute, five minutes, six minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 20 minutes, 60 minutes.
It essentially plots a curve based on your...
Cam Nicholls (01:30) Does it go all the way out to two or three hours if you want?
Ryan Thomas (01:30) Yeah, it goes, yeah. That part of the curve is probably not as important.
It's more the under 60 minutes that's the critical one as it defines the physiology of the rider type.
But yeah, it's super important if you want to know, you will know what type of rider you are, but as a coach or someone looking into it, or you don't know what your peak five-minute power is, how do you do a five-minute effort, for example, or a 20-minute? You don't know what that number is.
A lot of people will know those two, five and 20, but what's your one-minute or your 30-second or three minutes, for example? It's very specific to what type of rider you are.
Cam Nicholls (02:34) So that's a good segue. Well, why bother understanding your numbers across those segments?
Essentially they...
If you're a recreational amateur, and you sit out there and you're watching this video and you're like, no, I'm not going to bother because it's too much hard work.
I've got to go do all these tests. I don't need to figure this out. What would you say to that person?
Ryan Thomas (02:57) I'd say you're not training the right areas if you don't know what your peak powers are across those curves.
It depends on what type of rider you are, whether you're a rider that trains or you're a rider that does bunch rides, racing, two very different people in terms of what that curve looks like.
A rider that just trains, let's say, I'll just pull a generic one out, someone who does AI programs or chooses a program online, and they just do specific workouts.
They're never going all out.
Cam Nicholls (03:27) Zwift workouts is a very popular one.
Ryan Thomas (03:29) Zwift workouts.
They just go on and choose a workout. It's in ERG mode, never going all out. You're not doing racing.
That power curve is not going to represent the rider type you are because you've never done a five-second sprint, or you've never done a one-minute, five-minute all-out effort.
Cam Nicholls (03:42) You might've done one 10 years ago.
Ryan Thomas (03:47) Or five years ago, but not racing.
It's not representative of the rider you are today.
Someone who's racing or doing bunch rides, they're going all out for certain durations, might have a better idea in that curve.
More often than not, people who are coming to the RCA, I'll look at the curve and I'm like, your threshold setting's 250, but the highest power you've ever done for 20 minutes is 200.
Why is your threshold at 250 watts? That's an example, even if you're doing one-minute efforts. What's your one-minute peak power?
I don't know. What do you do on these efforts?
Cam Nicholls (04:20) In order for somebody to understand their peak powers, if they haven't really done this before, and they want to go, I want to get a little bit more accurate with my training, and I want to understand what rider type that I am.
Am I actually, I think I'm better at VO2 than threshold, but I don't really test it.
Would you recommend that they spend a week going out and doing an all-out five-second, then a 10-second, and then a one-minute, and then a three-minute, and then just following the TrainingPeaks cycle?
Because I know some people might have this information. I mean, you would know better than me.
What percentage of people, recreationals, come to you and you look at their data, they've never done structured training before.
They're about to start. You look at their peak powers. You're like, okay, you've got a good picture there.
Ryan Thomas (05:03) One to 2%.
Cam Nicholls (05:05) Oh, okay. Very, very few.
Ryan Thomas (05:06) Very little. Very little.
Cam Nicholls (05:10) A lot of people... Do they then have an idea of what they think they're good at? They must.
Ryan Thomas (05:15) Yeah, they do.
Cam Nicholls (05:17) Okay. Is it normally accurate once you've actually figured it out?
Ryan Thomas (05:22) Yeah, to some extent. It depends on the type of rider. If they're a trainer or a racer, depends what type of their goals are with riding, essentially.
But yeah, you don't necessarily need to go out and pick every point along that curve and do a maximum effort.
There's testing we can do that plots that curve. That's the whole point of critical power testing, essentially, is we choose three, four, five parameters, two parameters, and it mimics that curve based on the two to three markers we put on that curve.
Cam Nicholls (05:56) Yeah. You only normally practically, because you think it's most practical for recreational and amateurs with critical power testing, which is essentially another way to get your threshold estimate.
We throw FTP, as you said, throw it in the bin.
We're now going to look at critical power. So critical power gives us that threshold estimate, but it also gives us a rough idea of this power curve.
From your experiences, three is probably what they say online, but you say you can get away with just doing two tests across two days, and that'll give you a pretty good feel for your power graph without having to go do all the tests.
So why do you say just the two and what are the two tests?
Ryan Thomas (06:37) The two tests, the first test has two maximum efforts in it, but it's not used within the critical power model.
So the first test that we do in the RCA is a 10-second sprint and a three-minute maximum effort in one session with a long recovery in there.
The 10-second sprint gives us your five-second peak power.
That'll tell us your peak neuromuscular capacity. If you've got a lower threshold, where does that sit and how does that curve look? It's essentially how steep is the top end of that curve versus if it's a four.
Three-minute is your anaerobic VO2 estimate in between, and then the other test on the next day, we would do a 12-minute effort.
Okay. We have a critical power testing week, RCA testing week that I use, and I have a five-minute in there as well.
But my experience, the five-minute peak power within the critical power, if we have a three and a 12, that five-minute power, it changes the middle.
So if we think about what's happening at the other two ends, it only moves it up a tiny bit. It's like plus or minus five watts to the five-minute.
So if you're motivated to do three, then yeah, do the third. If you're not, then I don't think it makes massive.
Cam Nicholls (07:50) Yeah. Okay. And you were saying as well, last time we spoke about this, it doesn't have to be exactly three minutes.
So if somebody has got a segment, which is like a climb and it's going to take them two minutes, 45.
And if someone's got a longer climb, but it's not 12, it's eight minutes, 43. That's fine.
You can use this and we'll link to a calculator below where you put in the timestamp and then you put in the wattage and then it will calculate your critical power.
Ryan Thomas (08:16) Yeah. So there's general parameters, like the people who created this, the critical power and critical speed, it's been around for a long time, but there's general parameters around if you're just using two, what sort of durations you want.
And we use three minutes because it works well.
Three and 12 minutes was the first ones that they came up with.
Cam Nicholls (08:36) Oh, okay.
Ryan Thomas (08:37) Just align really well with how that curve sits.
But I would recommend anywhere from two to four minutes for the shorter effort and anywhere above 10.
Getting below 10 minutes starts to mess it up a little bit, I would say, because it's not quite long enough to see what's happening there.
I'd say over 10 minutes, 10 to 20.
Cam Nicholls (08:58) Today's podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy's Weight Training for Cyclists program.
And if you're listening from the Northern Hemisphere, now is a very good time to start thinking about strength training as you head towards the winter months and begin building towards next season.
Because if you do strength training right, you're looking at about a five to 10% gain.
But the problem many recreational cyclists face is they know they should be lifting weights, but they're not sure what exercises to do, how heavy to lift, nor how to fit strength work around their cycling.
And that's exactly why we have created this program with Dr. Aaron Turner, a strength and conditioning specialist with 20 years of experience working with athletes, including elite-level cyclists.
In our program, you'll get a beginner, intermediate and advanced strength program, all downloadable, backed by six detailed video tutorials, and then 60 individual exercise video demonstrations, showing you exactly what to do and how to integrate it with your riding.
The goal is simple, more power, better durability and improved efficiency on the bike.
And you'll get lifetime access to this program for only $147 USD, backed by our money-back guarantee.
If you're keen, head to the Road Cycling Academy website and check out our Weight Training for Cyclists program.
Now let's get back to the podcast.
Okay. So once you work with recreational amateurs, they haven't done this before, they do the tests and then maybe they're, you know, a few months in and they might be doing some other power numbers.
So they're getting a better feel for what their graph looks like, their power curve graph. What is it? Are they interested in it?
Is it changing the way that they see things?
Obviously it changes the way that you coach them because you can train more accurately to the zones and you can get a better feel for how they're improving over time relative to not just FTP, but all these other numbers.
Ryan Thomas (11:03) Yes.
Cam Nicholls (11:03) So that's great that you can see that, but what's most, what's of most interest to them?
Ryan Thomas (11:03) I think it gives, like you just said, it gives them another parameter to improve on.
So a lot of people, a lot of people will come and they'll know their threshold number, whether it's accurate or not, they'll know a rough threshold number.
But if you ask them, what's your best one-minute power, they'll have no idea.
And if we say, well, let's test it, let's try and improve it. Oh, cool. Like it's something, it's motivation.
It's something extra to test and track and follow.
And even if it's on TrainingPeaks, they go and do a bunch ride and there's a, in TrainingPeaks, you'll get notified if you get an all-time best or a 2026 best across that curve, but you only get notified for specific durations.
But as a coach, I can go in and look at that peak power curve and I can say, oh, that was, you don't get notified on your 12-minute best, but I'm letting you know that this was your 12-minute best effort for 2026, or this was your best two-minute for 2026.
Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know that. I'm going to look at that more often.
So making them aware of it gives them motivation to track those.
Cam Nicholls (12:05) Tangible improvements that they can now actually understand.
Ryan Thomas (12:08) Yeah. And if you're not looking at it or you're not just looking at the notifications that whatever platform you're using sends you, you may not be getting the whole picture.
So as a coach, I see that because I say, awesome, well done.
That was your best three-minute or two-minute, which isn't a notification in any system.
That's your best two-minute power for the last six months or last year or last two years.
And they're like, oh, what really? That's awesome.
Cam Nicholls (12:33) Yep. Okay. And then just to round out in terms of the training side of things, you say that people get more accurate with their zones, but most people out there will either have an estimated FTP from an app, AI tool, whatever it might be, or they might've done an FTP test.
They've done a 20-minute test. Okay. This now enables them to get more accurate with their training.
Why is that?
Ryan Thomas (12:58) Because your zones are set correctly.
I have a big gripe with AI-detected threshold zones because I mentioned in the start of this, it assumes that the efforts that you've done are maximal.
And if they're not maximal, then they're very incorrect.
So an example for myself at the moment, so even TrainingPeaks has this in their new Analyze360.
If you've got premium, you go into the power and it'll predict what your modelled FTP is.
If you haven't done any maximum efforts across any of the power curve, it's going to spit you out a threshold number based on the maximum efforts that you've done or the peak powers that it reads.
At the moment, it's telling me my threshold is 290 watts and it's 40, 50 watts off what I know my threshold is.
It's because I haven't done any maximal efforts. I've just been riding easy.
I've been doing some threshold efforts, a couple of Zone 2, but if you're coming into training and you're doing training based off this modelled power, you might be 10% lower on your threshold.
You're not training any zone accurately.
So you're just not training hard enough, essentially.
Or you're training too hard. It's two parts of the picture there.
So coming in, doing proper testing, critical power testing, the 20-minute test is good and it'll give you a good threshold number to base your zones off, but critical power gives us more data to go off.
But if you come in and you set that threshold zone properly, you're going to be training properly.
You're going to be training hard enough to get a stimulus in the areas that we're trying to get it out of.
Cam Nicholls (14:30) Yeah. One of the examples that I like in this space is, you know, I speak to a lot of people on a Performance Breakthrough Call and they haven't done this process before.
So they're kind of assuming, and often they're correct, that I really struggle with the sustained efforts, the 20-minute FTP efforts.
But then when I do my VO2, it feels too easy. Like I'm getting through it too easy.
And it's like, well, maybe your VO2, if you've done the proper testing, could actually be higher because you're more genetically gifted for whatever reason at VO2, but therefore it should be higher.
So I think that's a great example.
I know there's a lot of people out there that experience that. My VO2 is a lot better than my threshold.
And so when I do VO2 efforts, I train harder than what my FTP calculator suggests.
Ryan Thomas (15:21) Exactly. Yeah.
And if you're training based on a percentage of threshold, percentage of critical power for VO2 stuff, it can be wrong.
Someone did yesterday, for example, I got an email from a Mileage Club member and he just did a five-minute maximum effort.
He did an RCA testing week because he hadn't done one for a while.
He did his five-minute peak power and his percentage, his five-minute peak power was 114% of his critical power, which is quite low.
So going through a program, if he's got four- to five-minute efforts set at 120% threshold, he's going to go out with that and he's going to fail pretty hard because it's not appropriate.
Cam Nicholls (16:00) Yeah. And probably then probably won't do it.
And the consistency comes into play and it's just a domino.
Ryan Thomas (16:04) Yeah. So the W prime number is another one that comes into important factor here with the critical power testing.
It gives us an idea of how big that battery is, how big your anaerobic or glycolytic energy system is, how many times can you dip above critical power and sustain it and go harder and harder and harder.
So 30/15s are a good example.
I imagine that someone like yourself has got a good high VO2 capacity or someone who's got a big W prime number, they can go much harder in those 30/15s than someone who's got a lower peak five-minute power relative to their critical power.
They might only be doing it 110%, where you could probably do 130%.
So very different.
And that's where RPE, maximal efforts, knowing what those peak powers are, what that W prime is.
W prime isn't 100% accurate, but it gives us an idea on how big that tank is and we can track it and we can see what's actually happening.
Cam Nicholls (16:59) Yeah.
Ryan Thomas (17:00) Yeah. As a coach, the data isn't always 100% accurate.
It gives us really good guidelines on where we go and how we track what's happening, what sort of prescriptions we set for maximal efforts and VO2 efforts and threshold efforts and what's actually appropriate for that rider.
Because one size fits all isn't always the best.
Cam Nicholls (17:20) It goes well and truly beyond estimated FTP, essentially what you're saying there.
So if people are out there listening, they're like, yeah, I wouldn't mind, you know, looking at my peak power graph, at least as a first step.
Would they be best to jump onto TrainingPeaks for this?
Ryan Thomas (17:35) Yes.
Cam Nicholls (17:35) And just import some historical data?
Ryan Thomas (17:37) Yeah. You can look at it on Strava. You can see that on Strava.
Cam Nicholls (17:40) Okay.
Ryan Thomas (17:40) And look at it and have a think, like, have a look at the curve and say, well, this looks pretty flat actually.
Maybe I haven't done a five-second sprint.
Or think about, no, I've never done a five-second sprint on fresh legs or a 10-second sprint on fresh legs.
So maybe that curve isn't accurate.
Maybe I need to go and do that or I need to retest that and see what's happening.
Cam Nicholls (17:59) Get to know yourself a little bit better.
Ryan Thomas (18:00) Yeah. And more often than not, honestly, the first thing that people are going to think is actually no, I've never done a sprint on fresh legs.
I don't actually know what my peak power is.
I've never done a sprint.
More often than not, that's the area that people don't know.
Interesting.
All right. Well, thanks very much for your time, Ryan.
No worries.
Cam Nicholls (18:21) A lot of meat on the bone there for people to digest. And we'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

Summary:
Why can you keep doing the same group ride every week and still get dropped in exactly the same place?
For recreational and amateur cyclists, simply doing more group rides can improve fitness and experience, but it may not address the specific weakness that's causing you to lose the wheel when the pace suddenly increases.
In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA head coach Ryan Thomas to discuss training specificity and what amateur cyclists can learn from research examining how professional riders train for the different demands they face during stages of the Vuelta.
The research looked at power distribution across sprinters, all-rounders and climbers on flat, semi-mountainous and mountainous stages. While the findings may not sound revolutionary, Ryan explains why they reinforce an important training principle: professional cyclists prepare for the specific demands they'll face in competition rather than relying on racing alone to make them better.
Cam and Ryan bring that principle back to a much more familiar goal for amateur cyclists: keeping up with the local bunch ride.
If you're repeatedly getting dropped when the group accelerates, simply returning to the same ride every week may not provide enough targeted training to improve the energy systems that are limiting you. Instead, Ryan explains why identifying where you're getting dropped and training that specific weakness can be more effective.
They use RCA member Belle as a real-world example. After previously being dropped repeatedly on the local Boreen Point bunch ride, Belle became more consistent with her training and incorporated dedicated Zone 2 riding alongside specific sprint, anaerobic and VO2 work.
Ryan explains that her five-second and one-minute power improved substantially, while Cam describes seeing the difference firsthand when Belle returned to the same group ride and was able to stay with the bunch and contribute turns.
They also break down one of the sprint sessions used in her training: six seconds all-out, two minutes recovery, another six seconds all-out, two minutes recovery, then a 12-second sprint, repeated for two to three sets.
The purpose isn't simply to sprint harder once. It's to develop maximum power and the ability to repeat those short, hard efforts that often determine whether you stay with the group when the pace changes.
In this episode:
What professional cycling research from the Vuelta tells us about training specificity
How sprinters, climbers and GC riders face different demands during a race
Why professional cyclists train specifically for their role
Why doing more group rides isn't always enough to stop getting dropped
How to identify the point in a bunch ride where your fitness is limiting you
Why short, hard accelerations often decide whether you stay with the group
The importance of five-second and one-minute power for group riding
How Belle changed her training after repeatedly getting dropped
Why consistent Zone 2 training still matters
How sprint, anaerobic and VO2 work can complement group riding
A six-second and 12-second repeatability sprint session
Why sprint sessions should still be treated as intensity training
How different rider types respond differently to sprint work
Why specific training doesn't mean you need to stop doing your favourite group ride
The practical takeaway is to look beyond simply doing more of the activity you're trying to improve. If you're consistently getting dropped at the same point in a group ride, identify what happens at that moment and train the specific demands involved. For many riders, that could mean adding targeted sprint, anaerobic or VO2 work around their existing riding rather than simply adding another bunch ride.
Road Cycling Academy helps recreational and amateur cyclists train smarter, improve their performance and get more from the limited training time they have available.
Research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13179141/ 
Weight Training for Cyclists
#CyclingTraining #RoadCycling #GroupRides #CyclingPerformance #SprintTraining #VO2Max #CyclingWorkouts #AmateurCycling #CyclingFitness #RoadCyclingAcademy
Transcript:
Cam Nicholls (00:02) Welcome to the RCA podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, which is also on YouTube. Today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas. And today we're going to be talking about some 2026 research that was published about how the, not Tour de France cyclists, but Vuelta professional cyclists train.
And I sent this to Ryan and his initial thoughts were, I'm not sure this is going to blow anyone's mind. But I said, no, I think, Ryan, it actually reinforces something that we all know, but I think a lot of recreational and amateurs neglect a lot. And I've got some evidence through the comment section of YouTube to show everyone.
And then an example of an RCA member who's recently demonstrated, like, how this type of training can really benefit the general recreational and amateur. So can you tell us a little bit about the research?
Ryan Thomas (01:20) Yeah. So essentially they looked at professional riders. They looked at the distribution of power and intensity factor and average power across particular stages in the Vuelta, in the Tour of Spain, across rider type.
So they looked at sprinters, all-round riders and climbers, and they looked at three different terrains. So flat, semi-mountainous and full mountainous stages. And they looked at what type, what rider type, how their power distribution was across each different stage.
So essentially, if you're a mountain climber, you spend more time in the higher powers in the mountain stages. If you're a flat rider or a sprinter, then you spend a lot of time in those lower zones and then you'll spend a little time in those higher zones.
So yeah, it's like, we all know that as a flat stage, it's going to be pretty easy for the climbers and then it's going to be really hard for the sprinters, and vice versa.
For the climbing stages or the mountain stages, the GC riders or the climbers are going to spend a lot of time in that higher threshold, VO2 zone. And the sprinters in those types of stages are going to be in the lower-intensity, moderate-intensity zones.
Cam Nicholls (02:31) Yeah. And if you're, like, I like how deep it went in terms of, like, if you're a domestique climber and you're there to support a GC rider, how does the stage look for you? Because you're not grinding threshold for four hours, are you?
No. You're probably really aggressive out of the gate on the climb to pace and protect your GC rider. So it really went into the specifics of, you know, not just about the rider type, but what they expect to receive, or expect, on any given stage.
Ryan Thomas (03:04) Yeah. And it helps them be able to train, right? Like, as a domestique, you know that I'd have to follow the breakaway for the first hour.
So I need to be able to do accelerations. Then I'll settle down if I'm in the breakaway or if I'm in the group. And then my role is to get that rider, the GC rider, to the bottom of that climb through five minutes, as hard as you can, and then see you later.
Cam Nicholls (03:21) See you later.
Ryan Thomas (03:22) Pull the agenda.
Cam Nicholls (03:22) In Zone 1. Yeah.
Ryan Thomas (03:23) Zone 1 for the rest. Whereas GC rider, sit back, Zone 2, a couple of accelerations following breakaways, the surges in the group. But your main role is halfway, beyond halfway through the stage, whereas the first half of the stage is easy.
So as a GC rider, you probably don't need to train that as much as what a breakaway specialist would. You go all out at the start, and then you need to be able to go all out at the end. So quite a different type of situation.
Cam Nicholls (03:49) Yeah. So the pros obviously analyse this information and then they train accordingly. So what is this specifically, maybe I've, pardon the pun, what is this specifically called?
Ryan Thomas (04:01) Yeah. Specificity.
Cam Nicholls (04:03) Yeah, exactly. Which is not anything new. So I think it's actually been around for a very long time.
But when I sent you this paper and I said, we should do a YouTube video on it, and you're like, oh, it's kind of like just validating or reinforcing something that we all know in the coaching circles. But I don't think many recreational and amateurs pay a lot of attention to it.
Especially, and the example I'm going to use here is what a lot of amateur and recreationals want to achieve. They want to beat their mates in the local group ride, or they want to hang on to the local group ride, or they want to get from the B group to the A group or something along those group ride lines. There's always some type of goal.
But then what do a lot of people end up doing?
Ryan Thomas (04:47) Just more of that.
Cam Nicholls (04:49) Just more group riding. In fact, there was a video we made recently about how you can actually improve your group riding through a specific workout. And we'll link to that at the top of the screen here.
And one of the comments was like, just do more group riding. And there was a lot of people that liked that comment, which suggests to me that perhaps there's some naivety out there about, okay, if you're wanting to get good at something specific, like a local group ride, which is the example we're going to use, we shouldn't just be doing group rides. Why is that, Ryan?
Ryan Thomas (05:23) Yeah, well, the example that I like to say is if I want to have a 400-watt threshold, I don't just go out and ride at 400 watts for as long as I can every day until I get there, because it's not going to get you there. Well, I'm just fatiguing you for no reason.
It's just not really specific in terms of what that bunch ride, in this scenario, what physiology are you hitting? What do you actually need to improve?
Because bunch rides are so variable in terms of intensity. If we're just going doing more bunch rides, we're hitting energy systems a little bit here and there, but never hitting one to improve it significantly enough to see a change.
Cam Nicholls (06:03) And you're probably not overextending yourself because when you get dropped in that specific part of the group ride and you keep getting dropped there, that's normally where you finish.
Ryan Thomas (06:12) Usually it's early in a group ride, right? So if it's a 45-minute hard part of the group ride and you get dropped 10 minutes in, 10 minutes of anything isn't really enough to move the needle. You're not really training that hard in that scenario.
So if you're getting further and further in a group ride, yes, there's progression there, but it's still not specific.
Yes, group rides are specific to group rides, but specific training for group riding is going to make you better at group rides or racing or whatever it is. The same as the professional riders. Professional racers don't just ride easy and then just go out and do races and get better.
Cam Nicholls (06:52) Racing does make you better, makes you stronger. And so does doing more bunch rides make you better. But as we talked about earlier, the pros train around their racing, which is very specific to the outcome they're trying to achieve.
So when they do get to the race, they're better prepared for it.
Ryan Thomas (07:07) Exactly.
Cam Nicholls (07:08) Yeah.
Ryan Thomas (07:08) And they're working strengths and weaknesses, like the weaknesses of the specific riders.
That's a big thing that, in a bunch ride, we need to figure out: where are you getting dropped? What do we need to improve?
It's not just go out and do more of those bunch rides to keep making yourself feel bad.
Cam Nicholls (07:23) Okay. So someone's listening to this and, maybe I should get a bit more specific so I can tackle my local group ride with a little bit more confidence, better training in the legs, better conditioning. What should they be thinking about?
And I think I'll preface this by saying you don't necessarily need to stop the ride. And it may not be a group ride. It could just be some people love going to their favourite Strava segment, or it could be a loop.
And I want to average 25 miles around this loop. That's my goal, right?
And you can still go do that. You can still go to the group ride, but it's what you do surrounding that which can better support you.
So the example that I wanted to bring in here is Belle, RCA member.
I know you've done a bit of research here on what training that she's done, but she came to us wanting to improve her racing, but she also loved local group riding. And she lives in my area in Noosa.
We've got a bunch ride called Boreen Point on Thursdays. And she had been dropped every single time she tried to get around that ride.
And, of course, like any bunch ride, it's not a climb, but it's a bit of a rise where everyone attacks with about maybe 15, 20 minutes to go. So there's a bit of fatigue in the legs.
There's a rise, everyone kicks. And that's where she was getting dropped repeatedly.
She signed up with the RCA about two months ago, working with Cav.
And then I went on the same Boreen Point group ride last week and she was there. And not only did she make it through, but she was actually ripping a few turns.
And I've got some footage because she's using the Insta360, which we'll overlay.
So I thought this is a really good example of what we talked about. She's got specific to her goals, which is racing, but also group riding.
Yeah. So you've dug into the training data and you can give us an example of kind of what she's done that's helped her take that next step with her group riding.
Ryan Thomas (09:15) Yeah. So it's actually quite interesting. I even spoke to Cav before we did this and I was like, what did you do differently?
Like, because she was a bit of content. Like, I can, I went back through and looked at her time in zones for power and heart rate for up until the 10 weeks before she started with the RCA, and then the 10 weeks since she's been with the RCA.
Okay. And the difference is quite dramatic in terms of the before and after. And we can overlay that here too, if you want.
Cam Nicholls (09:42) Any call-outs specifically?
Ryan Thomas (09:45) The overall volume dropped a bit. So she was training quite a lot before, but it was inconsistent.
So had some big weeks up around 20 hours and then some really small weeks up around five hours. And, yeah, it varied quite a lot before.
Now she's spent a good 10 weeks where, up over that 10 hours...
Cam Nicholls (10:07) Okay.
Ryan Thomas (10:08) Every week on week. Strategic easy weeks in there, but it's like, it's very obvious. You can see it. It's specific.
Cam Nicholls (10:15) Yep. Okay. That's quite good for, because for a bit of context, she's also, she's got a child, you know, she's a mum, she's got a full-time job.
So she's got, like, you know, a lot of the logistical considerations most recreational and amateurs have.
So it's interesting that she's been able to get consistent with it, perhaps because it's laid out in front of her.
Ryan Thomas (10:33) A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's the benefit of having a coach and a bit of a plug for the RCA there.
Cam Nicholls (10:39) Yeah. Okay.
Ryan Thomas (10:41) Yeah. But, like, time in zones as well, like a lot more specific in terms of heart rate in Zone 2.
So not just noodling around. So there's a bit of that, but I think the main thing here in terms of specificity for Belle was the inclusion of proper hard work.
So sprints was one thing that has been in there almost every week for a while now.
Cam Nicholls (11:02) And going back on her data, she wasn't doing sprints previously?
Ryan Thomas (11:05) No, not really. Not specific sprints. Like, she was probably throwing in some accelerations here and there.
Cam Nicholls (11:10) To try and hang on to the Boreen Point Thursday group ride?
Ryan Thomas (11:12) Yeah. But yesterday she did a five-second best power three-quarters of the way through a group ride, in that group ride. So five-second best under fatigued legs.
So big progression there.
And I can, we can overlay something else here. It's an interesting chart in TrainingPeaks where it shows your four-week peak powers across 365 days.
So you can track it and see the progression in five-second and one-minute power has been a big difference. The five-, 20- and 60-minute hasn't changed much in the last 365 days, but the five-second or one-minute, dramatic.
Cam Nicholls (11:48) Today's podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy's Weight Training for Cyclists program.
And if you're listening from the Northern Hemisphere, now is a very good time to start thinking about strength training as you head towards the winter months and begin building towards next season. Because if you do strength training right, you're looking at about a five to 10% gain.
But the problem many recreational cyclists face is they know they should be lifting weights, but they're not sure what exercises to do, how heavy to lift, nor how to fit strength work around their cycling.
And that's exactly why we have created this program with Dr. Aaron Turner, a strength and conditioning specialist with 20 years of experience working with athletes, including elite-level cyclists.
In our program, you'll get a beginner, intermediate and advanced strength program, all downloadable, backed by six detailed video tutorials, and then 60 individual exercise video demonstrations showing you exactly what to do and how to integrate it with your riding.
The goal is simple: more power, better durability and improved efficiency on the bike.
And you'll get lifetime access to this program for only $147 USD, backed by our money-back guarantee.
If you're keen, head to the Road Cycling Academy website and check out our Weight Training for Cyclists program.
Now let's get back to the podcast.
Okay.
Ryan Thomas (13:17) Across that year.
Cam Nicholls (13:18) And that's often group riding where you get dropped.
Ryan Thomas (13:20) That's the difference.
Cam Nicholls (13:22) The short, sharp efforts.
Ryan Thomas (13:23) Yeah. I think that's the specificity that a lot of people who would, if you're listening, why, if you're getting dropped in the group ride, like, majority of the time, it's when you're going all out.
You're never getting dropped in Zone 3 or Zone 4, like a lot of that...
Cam Nicholls (13:36) Or controlled rolling turns.
Ryan Thomas (13:37) Controlled rolling turns. You're not really getting dropped there.
It's when they drop the hammer and you go in Zone 6, 7, you go on and you're on your limit. And that's where the difference is.
So that hard VO2 sprint work was the big thing that Cav said he started implementing. Proper sprint work, proper anaerobic and VO2 work.
He was also doing fatigued efforts. So doing some sprints or some VO2s and then doing some tempo. So throwing a bit of mixed variable work in there, which is similar to what we do in the Beat Your Mates workout that you mentioned before.
But, yeah, the big difference is a sprint.
Cam Nicholls (14:10) And a sprint and anaerobic. And anaerobic's like your one minute.
Ryan Thomas (14:13) Yeah. 30-second to 90-second efforts.
Cam Nicholls (14:16) Yeah. So can you just give us an example of what the sprint session looks like and what the anaerobic session looks like?
If somebody's out there listening, oh, okay, maybe I should incorporate some of this.
Because I think a lot of people think that they're doing it. I do sprints. I do a sprint in the bunch ride, or I get to the end of my Zone 2 ride and I do a sprint.
But it's not a targeted one-hour session, which is dedicated to sprint and recovery.
Ryan Thomas (14:40) Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (14:41) So what does the session look like?
Ryan Thomas (14:43) So the session that Cav really likes, and I use this one now too...
Cam Nicholls (14:47) You got me to do it before my best-ever result.
Ryan Thomas (14:51) It's a really good sprint session. It's a really good anaerobic and VO2. So it kind of hits all of them, but it's pure sprint work.
It's a six-second sprint, two-minute recovery, six-second sprint, two-minute recovery and a 12-second sprint.
So that's one set, and you do two to three sets of that.
And the important part is you go as hard as you can for six seconds and you go, drop it right down, recover, Zone 1, repeat.
And it's just that all-out motor unit recruitment. And that has a really positive effect on your maximum power output and repeatability.
So this isn't just going and doing, like, another sprint session you can do is go and do a 10- to 20-second sprint and then have five to 10 minutes' recovery. Like, that's a different sprint.
This is kind of repeatability sprint. That's really good for bunch riding, racing, because you're doing 12 sprints, nine to 12 sprints throughout this workout.
And within a bunch ride, you might do 20 sprints, but this is getting really good peak power as well as repeatability.
Cam Nicholls (15:55) And interestingly, it's not a very challenging workout to get through.
It's not like you're doing, like, 30/15s, three sets of nine. That'll hurt you. Or the Beat Your Mates workout we did the other day, those one-minute efforts at the end, they hurt.
Even the fast-start VO2s hurt.
Like, to sprint for six seconds, I can feel it, but it's not like you're not in a hole. You're not dripping with sweat.
And the 12 seconds is a little bit fatiguing, but it's not really, you know, anything in terms of difficulty or rate of perceived exertion in comparison to your harder sessions.
So to implement it, it's pretty, it's not very daunting for people. But you should treat it as an intensity session, shouldn't you, if you're doing it?
Ryan Thomas (16:37) A hundred percent. Yeah.
And it's probably, although for yourself, like, your experience with these is probably different to someone who's a sprinter.
Um, so... What am I trying to say? You can't sprint out of sight in a dark night.
Cam Nicholls (16:58) Yeah, that's true.
Ryan Thomas (16:59) No, but as an aerobic, you're an aerobic athlete. So being able to sprint, you can't go deep enough that it's going to fatigue you.
Whereas an anaerobic or a neuromuscular athlete, for example, if someone's got a really high peak power compared to their...
Cam Nicholls (17:05) That'll fatigue them a lot more.
Ryan Thomas (17:06) It'll fatigue them a lot more because their tank's a lot bigger. They can go a lot deeper.
So it's very different for different types of athletes, which is the importance of, like, knowing what type of rider you are and how much it's going to fatigue you, because it will impact other riders differently.
But, yeah, you should, you need to go into it rested, prepared to go all out and to recover after.
It's not something just throw in, do another hard session, stay.
Cam Nicholls (17:32) Yeah. Okay.
So going back to, you know, the specificity element, to Belle as the example, leveraging, you know, the study on the pros, is she became more consistent with her training.
Ryan Thomas (within 17:32-18:01) Yep.
Cam Nicholls (within 17:32-18:01) She did more consistent time in Zone 2. So dedicated Zone 2 rides versus you're sporadic.
You think you're doing Zone 2, but it's actually, it's not.
And then dedicated sprint and anaerobic work.
Ryan Thomas (within 17:32-18:01) Yes.
Cam Nicholls (17:57) Which has given her a huge lift in two months' time.
Ryan Thomas (18:01) Yeah. Huge. Yeah.
So five-second peak power is, I think she's, like, easily a hundred watts onto the five-second peak.
Cam Nicholls (18:10) Wow.
Ryan Thomas (18:10) Which is a lot. And the repeatability, like, we can't, we could measure, I could go back in and look at specific sessions, but I would argue that her repeatability after eight to 10 sprints, it's probably the same, pretty close to the same peak power.
Whereas the first sprint session she would have done, it would have dropped off a lot.
Yeah. That repeatability peak is a lot higher.
Cam Nicholls (18:28) Yeah. Well, she actually put the video on social media at the end of the group ride. And I was like, firstly, I was quite impressed that she synced her watts accurately with the video because it's actually, that's difficult to do.
But she was doing 500 watts. And I'll overlay this, out in the wind, she wasn't even holding the wheel properly at the end of the ride. 64 kilos.
Yeah. Impressive.
So obviously there's some genetic, you know, gift there. You know, she's very fit and got a lot of potential.
But it's just interesting to see that rapid improvement in two months' time from constantly going back and doing the same group ride for months on end and getting dropped, and then within two months looking like a different rider.
And this is what people can do out there that aren't, you know, if you're just doing the same old, same old, you know, take one of these examples.
Probably the sprint example is your best one if you're struggling on bunch rides because, as you said, it's typically in a bunch ride when somebody accelerates where they get dropped.
So this would be good work for them.
And perhaps we can drop a link in the description to the workout, to Cav's workout. We'll have to ask him first, but I think he'll be fine if people want to implement it themselves.
So, yeah, that was good.
Thanks very much for your time, Ryan. Much appreciated. And we'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

Summary: 
What is cycling durability, how do professional cycling teams measure it, and could it be more important than your FTP or VO2 max?
In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and exercise physiologist Ben Treble to unpack emerging research into one of cycling's hottest performance topics: durability and fatigue resistance.
Fresh from the Science & Cycling Conference in Barcelona, Ben shares insights from unpublished data presented by Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe, exploring how WorldTour teams are attempting to identify riders who can continue producing high power after thousands of kilojoules of work.
Because having a big FTP or VO2 max is one thing. Being able to produce that power after several hard hours in the saddle is something very different.
Ben explains how cycling durability can be measured by comparing fresh power with power produced after significant accumulated work, why elite riders can experience remarkably little power decay, and why some amateur cyclists may see substantially larger declines.
We also explore an emerging metric involving four-minute torque, which Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe has investigated as a potential predictor of durability in younger elite riders.
But does the same relationship exist in recreational and Masters cyclists?
Ben has started analysing real-world data from Masters cyclists competing in UCI Gran Fondo events — and his preliminary findings don't necessarily match what is being seen in elite riders.
In this episode:
What does "durability" actually mean in cycling?
Why FTP alone doesn't tell the whole performance story
How professional cycling teams test fatigue resistance
Fresh vs fatigued five-minute power
Why accumulated kilojoules matter
How much power cyclists lose after several hours of riding
The difference between FTP, VO2 max and durability
Why WorldTour teams are investing heavily in durability
How durability is being used for talent identification
What the "compound score" is
Four-minute torque and its potential relationship with durability
Unpublished insights from Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe
Why elite cycling data may not translate directly to Masters cyclists
Ben's preliminary analysis of Masters and UCI Gran Fondo riders
What recreational cyclists can learn from the latest durability research
If you've ever felt strong at the beginning of a ride but watched your power disappear after three or four hours, this episode explores the science behind why some cyclists maintain their performance better than others — and how researchers are trying to measure it.
Ben is also looking for additional Masters/UCI Gran Fondo cyclists willing to contribute training and racing data to his ongoing analysis.
📧 Contact: ben@roadcyclingacademy.com
🌐 Road Cycling Academy: https://roadcyclingacademy.com
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.836)
Welcome to the RCA podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists, and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster, and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I'm joined by the RCA's science geek who's now based out of Switzerland, Ben Treble. And as per his nickname at the RCA, Ben has been at a cycling and science conference in Barcelona, and he's got some unpublished data from one of the world's biggest cycling teams, Tour de France teams, that he's going to share with us.
So this is a bit of a an inside scoop. Are you allowed to share this info, Ben? Or like are we gonna get it in a bit of trouble here? They didn't say anything.
Ben Treble (01:02.848)
I didn't see the first like two minutes, so Okay. That was often my trick. I mean, if they gave us a and there's no NDA anyway. I'm not sharing photos of it, it's verbatim. Some of this I feel like let's just do it.
Cam Nicholls (01:05.112)
Yeah.
Cam Nicholls (01:16.514)
Okay. Good.
Ben Treble (01:17.826)
But hot topic, hey? it's on durability.
Cam Nicholls (01:22.414)
Okay, and which team are we talking about? Which Tour de France team?
Ben Treble (01:25.696)
Red Bull Bora Handscrow. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So David De Klerk from Red Bull, I think he's one of their performance managers. He may also be a coach, I can't remember. Sorry, David. he gave a very nice presentation in Barcelona on some of the work that they're doing with some metrics to measure say durability and and performance.
Cam Nicholls (01:28.437)
look at.
Ben Treble (01:55.116)
beyond the the standard metrics of say threshold and stuff. So this is actually very big business in the World Tours, which is we would bucket it under talent identification or talent ID. Why is this important? When you're a World Tour team, you have a budget and at some point you have a pipeline of riders and the performance of those riders or finding the next Tade Pogachar, that becomes one of your biggest goals. Can you find the next Tade Poggachar?
And how do we know if a rider's going to be good in the future? How do we measure that?
Cam Nicholls (02:28.29)
Well what are the standard mechanisms for testing durability now? Because to me it's such a untangible because durability is the ability to produce, you know, high bouts of power essentially after long periods, long fatiguing periods in the saddle. So is is there a standard testing protocol? Because I guess, you know, what what we hear is, you know, often in articles on online is the twenty minute FTP test.
But that's not a durability test.
Ben Treble (03:01.344)
You might argue in some cases that in part a threshold test. It could be a ramp test for FTP. It could be a multiple maximal efforts for critical power test. Ultimately those are testing your threshold, which still represents durability. How much power can you push for how long?
Cam Nicholls (03:20.152)
Twenty minutes, yeah.
Ben Treble (03:21.44)
It's still a a durable marker. But I think the difference is those things were always trying to measure, at least in my books, the gold standard threshold, which was metabolic, your lactate steady state, MLSS. Right. And this is very difficult to test well. So people come up with easy tests you can do from home that they found some correlation to MLSS that was actually really poor. And that's how we came up with FTP.
That's my that's my nutshell history that scientists will debate forever.
Cam Nicholls (03:55.352)
So is there a gold standard dura durability test?
Ben Treble (03:58.76)
No. You know, it's been a hot topic for the last two, even three years at Science and Cycling Conference. And I don't think anybody has agreed on a single test that says this measures durability. There are multiple tests out there. Some of them are quite similar. I would say the most common type of testing to look at durability and assess it would be to do a ride where you
deplete a certain amount of kilojoules. So let's say you have to deplete, I don't know, 2,000 kilojoules, 3000 kilojoules, 4,000 kilojoules. And then you have to do a maximal effort at the end. And they look at, let's say, let's just use five minute power, for example. They get you to do a fresh five minute power test. Like what is your best five minute power you can do in a fresh state? Then they go and do these, you know, depleted efforts.
And then you have to try and do your best. How close to this five-minute fresh power can you get? And what is the percentage decay in this power? Now, different teams and different riders use different durations of this. So this is where we see differences in the Jubilee protocols and why there's not a single one necessarily. For GC riders, they might use a longer, they might use your 20-minute power. So you go do a 20-minute fresh test, you do a depleted ride.
If you're a world tour writer, it's probably going to be even 4,000 kilojoules because that's closer to what you would have in, you know, a hard hilly stage. And then what is the decay in your power, your 20-minute power? And that is something they see. They talk about this in Tade Pogachar a lot. That's where he's different to a lot of other riders, right? His decay in like 20 it was quoted somewhere. His decay in his 20 minute power.
After like four thousand kilojoules is only one percent.
Cam Nicholls (05:56.738)
Huh.
Ben Treble (05:57.912)
course. You and I are probably like minimal fifteen percent, twenty percent declines. Amateurs can be thirty plus percent decline in their power after doing only say two and a half thousand kilojoules, not four thousand. That is a very big difference. So that's probably the most common method of durability testing that I've seen across the conference and different teams and what's used. but I would say there is no single standard protocol
There's big questions even around this protocol. So we don't have to go too far down this rabbit hole. But for example, when you do let's say you have to do three thousand kilojoul depletion, you can deplete three thousand kilojoules by doing, you know, five hours of zone two, or you could do it by doing high intensity efforts for one and a half hours.
Cam Nicholls (06:47.676)
Of course.
Ben Treble (06:48.93)
You know, doing a fresh versus a depleted, doing another twenty minute test at the end of high intensity intervals for two hours versus four hours of zone two, those are very different depletions that lead you into this. So this was a topic that was brought up by David in his presentation, as he said something they're working on is trying to find a way to standardize that depletion. But at the moment they predominantly use training data because it's too difficult to pull writers out and say,
literally go do a 3,000 kilojoul depletion and do this effort. They typically get them to do a training ride or look at training data where they did a 20 minute PB or close to after a big day out.
Cam Nicholls (07:29.524)
Okay, that makes more sense. So what what was the inside scoop?
Ben Treble (07:34.37)
Yeah, let's chat about it. So on that topic, what was presented? So we'll start with something that's not Red Bull on their own came up with, right? So beyond the standard measures of performance. So the joiner, there's a thing called the joiner model of performance predictors, which predominantly looks at efficiency, VO2 max, and threshold. Durability is considered this fourth element that needs to be added to this classic model of performance predictors that was.
Put together by a scientist called Joyner. But how we measure it is the big question. Red Bull and a bunch of other scientists came up with an idea called compound score to start with. That was their first, I would argue, attempt at measuring durability to some respects. And compound score is easily calculated as it's your absolute power output. Typically they use five minutes. So let's say you can do 300 watts for five minutes in a fresh state.
And then you multiply it by the same five minute power, but in its relative form. So you would take your 300 watts, divide it by whatever your weight is, let's say 70 kilograms. So then you just multiply the absolute power by the relative power five minute. And you get this score. It could be anywhere from say, I don't know, a thousand up to three thousand, roughly, right? And they came up with a table of benchmarks that kind of says depending on your score, this would be where you sit. And they found some
relationships between high people who had high compound scores typically got more podium results.
Cam Nicholls (09:08.014)
What do you mean compound scores?
Ben Treble (09:10.008)
So what I just talked about, so the compound score. Yeah. Yeah. If we look at your absolute five minute power output multiplied by the relative power output, so watts per kilo, you get this score. And let's say it's two thousand points. Yeah. People who had this higher number were more likely to get a podium in a race. Yep. And they said, well, we know that the joinum model alone is not predicting like if you have a high VO2 max, it doesn't tell us that you're going to get a podium result anymore.
You need to have a high VO2 max, but it doesn't tell us if you're going to win the race. Hmm. So they're saying what else is contributing to people winning? So they're trying to measure that. That's this and that means when they know how to measure that, they could potentially in talent ID find the new Tate pogger chart earlier. That's where this is coming from.
Cam Nicholls (09:58.914)
Okay.
Ben Treble (10:02.414)
So they started with compound score. they found a relationship between higher compound scores and results that was not found with, say, just pure watts per kilo threshold, VO two max, those other measures that are more, let's say, traditional. Mm-hmm. But then they started to see some differences where it didn't necessarily predict race results, especially in juniors. And they're saying, Okay, maybe there's something else to this. We need to look at other metrics. So
Let's dig into the study. What was presented? So, David, really what they're looking at here. So we're going to go back to the sort of durability test we talked about before, where we have a decay and the Red Bull team are using their five minute mean maximal power. So the fresh five minute power versus their depleted five minute power. And they take a percentage of this decline. So maybe it's two percent, 10%, whatever it is.
They take that percentage decline and compare it against other variables to try and find a relationship. Is there something that is able to identify who has smaller decline or decay in their mean maximal power? The reason they use five minutes is because five minute mean maximal power is a very good indicator of your VO2 max. So you might be able to argue the decline in VO2 max after
3,000 or 3,500 kilojoules is also a very important contributor to performance. So what they did is they looked at they used 3,000 kilojoulle depletion for the under 19s and they did three and a half thousand kilojoulle depletion for under 23s. So they have a fairly large pool of riders in their database and they looked at all the training data and they compared this decay percentage to fresh four minute torque value in Newton meters.
Cam Nicholls (11:58.776)
Today's podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. I know from personal experiences that one of the most frustrating things as a recreational and amateur road cyclist when you're wanting to improve is putting in more time and effort on the bike, but never reaching the level you know you're capable of. So often people start riding more because they think that's the answer, but the harder they work, the more frustrated they become because the results just don't match the effort.
And eventually many people start to ponder maybe this is just my level. But I can tell you after seven years of being involved with recreational and amateur road cyclers through the road cycling academy that it's not your level. And that's exactly why we've created the Road Cycling Academy's 12-week custom plan. It's a plan designed specifically for recreational and amateur road cyclers who aren't quite ready for ongoing one-to-one coaching.
But know they've hit a plateau and they want to do something about it. It all starts with a one-on-one consultation with one of our experienced coaches. We'll learn about your riding history, your goals, your available training time, and your not negotiable rides. Next, we'll guide you through some testing so we can establish your accurate training zones. And from there, the coach will build a fully personalized, periodized 12-week training plan in training peaks that's designed around.
Your life with coach support throughout the entire program. And the results speak for themselves. Recently, we've had Ryan come to us wanting to improve his tour to Brisbane result. That's a UCI qualifier. And following his custom 12-week plan, he didn't just crack the top 20, which was one of his goals. He actually finished third overall on the podium, calling the program, and you can see this on our Google Reviews an absolute game changer.
Steve increased his critical power by 35 watts in 12 weeks. That's a 15.7% improvement. And he enjoyed the coach experience so much that he actually continued with one-to-one coaching following. So if you've had a gut full of putting in the work without getting the results, you know you're capable of. We'd love to help. Head to the Road Cycling Academy website and check out
Cam Nicholls (14:17.888)
Our 12 week custom training plan. And as a thank you to our listeners of this podcast, for the first five people, use the code RCA ten and you'll receive 10% off. Once those five spots are gone, the offer ends. Let's get back to the podcast. Okay. So how do people know what their fresh four minute talk value is in Newton meters? Not something I've looked at before, Ben.
Ben Treble (14:44.524)
Yeah, do you have a power meter can?
Cam Nicholls (14:46.902)
I do, yes. Asioma.
Ben Treble (14:48.942)
Do you spin the pedals? Then we can measure torque. So your power meter, well, when to measure power, you essentially have to have velocity times torque. That's that is power. It's velocity times torque. So people who spin more need less torque to produce the same power. And then people who have slower cadence, so they s they spin less, they're producing more torque to achieve the same power as the spinners. Yep.
So this is when we think of people who are more aerobic, right? They can lean more on this producing power through the cardiovascular system by spinning more, right? High cadence. And then you get the people like probably more you and me. we have more muscle mass. So we probably naturally lean more towards producing our power from a torque component of the equation, right? We have more type two fibers. So that's the torque component. If you have a power meter, pretty much every modern power meter is going to be calculating.
Talk or at least estimating it. Some power meters are better at measuring torque through the whole stroke cycle, but to get a four minute average it's they're probably pretty much every power meter is measuring this.
Cam Nicholls (16:00.616)
So for the layman out there, and I'm certainly a layman, the four minute talk number is gonna be different to your four minute power number because it's not taking into account how much you're spinning. Yep. So now you can go back to what you were saying before I interrupted with my question.
Ben Treble (16:10.51)
Correct.
Ben Treble (16:16.472)
Yeah. And if you think of torque, where is it also coming from a little bit? If you think of people who do this low cadence or high torque training, it's often about improving the fatigue ability of the fibers and the motor units in the muscle itself. Right. People who can tolerate higher torques often have like the the muscle fibers can tolerate more fatigue. Yep. So that's why they were like, okay, this let's look at the relationship between torque.
And the decay in the mean maximal power. And they found a strong relationship here. So that for the scientists who are listening, the R score 0.49, P score was 0.03. So they found a, in terms of science, that is a good relationship between fresh absolute four-minute talk value and the percentage in decay. So people who had higher fresh four-minute talk values had smaller percentages in the decay.
of their main maximal power.
Cam Nicholls (17:17.643)
Okay.
Ben Treble (17:18.594)
And that was across both the 3,000 kJ depletion in the under-19s and the 3,500 kJ in the under-23. David Declerc, who did this presentation, didn't present data on the world tour riders themselves, but he indicated it's going to be published soon. And I imagine it's kind of indicated it's gonna share the same story, but they looked at using a 4,000 kilojoul depletion in the Elite Riders, and I think it had the same story. So
What else was interesting in his presentation? They didn't just look at fresh four minute talk. They looked at your relative torque. So a bit like your relative power. This is torque divided by your body weight. And they found no good correlation here, which is quite interesting. So your relative torque had no relationship to the decay in your five minute power, which I just thought that to me was actually a very interesting.
thing that I I thought I kind of expected it would at the end of the day. They also then, if you remember we talked about the compound score before, they looked at the decay in five minute power percentage against compound score and found no strong relationship. So what does this mean? It means that the compound score, it's important for predicting performance success, but it doesn't correlate to durability. They're separate from each other. So his
summary on this was compound score is good to measure and it's good to measure performance capacity. And then looking at absolute fresh four minute talk values was a good predictor on your decay in five minute power in terms of V2 Max. So they are now looking for riders who have both good compound scores and high fresh four minute absolute talk values. And they're thinking the four minute talk value might become one of the key markers to measure durability.
Cam Nicholls (19:15.232)
Interesting. So, you know, that's pretty pretty good insight from a professional level. If we're amateur recreationals, which I think most of us are listening to this and I certainly am, what can we glean from this? Like what what can I take from this to implement into my own cycling? Or is it is it more about how much attention and focus pro teams are giving to durability now and trying to find durable riders?
that it should really be a focus in my own training too.
Ben Treble (19:48.748)
I think that's why I wanted to start with the context of the talent ID, right? So there's a very big emphasis in the world tool. Why does durability matter? It's about finding the next writer and getting value for money in their budget and trying to find the next big thing. We know durability is important. We probably don't really know how to quite measure it yet. and when we think of amateur writers like you and me and most of our audience, I was sitting there in the room thinking, this is amazing.
Like I've got plenty of writers who come to me and say, you know, I want to improve my durability. And we come up with some individualized ways to try and measure it. And I'm thinking, this might just be what I've been missing. Like maybe I have to just be putting a bit more emphasis on fresh four minute talk values. And I was like, but this will be easy to test because I have quite a few masters writers. I can look at their data and say, do I get the same relationship?
Cam Nicholls (20:35.328)
Okay.
Ben Treble (20:45.706)
that David De Klerk has found. So I'm going to give you a little bit of unpublished, unofficial, and very small sample size data. So take this as you want. But I'm collecting more data. So if you're listening to this and you are a UCI Fondo writer and you've been training for a year, get in touch because and you're willing to share your data. I would love to add you into this little research project. The more data, the stronger the insights get and the summaries. So but long story short, Cam.
I do not get the same findings as David De Klerk with Masters Riders. There's so far at least in my small sample size, there's zero relationship between decay in five minute mean maximal power and fresh four minute talk value. I'll let that sit with you for a second.
Cam Nicholls (21:32.984)
Go, h how many riders have you been able to look out data wise? Eight. Okay.
Ben Treble (21:37.762)
I got eight. And to give you an idea, I mean I think David Claklerk, they had around twenty-three from memory, he said. So eight's not bad. I wouldn't say it's amazing, but in terms of the performance, real-world values, it's not bad. Yes. To give you more context to that sample size, I had they're all male. I didn't have any females, unfortunately. They were a mixture of podium performers. Yep.
People who qualified. So this is at the the Tour of Brisbane. And I had riders who did not qualify. So say mid-pack or even towards backpack. And so I think there's a really nice mixture of performance abilities. There was obviously a range of age categories within that. And it's just it's interesting because I looked at both how do these values compare to how close they got to a qualifying race time and also
performance race time. So how far away from a podium performance time were they and also the qualifying time? And there's just no I couldn't find any relationship between fresh four minute talk or relative four minute talk or compound score to their performance.
Cam Nicholls (22:53.396)
Okay. And this is all data. You did you get y these you know, these people that you looked at, you didn't need to get them to go and test, did you? The the data was already available. Just from their tr their training data.
Ben Treble (23:02.456)
Yeah.
Yeah, I can use WKO and pull out their you know, I can create I just created a little dashboard in WKO that looked at fresh four minute talk values.
Cam Nicholls (23:13.834)
WKO is a is an application inside Training Peaks which is a bit more advanced for all those people that are wondering what WKO is.
Ben Treble (23:22.304)
Yeah. And then I created a graph for the five minute like decay percentage on mean max full power. So kind of easy to pull the data out. One thing to note, I did not use a like a three thousand or a three and a half thousand kilojoul depletion. Most masters riders are rarely hitting those numbers. In fact, I looked at two and a half thousand and also two thousand kilojoul because on average, in the end, I used two and a half thousand because on average
It was almost spot on. Two and a half thousand kilojoules was the depletion across that sample size at tour of Brizzy for the event. So I don't think a three thousand or three and a half or even four thousand kilojoulle depletion is relevant for masters riders in terms of UCI fondos, because for the most part, the race is not even getting close to hitting those depletions. So what we care about would be and what's more relevant is between two and two and a half thousand depletion in Masters riders.
The UCI fondos are often shorter and less intense than World Tour racing. So I tried to make it very specific when I looked at it, but also because most of them just don't have the data. Like you there's no five minute effort that they've done after 3,000 kilojoules because heaps of them have just never done it.
Cam Nicholls (24:38.868)
If there is a recreational and amateur out there that wants to lean into your your study here, Ben, and maybe get involved, what's the best way for them to get in contact? They just contact the general RCA email and then we can forward it across or do you wanna give do you wanna give your personal details away here?
Ben Treble (24:54.414)
Yeah, I mean they can hit up the RCA for sure and that can get passed on to me. You can also reach me at my RCA email, Ben at RoadcyclingAcademy dot com. Also happy for you to hit me up on Instagram. I have a public profile. it's nothing super exciting. If you're it's just Benjamin Treble would be my handle if you search me. yeah, you can reach me on either of those forms.
Cam Nicholls (25:19.192)
Yeah. Well we'll we'll we'll link those in the podcast description as well if people want to get involved because it's it's it's quite it's interesting what you're doing and it's an emerging, developing space. And obviously, you know, while pro athletes and that they do their pro things, their expertise and their their frameworks can definitely be leveraged to advantage in what we we do, you know, with our members and athletes at the at the Road Cycling Academy. So yeah, that's really interesting. Ben, is anything else that you wanted to add there?
Ben Treble (25:49.868)
No, I'll probably leave it there and stay tuned because I have some hypothesis and some other insights from the masters data that surprised me in terms of what predicts performance at UCI fondos. So stay tuned.
Cam Nicholls (26:06.318)
Alright, that's great. Well, yeah, as mentioned, if you if you want to get involved in what Ben's doing, we'll drop the details to get in contact in the podcast description. And Ben, thank you for sharing. That scoop was very interesting. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

How many carbohydrates per hour do cyclists actually need — 60g, 90g, 120g or even 150g?
Professional cyclists are consuming more carbohydrates than ever, with reports of Tour de France riders pushing towards 120–150+ grams of carbs per hour. But does more carbohydrate actually mean better performance — and should recreational and amateur cyclists be trying to copy the pros?
In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and resident science geek Ben Treble, fresh from the Science & Cycling Conference in Barcelona, to discuss emerging research into high-carbohydrate fuelling for cycling performance.
Ben breaks down where the traditional 60–90g of carbohydrate per hour recommendation came from, how glucose and fructose are absorbed by the body, and what the latest research suggests happens when cyclists increase their intake to 120g or even 150g per hour.
They also discuss why simply eating more isn't necessarily better, how professional cyclists periodise carbohydrate intake depending on the demands of each stage, and why gut training may be one of the biggest untapped performance opportunities for amateur cyclists.
In this episode:
60g vs 90g vs 120g vs 150g of carbs per hour
How much carbohydrate cyclists actually need
Why 90g/hour became the standard recommendation
Glucose vs fructose absorption explained
Does 120g/hour improve cycling performance?
Why 150g/hour may offer little additional benefit
What Tour de France riders are really consuming
How the pros periodise carbohydrate intake
Gut training for cyclists
Why amateur cyclists often eat less than they think
How to gradually increase your carbohydrate intake
Fuelling hard sessions vs easy Zone 2 rides
When lower-carbohydrate or fasted training may still have a place
How better fuelling can improve performance and recovery
For most recreational cyclists, the goal isn't to immediately chase 120 or 150 grams per hour. As Ben explains, consistently reaching around 90g/hour during demanding sessions and events — after progressively training the gut to tolerate it — can already represent a significant opportunity for improved performance and recovery.
Road Cycling Academy helps recreational and amateur cyclists train smarter, improve their performance and get more from the limited training time they have available.
One-to-One Cycling Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/ 
12 Week Custom Plan: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/cycling-plan-custom/ 
#CyclingNutrition #CyclingTraining #Carbohydrates #CyclingPerformance #RoadCycling #CyclingPodcast #TourDeFrance #EnduranceCycling #SportsNutrition #CyclingScience
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.826)
Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I'm joined by the RCA's Science Geek based in Switzerland now, Ben Treble. And Ben has recently, as per his Science Geek nickname, been to a science conference in Barcelona. And he's been to a number of presentations, seen some research, which I believe is yet to be published. And we're going to dig into some of that. And it's relating to carbohydrate intake. Now,
I know this is not new news, Ben. Is it taking more carbs to help you improve your cycling performance? So it's not so much about that. It's more about the level that we should be targeting now, which is therefore, I guess the research is becoming more specific to okay, is it ninety grams good enough? Is 120 grams good enough? Should we be looking at 150 grams? Like, where do we shut the door?
I believe that's what it was relating to. Is that is that correct, Ben?
Ben Treble (01:30.028)
Yeah, it was looking at I mean, I think this is just a hot topic. It came up at another conference as well after Science and Cycling, which was at Barcelona. But I think an enormous amount of research in nutrition has only historically looked at, say, either zero, sixty or ninety. Ninety was for a long time considered the if you want to say the ceiling or like high carb intake. Now we have some research that looked at
a hundred and twenty grams per hour. And I would say there is coming soon, there will be some published research on a hundred and fifty grams per hour as well. So hot press. What is the takeaway at the end of the day? You need to fuel it's very individualized for one. And two, you need to fuel for whatever your your efforts are. But I personally I wouldn't be at this stage anyway, thinking even
Dreaming of a hundred and fifty grams per hour.
Cam Nicholls (02:32.01)
Okay. So what about let's back the bus up. So for a long time ninety was considered, you know, that's where we should be targeting for optimal performance per hour, ninety grams per hour, four R intense training sessions or four hours when we want to go go hard, whether it's a group ride, whether it's a fondole event or whatever it might be. And of course, if people are out there listening and th and it and thinking to themselves, Well, ninety just sounds ridiculous, or even sixty sounds ridiculous.
and maybe this is a conversation for another day, but you know, don't start there. You've got to work your way towards it. But let's just say somebody's at ninety grams now, they've been training, they've worked their way up towards ninety grams per hour for the key sessions. Is there any science which says actually suggests that if you actually then worked your way from ninety to one hundred and twenty grams per hour? And then we can touch on one fifty shortly, is there much of a performance?
benefit f to increasing from ninety to one hundred and twenty? Should I be looking at that, Ben, as I'm now training for Masters Nationals, starting to increase my carb intake? Yeah, am I going to benefit from one hundred and twenty?
Ben Treble (03:39.584)
If the duration and the intensity is high enough, these I think it's worthwhile if you have the capacity to do the gut training and your gut can handle it, at least to test if your gut can handle ninety to a hundred and twenty. I think the reality is that for a lot of people, to be honest, especially amateurs, they really struggle even just to do ninety. It's eating a lot of food. It's a lot of gels or a lot of bars or a lot of whatever combination you want to use.
And that was also really clear. So there was a couple of presentations. There was one that was quite interesting from I don't know if they were, sorry, if they were a researcher, I can't remember the name, but they were from precision hydration. So take this as you will. There's obviously some commercial bias, but they have collected, went and collected over the last couple of years enormous levels of data on carbohydrate utilization across cycling events, triathlon events, like a bunch of endurance events and running events.
And they compared age groups and genders on what were people actually managing to eat during these events. And for the most part, a large majority of people were in the like 40 to 80 grams per hour. Which tells me two things. One, people often think they eat eat more than they actually do in the event. Two, a lot of people struggle from an amateur point of view, and this in my coaching is something I've experienced.
They struggle with gut issues and they struggle with the the logistics, like taking my hand off the handlebars to get gels out of my pocket to eat, and then it's a bumpy road or a descent, so then I'm not eating, or I drop the gel. Like these factors are impacting their ability to get 90 grams per hour, maybe more than anything else. So practicing eating on the bike is probably a big takeaway from this. But let's back this up. Where did the like 90, 60, 90 grams?
come from. I think it's kind of important to just reestablish some of the basics. So I am now talking about we eat food. This predominantly what we're caring about here is the sugars, the carbohydrates. How do those sugars go from being in your gut to producing ATP or energy in the muscle? Right? Step one is they have to get absorbed through the gut into the bloodstream. The blood then transports the sugars to the working muscle group to to utilize.
Ben Treble (06:04.166)
For the sugar to be absorbed through the gut into the bloodstream, there are some things that are called transporters. And different sugar types have different transporters. So the SGLT1 transporter is the glucose transporter, and it has a ceiling. It's rate limited. This is biochemical math. It's around 60 grams per hour. So you can take in 200 grams of glucose if you want. Doesn't mean your body's
Actually, going to absorb the 200 grams through the gut any faster. That's kind of this is still very solid science that has not changed. The second transporter we care about is the GLUT5 transporter. This was a big revelation in the science many years ago because we realized actually fructose, which is a a different type of sugar to glucose, has a different transporter.
That means that if we take, for example, 60 grams of glucose, and we can now take, say, 30 grams of fructose, because it's going through a different transporter, we might be able to get more sugar into the bloodstream and to the muscle. So that's and there was typically thought to be around 30 grams per hour, was the limit of fructose. But that was more so due to the fact that's just the amount that the research papers picked in the first days, and it was also that's what
The participants could tolerate without GI issues. Keep in mind in science world, you know, they're not necessarily bringing in gut-trained athletes. They're bringing in normal people who are not gut trained. So they can't go and give them 50 grams of fructose because they'll get GI issues and pull out of the study. And that is where the we went from 60 to 90 grams per hour. That's where that kind of came from, because we went from just glucose.
To the glucose and fructose, we have two transporters. 60 and 30 grams was your 90 grams per hour. That has evolved. We realize that the gut is highly trainable. You can most likely take in quite a bit more fructose, but your limiter is probably more around your individual gut tolerance than anything. So some people are able to tolerate 50 grams of fructose. And probably the transporter sealing is rate limited around 50 to 60 grams per hour as well.
Ben Treble (08:26.092)
And that's what gets you to this hundred and twenty grams per hour sort of carbohydrate rate that we start to see now. So the main presentation was from Bernardo Nortz. He's from Liverpool University in the UK. And I got a couple points for you, unless you have any questions yet, Ken. Are you with me?
Cam Nicholls (08:44.36)
I'm I'm I'm completely with you, yep. Cool.
Ben Treble (08:47.882)
so some key points from the study. So exogenous oxidation, this is carbohydrate, so exogenous oxidation and whole body oxidation rates across the that range from 60 to 120 grams per hour had pretty minimal difference. So this again, this still supports the notion for the most part that these rate limiters in the transporters in the gut still exist and they haven't changed. So people taking 150 grams per hour.
question becomes what other mechanisms are occurring or what other changes beyond taking more sugar through into the bloodstream are occurring that help improve performance? Like because we know people who say, I do 150 grams per hour, who don't have gut issues, say that their performance is better. Maybe it's not because they're getting more glucose or sugars into the bloodstream, but there's something else going on.
That helps improve performance, right? I think that's kind of an important part. So
Cam Nicholls (09:50.936)
So what what could that be? What's the hypotheticals being thrown around?
Ben Treble (09:54.85)
Yeah, well this is what this paper looked at, which is exciting. So the major difference, right? Now if we think of when you produce energy, it's fueled predominantly from, in layman's terms, carbohydrates and fats. So if you were to say you produce a hundred watts, I don't know, at sort of a a very low intensity, let's say it's around fifty fifty. Fifty percent of that hundred watts is produced is fueled from carbohydrates and fifty percent is from fat oxidation.
There is a crossing over point where the fat oxidation, like you you you you need more carbohydrates than fat, and this crossing point in this balance between the two fuel sources, the timing of this crossing point is what shifts with these different carbohydrate rates. So it occurs later in duration. So if we go from between sixty to a hundred and twenty grams per hour, the carbohydrate oxidation rates were
not scientifically different. There were very small differences. But the difference was prolonging the crossing points at which you have this crossing point from fat and carbohydrate oxidation rates, which is a good thing. So essentially comes to that verbatim that you're reserving some of your glycogen for later, right? Because you're doing a bit more fatty oxidation.
There were no differences at all between 120 to 150 grams per hour in whole body carbohydrate oxidation. So there are small differences from ninety to one twenty, which you could argue at a high performance sense is worthwhile chasing because we want to chase those one and two percenters. But they had no difference from one hundred twenty to one fifty. So I don't I'm yet to see evidence that shows why one fifty is worth chasing. And the general
feeling in the room from any of the real hardcore scientists was ninety to one twenty is kind of where you need to focus. This one fifty world is not worth it.
Cam Nicholls (11:55.968)
Right. So so why do you think you know you hear about some of these Tour de France riders and and triathletes pushing even one fifty plus? I've I think I've heard one sixty, or even perhaps even more. W are they just doing it because it's it's a challenge? Or are they doing
Ben Treble (12:15.148)
I think it's a combination of things. One, I think their guts are highly trained, including the fructose transporter system. I also think that at a hundred and fifty grams per hour, they're taking it for a very short period, right? They're not taking hundred and fifty grams for the full eight hours necessarily at a you know, a G C stage day, right? Like a queen stage. And they're certainly not taking 150 grams per hour every day.
That was very clear. There were a few case study presentations from world tour teams on what their riders were actually taking during grand tours. I think there was actually a really good case study on Jai Hindley, I think it was. They kind of took the name out, but I'm pretty sure it was Dry Hindley. And on their, you know, their easy rest dates for the GC guys, so keep that in mind. On a flat stage, they were only taking in, say, 60 grams per hour. And then on a on a hilly stage, maybe they were going to the ninety.
potentially if it was a hard hard one, move it up to 120 during hard periods of the race. And then on queen stages is all their key days is when they were trying to lift it to maybe say 150. So it's very periodized and individualized. They had riders who only go up to 100 because it's what they tolerate. So I wouldn't say 150 is what everybody is taking and they're certainly not taking it every day. But the media
catches it right and they come out and say, everybody's doing one fifty all the time or one writer gives some verbatim in an interview at some point they were taking a hundred and sixty grams per hour or something and it gets taken out of context, I think.
Cam Nicholls (13:52.28)
Today's podcast is brought to you by the Road Cycling Academy. I know from personal experiences that one of the most frustrating things as a recreational and amateur road cyclist when you're wanting to improve is putting in more time and effort on the bike, but never reaching the level you know you're capable of. So often people start riding more because they think that's the answer, but the harder they work, the more frustrated they become because the results just don't match the effort. And eventually
Many people start to ponder maybe this is just my level. But I can tell you after seven years of being involved with recreational and amateur road cyclers through the Road Cycling Academy that it's not your level. And that's exactly why we've created the Road Cycling Academy's 12-week custom plan. It's a plan designed specifically for recreational and amateur road cyclers who aren't quite ready for ongoing one-to-one coaching, but know they've hit a plateau and they want to do something about it.
It all starts with a one-on-one consultation with one of our experienced coaches. We'll learn about your riding history, your goals, your available training time, and your not negotiable rides. Next, we'll guide you through some testing so we can establish your accurate training zones. And from there, the coach will build a fully personalized, periodized 12-week training plan in training peaks that's designed around your life with coach support throughout the entire program.
And the results speak for themselves. Recently, we've had Ryan come to us wanting to improve his tour to Brisbane result. That's a UCI qualifier. And following his custom 12-week plan, he didn't just crack the top 20, which was one of his goals. He actually finished third overall on the podium, calling the program, and you can see this on our Google Reviews, an absolute game changer. Steve increased his critical power by 30.
Five watts in 12 weeks. That's a 15.7% improvement. And he enjoyed the coach experience so much that he actually continued with one to one coaching following. So if you've had a gut full of putting in the work without getting the results, you know you're capable of. We'd love to help. Head to the Road Cycling Academy website and check out our 12 week custom training plan. And as a thank you to our listeners of this podcast.
Cam Nicholls (16:17.144)
For the first five people, use the code RCA ten and you'll receive ten percent off. Once those five spots are gone, the offer ends. Let's get back to the podcast. Yeah. So it's interesting what the preliminary research is suggesting from your session in Barcelona at this science expo was that yeah, the difference between one ninety and and one twenty is is marginal.
And the difference between one twenty and one fifty is don't even worry about it.
Ben Treble (16:51.79)
Pretty much. And the I think the difference maybe what we'll see is there'll be I mean, there's more signs coming out. And I think what we may find is the difference between one twenty to one fifty. I don't think we'll ever see a difference in whole body oxidation rates, but I think what you might find is and what the theory is is that your glycogen resynthesis rates are faster post exercise. And this is something that
Grand Tour riders or people doing multi-day races, this becomes important, right? Because you how fast can you replenish your muscle glycogen and your liver glycogen levels for the next day? So that's a very important. But for the large majority of amateur riders, especially I think in our community, they're doing single day events. And so that's not actually as important for them. So they don't need to risk GI issues for that, in my eyes, for the most part.
Cam Nicholls (17:49.526)
Yep. And let's face it, you know, going back to the standard the gold standard ninety is is still quite challenging to get to. even I'm sh you know, struggle as I'm ramping my training back up. I haven't done much training in the last, I'd say, twelve months and therefore haven't been doing any form of gut training. So I think I was doing maybe sixty to eighty grams of carbs at the local group ride on Saturday and I was I was struggling. My gut didn't like it.
So it's I know it it takes work, but I I also know that if if you do it properly for our even recreational and amateur level, you know, the benefits it has for us with our recovery for the next day's training, and also to mitigate, you know, what a lot of recreational and amateurs tend to do is don't eat enough around training, then they snack in the afternoons and they they make poor decisions with their their eating because they haven't fueled their training session properly. And that
There's a whole other factor of weight management, which I know a lot of recreational amateurs are trying to, you know, achieve, you know, drop some weight, get stronger on the bike, and then therefore periodizing and getting, you know, your carbohydrate strategy around your training sessions and going that high carb for your actual session, but before and during during has a lot of benefits. So from your experiences working with recreationals and and now, you know, seeing more research, you what are you thinking is is a good place to land?
For the general Joe Blow, who's, you know, training to beat his mates or training for a fondo event, is ninety the is is where we should be looking at?
Ben Treble (19:22.186)
Ninety for me is still kind of a let's try and get you to ninety. Don't even worry about one twenty or one fifty. Most people struggle to get to ninety. So Yeah. And in my experience working with athletes, they often think they're eating more than they are. And when we really talk about, okay, what did you eat on this ride? Let's count the gels. Let's factor in that for the most part when you eat a gel, you're not eating the whole gel. You can't use two hands and squeeze every gram out of that gel packet. There's usually a couple grams left in every one of them.
And once you start to do that, you realize, you took forty to sixty. You weren't even close to ninety. So and then they try ninety and maybe you get gut issues like you are, Cam. And so it's becomes a bigger focus of the training. So we might do a block of training where the primary focus in that block is not as focused on say power or some specific intervals. Of course we still do some key sessions, but it's really to say, okay, this work out.
Your main focus isn't to hit every interval perfect. Your focus is eating on the bike. And we're gonna spend a little bit of time to find that limit where you get jihad issues. And let's say it's 70 grams per hour. You had to go to the toilet, couldn't ride anymore. Okay, we found your limit. We back it off 10 grams per hour, and we do that for a week. Let's say it's 60. And then the next week we're gonna try 65.
And then the week after, and I just look at trying to get you up five grams every week. Maybe we can try ten gram increases per week. Depends on the athlete. But essentially that's part of the gut training process. So and I generally find in a single block you can get most people from sixty to like eighty or ninety. And this has a measurable difference on performance and recovery.
Cam Nicholls (21:06.614)
Yeah, we we see it time and time again. And it's interesting. I I run these performance breakthrough calls. They're called at the RCA where, you know, people book an hour of my time to to go through just what they're currently doing, with their training, identify low hanging fruit opportunities with their training and you know, I normally give them four or five things that they can implement, or three three or four really, things they can implement straight away and
Often this is at the top of the tree because it's surprising how much research is out there about, you know, high carb intake, how many people are talking about it, but there's still so many people not doing it. They're like, but surely that doesn't that's not gonna be relevant for me. I'm just a General Joe Blow who's training for just a, you know, local club race. It's like, as you said, the performance gains
at that level, our level, are still significant. So, you know, everyone should be leaning in. But it's interesting the key takeaway from this conversation is, you know, don't get carried away with what, you know, you're hearing, you know, in the cycling news after the latest Tour of France. You know, 150 is probably never going to be achievable and probably not beneficial from what you're saying as well.
Ben Treble (22:24.92)
have one of my athletes who did go a bit crazy on the fueling because when he went from 60 to 90 the performance improvements were wild and he went from nine 90 to 110 even 120 and he he had further improvements and so he thought I'm just gonna I'm just gonna see how much I can eat. Let's see if I keep getting improvements. And he started eating, you know, trying 150 and he could tolerate 150. Like it was
He didn't get GI issues. I don't I would argue he didn't necessarily get a lot more performance benefit in terms of energy. Perceptually, I think, you know, he had sugar in his mouth, so maybe the neurotransmitters, he got some sort of activation from this, which he noticed. But ultimately, when we worked with him and his nutritionist on this, he worked out actually and he was overeating for some of the sessions. So that was also like if we think about what I said earlier with the propello.
Some of those guys on the easy stages are only doing sixty grams per hour. So they're still fueling the work that they're doing. So you have to really think about what session you're doing today and are we fueling for the work that we're doing and the planning ahead for the s session the next day. So I don't think it's as simple as saying, let's get to ninety or a hundred and twenty grams per hour and that's the end of the story. It's the periodization and the timing of that is just as important.
Obviously, if you're going through a gut training block, you might go ahead and know, okay, we're going to do a little bit of overeating because each day and every session we want to try hit 60, 70, whatever your buildup is. And that's on purpose because that's part of that goal. But yeah, I think I'd be careful about once you kind of hit and find a good level, you don't necessarily need to take it every ride.
Cam Nicholls (24:17.472)
No, exactly. Yeah, for for your key sessions when you're wanting to perform your intensity sessions, if you're doing a cruise with a mate, if you're doing a zone two ride for a couple of hours, you know, either don't, you know, you probably don't need any or minimal. I know I did two hours zone two this morning and and some people would argue that you should be taking you know, a little bit of carbs for that, but I didn't because I also like to have sessions where I don't put any sugar in my mouth because it just
That's just who I am. And you know, may maybe there's a fat adaptation component to not putting any sugar in on a zone two ride. And I can even out, you know, the the high carb key sessions with sessions where I don't take any carbs and that just works for me. So you're like it's dependable on the athlete. But I think the key takeaway for people is, yeah, with this high carb strategy we're talking about for amateurs and recreationals, it's for your key training sessions.
Ben Treble (25:14.05)
Yeah, fun fact, there was you know, I think the the low carb diet or the fasted training was very popular many years ago. That hasn't completely disappeared. So it's completely disappeared from the the media story that's out there around carbohydrate crazy, 150 grams per hour. but talking to some people on performance teams from the World Tour at the conference, there is still a place and time
To do either partially fasted or fat max training where you have lower carbohydrates. It's certainly a very small window of your training where it's appropriate. But as you said, like let's say, for example, a base a base period, there is advantages to doing, I think, some fasted, or you at least start fasted and then progressively increase some carb intake if it's long enough to look at fatty oxidation.
So
Cam Nicholls (26:14.326)
Yeah. I mean I this morning it was interesting because I'm kind of building my fitness back and I almost used not eating as a bit of a benchmark because the two hour zone two ride that I did this morning, I actually started to crave some carbohydrate and feeling like I needed it at about an hour and a half, hour forty five. So with about fifteen to thirty minutes to go. Whereas I know once my I've
continue to re s reestablish my aerobic base engine and become better at utilising fat as energy, I'll do that two hour ride and I'll have no cravings for carbohydrate. And I could probably go two and a half hours. So it's almost like a bit of a a a benchmark for me, knowing how efficient I'm getting at, you know, using fuel for energy, particularly at an aerobic state, by not eating.
So yeah, just just an anecdote from from my perspective on on that. And yeah, I'm I I'm all up for having sessions where you don't have anything, particularly if it's if it's under an hour and it's and it's recovery or zone two focus. I don't think there's any need at all.
Ben Treble (27:18.86)
Yeah. I'll leave you one with one last tidbit which I thought was interesting from the presentation from Bernardo. In their research, they actually found there was very minimal gastro differences between sixty and one twenty grams per hour. For example, like they had a I think there was a group of about twenty five or thirty, so still small sample sizes. But within that, I think only one rider experienced some gastro issues going from sixty to one twenty.
I found this interesting because that's not been my experience in the field with amateur athletes. I have had athletes go from 40 to like 60 and had issues with this jump. So I would almost guarantee if I had taken them from 60 to 120 in one go, they would have experienced gastroissues. so I th I just thought that was an interesting thing that the study found.
there was minimal gastro issues from sixty to one twenty. but they did have issues from one twenty to one fifty.
Cam Nicholls (28:26.134)
Absolutely. Well, thanks for sharing, Ben. I think we can all kind of land on, yeah, if you if you're a recreational and amateur and you're leaning into the, you know, more carbohydrate intake, aiming for through gut training, 90 grams for your key sessions is going to be a good target. But of course, if you want some support with that, as Ben has referenced many times during this discussion,
That's one of the things he supports his members through th through the coaching that he does. It's not just about training, it's also about nutrition and carb strategy and and and supporting that strategy, you know, over the course of many months. So if you're interested in in working with a coach, not only on your training, but also on your nutrition strategy, make sure you check out the RCA's website. Go to www.roadcyclingacademy.com and check out one to one coaching.
Thanks for your time, Ben, and we'll catch everyone in the next podcast.

What can recreational cyclists learn from the cooling strategies used by the Tour de France peloton?
In this episode of the Road Cycling Academy Podcast, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and exercise physiologist Ben Treble to unpack the science behind cooling strategies, heat acclimation, hydration and performance.
With the 2026 Tour de France being one of the hottest on record, riders were seen using ice baths, cooling gloves, slushies and cold water immersion before stages. But do these strategies actually improve performance, and are they worth using for amateur cyclists?
Ben explains the physiology of riding in hot conditions, why heat dramatically reduces cycling performance, and the evidence behind practical cooling methods that everyday riders can use before and during training and racing.
Whether you're preparing for a gran fondo, summer road race, Zwift event or simply trying to survive hot weekend rides, this episode is packed with practical, science-backed advice.
In this episode:
Why the 2026 Tour de France put cooling strategies in the spotlight
What happens to your body when you ride in hot conditions
How heat affects power output, recovery and endurance performance
Heat acclimation vs simply riding in hot weather
Ice baths, cooling gloves and pre-cooling strategies explained
Do Slurpees actually improve cycling performance?
The truth about pouring water over yourself during rides
Cooling vests, ice socks and cold towels
Does menthol actually help?
Practical cooling tips for recreational and Masters cyclists
Common mistakes riders make when racing in the heat
If you're looking to perform better in hot conditions, improve your endurance, or simply understand the science behind what the professionals are doing, this episode is for you.
Learn more about Road Cycling Academy coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com
Podcast Sponsor: https://onekloudx.com.au/ 
#cycling #cyclingtraining #tourdefrance #endurancetraining #heattraining #cyclingperformance #roadcycling #granfondo #masterscycling #hydration #cyclingpodcast
 
Transcript: 
Cam Nicholls (00:01.826)
Welcome to the RCA Podcast, designed for recreational and amateur road cyclists with a focus on performance. We dive into cycling training, nutrition, strength training for cyclists and even bike fitting tips, all designed to help you train smarter, ride faster and hopefully tear your mates' legs off. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.
Welcome back to the RCA podcast, where today I am joined by the RCA's science geek based in Switzerland now, Ben Treble. And today we're going to go through well, I wanted to ask Ben about the Tour de France, actually, because it's just been and gone. And there was a lot of scenes of riders with their arms in icy water or arms and hands in icy water. And I was like, that's interesting. Cooling strategies, Ben. But does this like
relate to, you know, everyone that's watching them, we're all recreational and amateurs at the end of the day. Like, should we be paying attention to this? Like, is it something that, you know, the mere mortal should be leaning into? Should we be dunking our arms and hands in ice before we go out for our rides?
Ben Treble (01:13.91)
I think you should pay attention to it, Cam. How feasible is it for an amateur to pull off the same strategy though, at a fondo race? Probably pretty limited.
Cam Nicholls (01:24.43)
True. So why should I be leaning into it? What does the science say about the cooling strategies? Especially when it's hot, of course. Like, you know, if you live in Canada and you're you're riding in the middle of winter, you're probably not gonna worry about it, are you?
Ben Treble (01:37.706)
No, not necessarily. You're probably worried about hypothermia instead. Yeah, look, I think the tour is a pretty special case this year. I'm over in Switzerland and we've we had some pretty severe heat waves even here for Switzerland, which you'd think as an Australian I would be pretty well well established to cope with, but it was I can tell you it was some of the hottest periods I've gone through.
The two are I think I read this stat the other day. The two are averaged in the first two weeks thirty point eight degrees. Now, that may not sound super crazy, but to be an average for two weeks where every day is over thirty, the previous record was twenty-five point nine in twenty-two. That is enormous. Like to have a a two week average temperature to be four degrees higher than the last record.
To me that's what stands out the most. Anyway, so it was an extremely hot start to the tour. In fact, the majority of the tour. Stage eight was hitting forty degrees. They cut stage nine short because of the extreme heat protocol from the UCI, which I think is a it's a good thing it's in place and it it worked and whatnot. Yeah, what else did we read that was pretty interesting before we get into the real physiology of it? Picnic post NL put up
that they were going through twenty eight bottles per rider per stage, which was three times the normal number of bid-ons that they use.
Cam Nicholls (03:12.704)
Well, crazy.
Ben Treble (03:14.902)
So safe to say, I think why does this matter? Well, for the Aussies back home who listen to this, they're you probably used to the heat and probably already put in place a fair amount of attention to being able to ride in the heat safely. Maybe they already do some heat training potentially, or they at least think that riding in the heat is their heat training. Maybe not. you'll find out later.
And you know, what else can we do to cool down in the meantime? So I think there's a lot in this, Ken.
Cam Nicholls (03:49.198)
Can I just like my little anecdote that I'd like to share at a recreational and an amateur level? Yep. And it's not even cycling, it's triathlon. I know we shouldn't be talking about triathlon on the Road Cycling Academy podcast, but I'm going to. So I've done the Noosa triathlon the last two years. It's the the biggest Olympic distance triathlon in the world. It's big event. I don't do very well because I'm not a very good triathlete, but on the run.
Not last year, the year before, the first year I did it. my daughter gave me a little bit of ice. I just put down my back. Because it's very hot in Noosa during November when this is on. Like I'm talking, you know, like early 30s, high humidity. By the time you're doing the run, which is a five kilometer run, you're getting quite hot. I had my heart rate monitor on. She gave me the ice. I dropped it down my tri-suit and it went down my it actually slid down my spine essentially. But I noticed my heart rate dropped.
Probably three beats, which may not sound like a lot, but when you're pushing threshold when I was I guess essentially during a ten kilometer run, which is what I was doing. It enabled me, I I noticed that all of a sudden I could run at a faster pace. So the next year, which was last year, I got it to drop me ice on the way up and on the way back. And it was almost instantaneous, like energy. Even though I was, you know, I wasn't consuming anything. It was just
The heart rate dropping and the ability to to go a little bit higher. So I see what the pros are doing and I'm like, yeah, I completely understand why they are doing it just from my own little baby recreational experience at the Noosa triathlon.
Ben Treble (05:31.03)
Well, let's find out why why that may may have helped you out from a few different angles. Maybe I thought it's good to talk about I think a lot of people talk about the heat and they don't necessarily fully maybe understand what's actually happening. We know that when you ride in really hot weather, it affects our performance. You feel hot and you know, generally your your core body temperature starts to go up at some point and affect your performance.
Cam Nicholls (05:36.439)
Okay.
Ben Treble (05:58.626)
But I don't know if we really quite talked about this, or people don't necessarily go too deep on it. So that's what we're going to try and do a little bit here, at least to begin with. So let's talk about what happens when you ride a bike. So that could be in the trifulone or for most of our audience, masters athletes. You can think of your body as a as a space heater. So when you produce, so you push the pedals, right? You're going to produce energy. And
Only about 20, maybe 25% of your energy from metabolism that fuels those contractions gets converted to mechanical work. The remaining sort of 75 to 80% of that energy gets released as heat. So yeah, exercise raises our heat production above rest rates about 10 to 15 times. There's a big range because there's huge variance across, you know, say untrained to
well-trained and elite athletes. So I'm giving you some pretty broad ranges, but it's for a reason. You know, during strenuous exercise, your active muscles are going to produce potentially 100 times more heat than at rest. Right? So what does this look like in numbers? Well if say you're sort of a a general rider amateur, let's say you know between 250 to 350 watts, this would be like an above threshold effort. You're probably producing anywhere from 800
To 1200 watts of heat, right? So if you're a master's rider, if you're at a lower wattage, say 180 watts, you're still producing another 650 watts out of in terms of heat. If you're to talk in watts, I know we love watts. Let's talk watts instead of percentages. So I'll let that sit with you for a second, and we can take it a little bit deeper when we talk about. You know, I have a great textbook, one of my favorite scientists, George Brooks.
His exercise book is a bit of a Bible. it goes a little bit more in depth, right, and starts to talk about one of the best ways our body cools down is through evaporation. Now, if we didn't have that evaporative cooling, right, and there are circumstances where it's not functioning very well, your body temperature rises about 0.2 degrees per minute. And in terms of moderate exercise,
Ben Treble (08:22.828)
This could result in thermal injuries within like 15 to 20 minutes. So you could say it's about one degree every five minutes increase in your core temperature. So and your core temperature has a very finite range before it starts to become a problem. I'll let you sit with that. We can go a bit deeper if you really want. We can talk about the heat balance equations. Maybe we don't need to go about that. But essentially there's a lot more involved in terms of your
Your body is like a heat sink, a lot of people use that term, or it's like a heat storage device, and at some point it hits its maximum, can't store any more heat, and it has to start getting rid of it. And in response to that, it has to do a few things. All right. So when we talk about heat storage, the things that become part of the equation are metabolic production, so energy production, you've got convection, conduction, and radiation. Those are all
Positive or negative variables in the equation. And the final one is evaporation, which is the only one-way street in terms of cooling and heating the body down. All those others, so metabolic production, convection, conduction, radiation, can both get rid of heat but also increase it, right? And there's a tipping point. So the only thing you end up leaning on at the end of the day there is the evaporation. So
That means that evaporation or evaporative cooling in terms of physiology is one of the most important areas we have to focus on as athletes. So let's are you ready to keep going? Is that sit well with you? Any questions?
Cam Nicholls (09:59.476)
Yeah, th well there's definitely a lot more to it than you kind of you know, consider when you're either training or when you're doing a an event, because, you know, let's face it, no matter where you are in the world, events for recreational and amateurs are are typically in summertime. And as a result of that, there's a propensity for it to be really hot and and often i it is. But am I considering what's actually happening physiologically when I'm like heating up?
Like you've described? No. I'm not. I'm just thinking about how many more carbs can I get in? How much more power can I put out? Versus, you know, how could I maybe cool myself down right now?
Ben Treble (10:40.398)
And I think it's it's probably a little in depth for some people, but it's also really important to get a handle on it because it might help people understand and pick between what might be a little bit more low-hanging fruit in terms of cooling strategies, which ones are worth your time investing in, and what ones are maybe less and people have different circumstances, right? If you're doing a hill climb time trial versus a road race or a crit at night
Those are t or an indoor, maybe you want to do a Zwift race, these all present very different situations that may change like which cooling strategy is more appropriate for you. So yeah, glad you're sticking with me. we'll keep going with it. So in terms of proportions across evaporation, right? Let's say you're at rest. Radiation is about 60%, evaporation is about 25 and convection is about 12%.
In terms of where's the heat coming from during exercise or if you're in the heat, let's say, I don't know, you go to the sauna, something like this, evaporation suddenly becomes the principal mechanism, right? So when the ambient temperature starts exceeding your skin temperature, your body starts absorbing heat via radiation and convection. Right. So in terms of this, the heat equation, suddenly we're not losing heat.
Through radiation convection, like at rest, your body produces heat to survive. And it it gets rid of that heat through radiation convection. But there's a flipping point to which instead of losing heat via those methods, it actually starts absorbing heat. And so the only thing you have left to get rid of the heat is evaporation. In terms of numbers, useful or not, maybe, but every gram of sweat that evaporates removes around
0.5 to 0.6 kcals. So why is that interesting? If you remember those watts we talked about before. So at 180 watts, it was around 650 watts of heat. If you need to get rid of a thousand watts of heat, you need to evaporate one and a half liters of sweat. Suddenly it's like that's a lot of sweat that you need to kind of get rid of to drop that kind of heat, right? Now if you're not
Ben Treble (13:09.022)
acclimated. So if you're not heat acclimated, so a normal person, your sort of the ceiling of sweat rates is around that one and a half liters per hour. Athletes that are heat acclimated can have sweat rates up to four liters per hour. So very big difference in terms of the ability and why is a sweat rate kind of important because it's about this evaporative heat cooling
procedure, right? So heat training helps really raise that ceiling a considerable amount. So if there's probably one key takeaway in all the numbers in the last five, 10 minutes, that would be one of the big ones. What's one of the big outcomes from doing heat acclimatization? You can increase your maximal sweat rate and this improves your ability to evaporate sweat and cool your body down. Something that is interesting to note
So there was some research papers from Barnes in 2019 that did looked at sex differences in sweat rates. So men do typically average their s they're typical, so rest sweat rates are higher than women. So 1.13 versus 0.83 liters per hour. So it's probably just a side note for the the women listening. I would caution that's probably just mostly due to body size, but yeah.
Typically women have lower sweat rates, so your ability to evaporate the heat is also lower. And because the the heat sink, the physical body is smaller, it has less heat storage to start with. So food for thought for women out there, I would say it's pretty important for all people to consider heat training. you still following me? You ready?
Cam Nicholls (15:01.57)
Yeah, yeah, I'm still following you. So I'm I'm I'm starting to get a little bit well, not confused, but conflicted in my mind whether I should be doing heat training or be trying to cool myself when I'm in the heat. Or maybe both.
Ben Treble (15:16.532)
Yeah, well, I mean, long story short, I would say the heat training precedes the event that you're targeting and this will help you operate better. And you can still do Yeah. I would say the heat training should be done riding in the heat is not necessarily heat training, so to speak, in my eyes. Okay. It is one thing to do, but it's not people who say, I just ride my bike in summer and it was thirty degrees outside
This is good, but it's not not doing as much as you think. Yeah. Particularly when we look at s if you do any sort of heat training. We'll get into this later, but typically you need to probably at least a week's worth of heat training to see any real change and adaptation. And the decay of those adaptations is like two to three weeks. It's quite quick. You can extend that with maintenance work, but generally speaking, let's say summer finishes.
Cam Nicholls (15:49.538)
Mm.
Ben Treble (16:12.952)
Your heat adaptation's gone in like two weeks. Right. So you hit summer again and it's gonna feel brutal if you haven't done anything through the winter. Cycling has a very big advantage, which is nice though, because we get this additional self-generated airflow. Obviously, when you ride, you have the wind effect. Keep that in mind when we're talking about evaporation, because it means that when you're on climbs or you have a headwind.
where the the the wind effect is low, it becomes you're more at danger, right? Because the evaporative effect drops massively. And you probably notice that if you do a a nice ride in summer and you hit a climb, the pace drops right down. Let's say it's for us mere mortals on a steep climb, maybe anywhere from six to ten kilometers an hour. at this speed you probably feel like you heat up super quick suddenly.
Even though the ambient temperature outside hasn't probably changed at all. And that's predominantly because you lost this this the evaporative cooling has dropped massively because the airflow's gone. Now, something else to keep in mind when we talk about sweat rates is water that drips off you doesn't do anything for you. So when you're riding the bike up the hill and you've got buckets of sweat dripping off you, that in itself is not
evaporative cooling, right? It's just water lost. In fact, it means it's not, it's not a good thing necessarily. So the evaporative cooling, the way it works is the water is on your skin and it's evap it's evaporating because your skin is hot. You know if you get some water and you put it on a hot pan outside and it dries. Your skin, your body is so hot and when it sweats, this water on the skin evaporates because of the heat from your body, not because of the heat outside.
And that process is drawing the heat off your body and then getting rid of it. That's the evaporative cooling mechanism that we we need predominantly. So if the water, your sweat, is just dripping off your skin, it's not staying on there to actually absorb the heat from the body and take it away. So dripping buckets of sweat doesn't necessarily mean your evaporative cooling is working amazing. So where does all this go in terms of performance? What happens?
Cam Nicholls (18:29.717)
Mm.
Ben Treble (18:35.146)
when we do do heat training, right? So we just talked about what happens when you hit the heat, why it's really important, evaporative cooling is the main thing to take away. We have different sweat rates. Ideally we want to increase the sweat rate to improve our ability and the sealing of our evaporative cooling in terms of the heat equation. What happens when we do do everybody talks about doing heat training and increasing blood plasma volume, but what else is happening when we do heat training, right? So
Almost every system gets some adaptation. So your cardiovascular system, essentially the mechanism, you're going to get more blood flow to the skin and less blood flow to the muscle. That's also something interesting. So if you think about performance, you're going to get reduced cardiac output, your stroke volume goes down, your fatigue earlier, right? You've got less blood flow going to the working muscle group. It's instead getting redirected to the skin to try and cool it down.
Your thermoregulation, so you're gonna with heat training, you'll get increase your sweat rate. interestingly, your plasma volume can go down depending on what you're doing. Your electrolyte imbalance also kicks in, right? So this is a negative thing. So if you're riding in the heat, right, as part of that high sweat rate is your your plasma volume goes down, right? You're actually sweating out plasma volume. You get impaired dissipation, you get dehydration, you get.
cramping risk. That's all part of thermoregulation. Your central nervous system, right? So when you're hot and you're struggling in the heat, what's happening? Well, your neurotransmitters are getting altered. So you'll probably get reduced motivation, your RPE goes up, your ability to make decisions, and your reaction time goes down. This is these are reasons why we care about improving our ability to perform in the heat, beyond, you know, I guess some of the
reasons people talk about. From a metabolic point of view, your carbohydrate oxidation goes up quicker. Right? So you become more glycogen depleted and you'll actually start to produce more lactate quicker. So obviously this lactate is both good and bad. Depends at what point at the intensity and duration you're at. But that would result in earlier fatigue and potentially if the intensity gets high enough, more lactate is a bad thing. So it it's a contributor to
Ben Treble (21:04.204)
metabolic acidosis. Your muscle function in the heat becomes impaired contractually. So you get this altered excitation contraction coupling process. What that means is essentially is you just get less strength, which means less power, but also you're going to get more muscle damage. So your recovery time from rides in the heat, which was significant, goes up. Obviously if you ride in the heat, you've got this hydration
I think we don't need to go into that too much, but yeah, fluid loss, you lose your plasma volume, there's a heat illness risk that gets concerned with that. Psychologically, I don't know, you've ridden in the heat cam. Do you find it harder?
Cam Nicholls (21:47.266)
Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, when I first moved to Sunshine Coast from Victoria. So Victoria, for those of you not in Australia, is typically a lot colder. Well, it is a lot colder. You get the dry heat there, so summer does get hot, but there's nothing more depleting than a you know thirty-two degree day and eighty percent humidity, like combining heat and humidity. It's so draining. And I I I did find when I first moved here in particular the first year or two, the summers really drained me.
physiologically, like I I was taking a lot longer to recover and probably had to back off my intensity and volume a little bit to accommodate the shift in in environment. So completely yeah, hear what you're saying in terms of you know, the impact it can have on recovery. Yeah.
Ben Treble (22:35.726)
I think two key takeaways from here would be heat doesn't just impact our cardiovascular system, right? If we talk about blood flow, cooling the body down, it's also impacts the muscle function quite directly. So this contractual excitation coupling gets reduced, right? So your legs are also worse at the muscle, huh? So it kind of it it hits you in a lot of sides. And the second one is another downstream impact we get from the heat.
Is it often impairs your GI function? So people often get gut issues in the heat. And it may not necessarily be because they had the wrong food or too much food. It's probably because your ability to absorb water from the gut decreases when you're in the heat, right? Which changes the asthmology and the ability to then absorb food. So that's because the body's moving water.
And your blood plasma is changing. So all these things, right? The blood flow is also getting redirected to the skin and the working muscle. The stomach is not getting enough blood flow. And I think this probably explains a lot why some people, particularly in hot triathlons, they have nutritional blow ups that don't necessarily make sense. They assume it's because they ate too much food or they just had a something it was the food. It's not doesn't it's not always the food.
So that's something for people to think about in the especially in the triathlon world. Maybe the Noosa tri is a pretty hot one, I think. Or Kona.
Cam Nicholls (24:05.78)
Yeah, Kona is definitely a hot one. So the pros are obviously training in the heat. They're preparing for hot tour de France, maybe not to the level of what they've each just experienced, but you know, they're obviously prioritizing the cooling strategies more these days than perhaps they did in the past. Is would that be fair to say? Or is it was it just because this was a really hot Tour de France, it was more front and center?
Ben Treble (24:30.082)
I think it was also just you know, when you had Net Company Ineos, is that their name? They at the the Team Time Trial, which was the first stage, you know, they just had this image of a bunch of riders with their hands at the the starting ramp in big plastic tubs of water. Later latter to the which this this didn't quite do the media rounds as much, but you may have seen it. Tom Peagcock at some point had his hands in these
Fancy looking mitts.
Cam Nicholls (25:01.42)
Yes, I saw that.
Ben Treble (25:02.956)
Yeah, and that's it's essentially trying to do the same thing but with technology. So yeah, they're just trying to cool the body down through some sort of more practical methods, at least in the Pro Peloton. I think teams have invested more money in this in the last couple years, especially as budgets have gone up for some teams. because it is getting hotter. Like there's sort of no no two two ways around it, but
A lot of summers we seem to break new records and if the race is getting hot, at the end of the day, performance is what matters for the propeloton. So if the environmental conditions and heat becomes the biggest limiting factor on performance, that will end up getting more money, more research and more attention than has been on, say, aerodynamics in the past, right?
Cam Nicholls (25:55.724)
Before we continue with the podcast, I wanted to thank one of our team sponsors, OneCloudX, a company that's headquartered in the Gold Coast, Queensland, but they have a national presence and they provide software solutions to small to medium businesses that need support with financial management, planning and budgeting, advanced manufacturing, warehouse management, supply chain optimization, and analytics. They also specialize in multi-entity and operationally complex.
environments across manufacturing, distribution, construction, education, and services. And they go beyond core enterprise resource planning solutions like NetSuite and Epicor, which they do provide. But on top of that, they're layering automation, warehouse management solutions, and AI-enabled workflows to drive measurable operational outcomes. They're also a supporter of local Australian cycling and we're very grateful for that. So if you're a
Small to medium sized business in need of what I've just described, please check out OneCloud X and we'll drop a link to their business in the podcast description. Now, back to the podcast. Yes. So those cooling strategies before the race like starts. I I kind of the the one thing that confuses me is if you've let's just say hypothetically you've you've done the heat training, you know, you're super fit and you're about to start a hot race and
You stick your your feet your hands in these gloves to keep your hands cool. But then you're gonna go do a you know, in our case, a three or four hour fondo event and get really hot during it by using those gloves before you actually start the ride just to cool yourself down before you get going. Is that really gonna be doing anything?
Ben Treble (27:34.87)
Yes. Potentially. It might be for a short period, right? But think think about it, your body's like this, this heatsink, and it has a ceiling, right? And let's say I I'm gonna s come up with some numbers for for betum, but let's say you don't use the gloves, your body's gonna be, I don't know, the heatsink is filled to fifteen percent. Then you start the fondo and at some point, maybe two hours in, you hit the ceiling, right?
Cam Nicholls (27:36.93)
My guy.
Ben Treble (28:03.042)
And then you have to kind of back off the intensity because your body has to redirect its resources to cooling itself down. Let's say you use the gloves instead of starting at 15%, but you're starting at now five percent. You're just delaying the point at which you hit your heat ceiling. So you're probably still gonna hit your heat ceiling and at some point you would still struggle, but you're just prolonging it. But that might be the difference between staying with I don't know, staying with the group.
that made it through to the qualifying sprint out and the group that didn't.
Cam Nicholls (28:35.31)
True. So what could be there for? I mean, it's pretty obvious, not obvious, but I think, you know, people would have ways and mechanisms to keep themselves cool, whether you're using traditional forms like just ice or whether you're, you know, using modern gloves. But what about during? I mean, you see people just dropping water bottles on themselves. I'm thinking of the you know, the Australian National Titles in which is run in January. It's always very hot. There's always scenes of prose, you know, just
Pouring water down there, you know, all over them. Is that doing anything? Like, should we be doing that if if we've got a spare water bottle to pour on ourselves?
Ben Treble (29:12.876)
Yeah, it's not a bad thing. It's probably important to note for the most part, and it's still beneficial, but a lot of that is probably more about your perceptual cooling, which does have a it's more psychological. Yeah. Let's go, let's dig straight into cooling strategies because it's a pretty good topic, huh? I'm gonna run through if anyone's listened to my podcast before with you, I do like the AIS for those listening, that's the Australian Institute of Sports.
Cam Nicholls (29:24.715)
So psychological.
Okay.
Ben Treble (29:42.712)
They do a lot of frameworks on this. sort of did a bit of a summary of it. So we've got some of the cooling strategies that they would recommend. So I'll run through them sort of just one by one. And they talk about the
Cam Nicholls (29:57.87)
They have like groups, you know, when we previously discussed the AIS and we talked about supplements, they've they've kind of got your A supplements, which is like your caffeine, your creatine, your beta-alanine. and then you've got your your B and your C supplements, which are like either emerging or, you know, have dropped out because, you know, there's been more research and they've realized it actually doesn't do a hell of a lot. So with the cooling strategies, is it like categorized like that or it's just like here are all our cooling strategies?
Ben Treble (30:26.286)
They just kind of put them in a big table to some respects. What they do do is talk about what methods are good for pre-event, during events, and post event. And then they kind of give them a general, you know, grading what's slightly better than the other. So we'll go through them. Highlight, they call it the mixed method, which is using multiple cooling strategies so that affect your internal and external like heat.
This is probably the best way to improve your overall experience at a hot event and ability to reduce the performance effects from the heat on you. So keep that in mind. We'll start with cold water immersion. This can be good for and for post. So cold water immersion gets like some of the biggest ticks as a an effective rapid cooling mechanism.
And you can take this in lots of different ways. So this could be, you know, if you need to cool down the entire body, obviously an an ice bath or a cold water bath, like full immersion is is one of the best ways to do it. You would have seen this at the tour. Some of the teams now have a an extra bus or a van, and in the back of the van they've got, you know, the little blow up, you know, bathtub and that they put ice water in it. So the riders finish a stage, jump in the back of this van, or they or they just bring them out.
You know, they the little blow up tubs. There's a bit of a joke because there's a few videos of Remco with his rubber duckies. the team threw some rubber duckies in the back of the van in the the cold water tubs. So they were using the full body immersion for post and for pre, they were using, particularly at the time trial, they were using that, you know, the forearms and the hands are good because they have an awful lot of your veins and all your capillaries. It's very dense. So there's a lot of blood flow.
Cam Nicholls (31:58.563)
Huh.
Ben Treble (32:22.678)
through there and that's where we can cool down the blood really quick and really effective, right? Like you can really effectively cool your core body temperature down just by putting your hands and forearms into cold water. So that's what you're seeing. And they have obviously the the fancy version, Tom Piccott has the expensive technological ones, which are kind of some cooling mitts that you stick your hands in. Or you can have the the cheap, easy version which is a bucket of ice water. Dunk your hands into it.
The nice thing about that is if you're doing a warm-up right, because it's kind of important at the start of an intense race. Like if I thought of say Amy's Fondo at Lawn, where you start with that climb and you're kind of cold to some respects. In a perfect world, like you're kind of sitting on a trainer next to the start shoot, keeping your your muscles warm because your muscles need to be warm to go hard and not
have a problem, right? So the the real trick with these time trials is how do you keep the muscles warm and the metabolic systems, like your aerobic system needs to be up and running and ready to go from that first pedal stroke whilst keeping your core temperature down. Right? So that's what brings us to I guess let's talk about cooling vests.
Cam Nicholls (33:38.339)
Hmm.
Ben Treble (33:45.624)
This is actually something you see a lot in the propello, right? And I think you even start to see it at some amateur events because it's easily accessible. They're pretty pricey, I would say, for what they are. But the cooling vests that you can buy, you probably buy them off Amazon now. it's probably only good for pre events. I wouldn't use it for of course during, and I definitely wouldn't use it post. Though I have seen some people in the propello using it post, so that's interesting.
Cam Nicholls (34:13.045)
Why would you definitely not use it post?
Ben Treble (34:15.509)
Yeah. Because at the end of the day, post ride, your body's gonna be very hot. Right? When you're pre-ride, your heat sink hasn't filled up yet. You're just trying to keep it the starting point as low as possible. But post, let's say your heat sink's already full, then you and your your most important method for cooling at that point is evaporation. And you go put on this plastic vest that traps heat and reduces your evaporation. I don't think it's it probably feels good.
But it would actually I think it would reduce your body's ability to lose that heat pretty quick. Rather than it'll probably feel good and cool your skin temperature down, but it's actually probably gonna prolong your core temperature reduction. And it's for sure gonna block the evaporative effect. So you're just gonna reduce your your skin temperature, right?
Cam Nicholls (34:59.054)
Okay.
Cam Nicholls (35:07.086)
Probably aligns with what what they say about saunas now, like when you leave a sauna, they all recommend that you let your body naturally come back to its core temperature versus forcing it back through jumping in a cold ice bath or having a cold shower or something like that. Whereas, you know, two, three years ago you'd never hear that. But when I go to my local sauna place these days, Noosa City Cave, they and even T H seven, yeah, that the the best approach when you've really heated your body up is to let it
Come back naturally.
Ben Treble (35:38.818)
Yeah. Yeah, the body's pretty smart, it's pretty effective when you let it do its own thing to some respects. So if you stop putting it in that un let's call it an unnatural environment, which would be doing intense exercise or going into a sauna, when you take it out of that, you know, in let's say it's a an unnatural environment, but it's natural. it's not normal environments that it's gonna work pretty well to cool itself down. So let's keep we'll run through so that's cooling vests.
Something that I think you see a reasonable amount in the propello that the amateurs could use better, possibly, is the the slushies or the the ice slurry, as it's often called.
Cam Nicholls (36:22.626)
This sounds good. This sounds more up my alley. Go to seven eleven before a race and just munch on a slurp. You get the sugar hit too. I like this one.
Ben Treble (36:25.752)
Yeah.
Ben Treble (36:32.374)
Yeah, me too. I'm a big fan. It's good for pre and for post and it's potentially good during. The science on this was I looked into it was was probably quite interesting because the AIS the recommendation though is for this to be effective, you need quite a lot.
you need to drink a lot of slushy. It was like, you know, around more greater than seven grams per kilogram. Right.
Cam Nicholls (37:01.868)
Okay, that's a lot. Of of you just slushy ice. Not necessarily sugar we're talking here, yeah.
Ben Treble (37:04.803)
Yeah.
Yeah, you're talking about, you know, easily half a litre plus.
Cam Nicholls (37:12.876)
Okay, well that yeah, that's so it's it sounds good in theory, but it could require a lot of pull it stops during a Fondo event. It's gonna slow down your peaks time.
Ben Treble (37:21.718)
Yeah, so I mean it's very effective, but for it to be effective from the science, my textbook from Brooks goes further and says it's between eight to ten grams per kilogram. So that was also an interesting difference between the AIS and some of the other science out there. So I would say probably the the range is between seven to ten grams per kilogram of ice slurry that you would need.
Best used when sweat can't evaporate on its own. So if you're riding and it's a very fast-paced ride where there's a lot of wind effect, at least having it during is probably only going to have a psychological effect. So it's not a bad thing. I don't think it's going to do do necessarily too much negative, but there's probably a time and place for during, but definitely something that could be used pre, right? To keep your heat sink as low as possible before you start.
But you also probably need to know that for that to really work, you have to have quite a lot and you probably need to factor that in in terms of, you know, practice. Make sure your stomach can tolerate it so you don't get a gut issue, right?
Cam Nicholls (38:31.562)
Yeah. But it's also like, you know, if people are are aiming for their high carb intake pre, you know, it's it's it kind of falls into that as well. So maybe it's it's you know, there's two positives to it. One is if it's a hot race or hot event, you're getting the cooling component and irrespective, if you're if you're trying to hit what does the science say? One to four grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight, you know, two to four hours before an event, it's very hard to to achieve four grams.
Per kilogram of body weight, almost impossible. You know, but if you're getting an extra, you know, on top of what you're already doing, if you're sitting on the start line with a slurpee in your hand, full of sugar. Yeah. You know, it's gonna help help you with that, irrespective of the cooling component. Are we gonna see fondos next year? Everyone's gonna be standing there with slurpees at the start line. I like it. That'd be a great pitcher.
Ben Treble (39:17.614)
Exactly.
Ben Treble (39:25.942)
There's business idea for you, Cam. You need to have not the not the coffee cart, but the slushy cart at the start of the fondo.
Cam Nicholls (39:32.578)
Yeah. I think so.
Ben Treble (39:35.394)
Sell half litre bottles of slushy to people.
Cam Nicholls (39:38.456)
Let's have a chat offline, Ben. The RCA Slurpees at the Fondo events.
Ben Treble (39:43.042)
I like it, huh? We could put something else in there to help it out. Hang on. Okay, so we're gonna keep going down my list of cooling strategies. So the next one most people have probably seen it at some point, at least at time trials, which would be water misting. This is you know, you if you I know some cafes in in Australia have them, right? Like the water misters. If you go to the plant section in Bunnings, they also use the water misters. So
The water mister is good pre-per like during. Obviously during is difficult and post, but if you've ever seen people sometimes you'll see people like put the hose in the air with the water that creates water mist when the riders go through. Like this is actually like some riders probably don't like it, but it it is a good thing. So if someone offered the water spray in my face from the team car on a hot day, I would take it. It is better if you combine it with a fan.
Because you're going to get a like a wind cooling effect with the water. And this helps keep the water on the skin instead of dripping off. And it improves the evaporative process. Right. So yeah. Water misting with with fans improves both the physiological and perceptual markers for cooling. So that's a that gets quite a few ticks. Obviously, there's a fair bit of equipment and logistics required to pull that off.
Cam Nicholls (41:10.806)
Okay. Yeah. I prefer the slur. I'm still on the slur. Slurpe's my number one at the minute.
Ben Treble (41:15.19)
I lost you at Slurpes. Okay, let's keep going. probably something simpler, which we already talked about, but it comes in the bucket of cold towels or cold packs. I would put the ice socks in the same category. So it's good, like reasonably good. I wouldn't say it's amazing for pre-tactics. It's pretty good during, and it's okay for post. So why is it only okay pre and post?
'Cause it's predominantly only cooling down your skin temperature. Predominantly. So it's pretty hard to wrap your whole body in a cold towel or keep the ice on something like your hands and your forearms while you're cycling. It's not very practical, right? So the at the end of the day it's mostly cooling the skin temp down. You typically can only put it behind your neck.
And if you're very unlucky to be a propello rider, you weren't even allowed to use this during the time trial because the UCI said that might be an aerodynamic advantage. Which was a bit of a a shock to a lot of people. So yeah, I think this is but this isn't it may not necessarily be the best out of all of them, but it's often pretty cheap and pretty accessible. Like it's
Cam Nicholls (42:17.378)
Well
Ben Treble (42:33.44)
It's something that I think a lot of amateurs could pull off. Like if if you're at certain ultra events, you could probably put some ice socks in a little SC in the support car and grab one at some point if you're overheating. You could if you're lucky enough to have a friend to come support you at your event and they're at one of the the fueling stations, they could have some ice packs with them and you get a rubber band, you put it around your bottle and they could even hand it to you and do a drive by.
If you if you're one of the riders who wants to focus on time and not stop, you can even do the drive by from your mate on the side of the road. So I feel like it's pretty, pretty cheap and accessible to pull that one off. The Science was something I didn't sort of think about necessarily, but they actually recommend that you use a chamois fabric because it holds the water without dripping, which will improve the evaporation. So yeah.
I'm not sure how that compares to the pantyhose, which is probably the most common Ice SOC used material. fun fact is you probably know Cam because you might have seen the budget for the RCA Provelo team, but pantyhose are not cheap. So if anybody has a a cheaper alternative that works the same, that's accessible at a petrol station, let us know.
Cam Nicholls (43:55.277)
Yes.
Ben Treble (43:57.154)
okay, last one on the list at least from the AIS. It's probably an interesting one you might not have thought of, but menthol. This one is almost only really useful for during the event, and it's entirely for perceptual heat changes. So psychological. But yeah, menthol it can be actually put in two ways. It can be sort of like people have it in sort of some cooling creams.
And they put it on the working muscle to cool the skin down, or at least it's a perceptual cooling. Your skin feels cooler. I've even seen there was at some stage people were putting menthol into a like a drink product. And they even targeted Swift racing because they had a lot of cooling issues with indoor Swift races. And they were putting menthol product into sort of some sort of drink mix. So you had that cooling effect. I think this one's probably the lowest
If we had to grade them all, this would be the the lowest on my list. But it's just it's one that made the list, which I thought was interesting.
Cam Nicholls (44:59.97)
Yeah, okay.
Cam Nicholls (45:05.314)
Yeah, and look, I I think what might, you know, be relevant for, you know, recreational and amateurs out there listening is, you know, it depends what season you're in, of course. So Aussies might be listening to this now, you know, we're in the middle of winter thinking, yeah, don't worry about it. But if you're in you know, Europe, the US or that part of the world, you know, it it's very relevant. You know, just pick a training session. It maybe even if it's just on the indoor where you where you're getting quite hot, or if it's if it's a hot Saturday ride.
And just trial one of these strategies and and and see what it does. Because most I'm of the belief most recreational and amateurs ignore this kind of level and and just don't do anything. But from what I've seen in my own little world is you know, the impact on your rate of perceived exertion, which is in correlation to what's happening to your physiology physiology, is significant and it's instantaneous. So
I mean that's th that that would be my I don't know if you've you think differently, Ben, my th my thought for people listening. Give it a try on your next hot training ride, one of these strategies and and see how you go. And if you do notice you can produce more power, you do you know, you do notice a drop in in your rate of perceived exertion, then maybe it's something to consider for your next event.
Ben Treble (46:24.162)
Definitely. Yeah, I'll bring us back to the the top of the list, right? So the first thing I talked about was the mixed method. Now, if you think about the lovely media craziness around the Tour de France or even just looking at summer racing in in general these days, if you think about the list that we just went through, what do you see the most? You see the mixed method, which is using a multiple methods through that list, right? They're using cold water immersion.
They're using slushies, they're using water misting, they're using cooling vests, they're using ice socks. They're pretty much using everything on this list. The only probably warning I would put out there, which the AIS raises around menthol or some that are perceptual, psychological only methods, which was pretty much just menthol, was when your perceived heat is dropped, physiological, you're still hot. So
What they found is that some riders just rode harder because they perceptually they thought they could, but actually they just cook themselves quicker. So there's maybe a flip side to all of that when we're talking about it. And yeah, something else that's for at least for the Aussies, very easy to try. One of my favorite things, which is not fully on the list, but maybe a version of it, was on hot summer days on a long ride.
The first thing I would do is go to the 711 gas station. First thing I'd do is actually I would I'd go into the the ice cooler outside the station and I would actually go sit in it.
Cam Nicholls (48:03.105)
Right.
Ben Treble (48:03.874)
I'd just open that door and go sit sit in with all the buckets, the bags of ice to cool down super quick. Then I would go in and I would grab my 7 Eleven slushie, like the big one, half a liter. Then I would go back to the ice box and for the next five minutes, drink my half a liter of slushy while sitting in an ice box, finish the slushie, then I'm grabbing the loose ice in the bottom of the big ice box, the ice, chucking it down the back of the jersey, and then getting on the bike.
Cam Nicholls (48:34.198)
Wow, but some of those ice boxes are a bit small and perched up and like climbing into one of those could look a bit odd if you're kind of at a petrol station. So perhaps let's not recommend that one. But each to their own Ben if you want to do that. Yeah. It's it sounds it's ticking a lot of boxes.
Ben Treble (48:51.628)
If you're really hot, like if you're getting to the point where it's you almost can't it's a bit dangerous, right? Which can happen quickly. I think that's a a little a very brief note. Like once you heat up, once you hit your ceiling in terms of heat sink, you can quickly become too hot. That it's it's not healthy. So you actually it's important to cool the body down. And that's a very effective way. like whole body immersion in the ice box. So yeah.
Cam Nicholls (49:18.766)
It's a it's good one to leave with. Yeah. So is is is that the list, Ben? Are are we done? Because we've gone pretty deep there on on technical analysis of why it's important and and what people can do.
Ben Treble (49:32.632)
Yeah, I think we'll save the the heat training for another time. but that's probably the continuation of this this topic.
Cam Nicholls (49:39.8)
Yes. Well, of course I know you're working with some of your members, Ben and and our other coaches at the RCA are working with their members on not only, you know, heat training and cooling strategies, but also, you know, carbohydrate strategies as well. So if you're out there listening and you're thinking, yeah, I wouldn't mind blending in some of the strategies discussed today into my own training, you know, working with the coach can be a a a really
effective way to blend these in and target certain sessions and and certain events with the right strategy. So if you're if you're interested in working with a coach, make sure you check out the RCA's website. Go to www dot roadcyclingacademy.com and check out one-to-one coaching. Thanks for your time, Ben. We'll catch everyone in the next podcast.