Congratulations on being a road warrior and cycling powerhouse! You have a unique talent for combining time trialling with short, explosive power and the ability to ride all day, no matter the terrain or conditions. Whether it's a challenging adventure or a gruelling race, you're ready for anything.

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It’s your unique approach that will bring you success in your performance, training, and events without focusing on the wrong things. 

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Measure your progress with:

• Power - 6 minute power
• Capacity - W’ (9-15 kJ) and/ or VLamax (0.4-0.6)

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But with any rider type, there are key strengths and weaknesses to be aware of…

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Strengths

• Strong endurance, powerful, favours in-the-saddle riding to develop power, prefers steadier riding overall, explosive ability, can do both short explosive efforts and longer sustained time trial-like efforts, and steady shallow climbing under 8% gradient.
• Your balanced anaerobic and aerobic capacity represent your intermediate "shared slow-twitch and fast-twitch" muscle fiber typology.
• Spending time working on everything; sprinting, short efforts, and long efforts is your key to your cycling success.
• Your taller athletic build, high muscular definition and high overall strength means you gain muscle easily.
• They can ride solo off the front of a group, climb medium-length hills well, time trial strongly, and ride at a high level in the peloton. 

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Potential Weaknesses

• Your athletic build and high muscular definition help your very high overall strength but you are sensitive to weight gain.
• It has been shown that the makeup of muscle fiber types in an athlete can impact training. For example athletes with more fast-twitch fibers have greater fatigue during a sprint-interval session than athletes with more slow twitch fibers. As you have a unique mix of both, it is important to learn through testing what work to rest ratio work for you in single sessions and across intense sessions. 
• Your body needs high glycogen availability to promote use of the glycolytic energy system during training, and thereby train the body to metabolise carbohydrates more effectively. Keep your glycogen stores topped up by consuming a relatively high daily intake of carbohydrates that is still within the recommended daily energy availability (kcal/kg FFM). This will ensure you are providing your body with adequate energy for all physiological functions.

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Practical applications

• ⬆️⬇️ Experiment with total training volume (hours or TSS per week)
• ⬆️⬇️ Experiment with recovery duration in between intense training sessions
• ⬆️⬇️ Experiment with duration between intense exercises within training sessions

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Training session best-suited for your type

Muscular Endurance: 2 x 20 Minutes Hard Finish

WU: 20 minutes building to 60-75% of CP.

MS: 2 x 20 minutes @ 80-90% of CP followed by a 30 second hard finish @ 110-120% CP. 3 minutes easy spinning in between the two intervals for active recovery.

Remaining time @ 60-70% CP.

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PURPOSE: Develop muscular endurance as well as the ability to produce short but high amounts of power after a sustained effort. Improves aerobic fitness by increasing mitochondrial biogenesis (the production of mitochondria, the cell's powerhouse), capillarization in the muscles, the development of slow-twitch muscle fibers, and training the body to use fat as a primary fuel source more efficiently. I wouldn’t expect to see strength gains from low cadence work. In fact, any of this work on the bike doesn’t meet the threshold for making strength gains. Low cadence work is prescribed for two different reasons. 1. torque and 2. aerobic adaptations.

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Traditionally, torque is used to develop functional bike strength, but it’s not really proven. But it about developing neuromuscular pathways between the brain and the muscles. Focused sessions are about increasing your Newton metres (Nm) of torque at a certain intensity. The second reason I will prescibe longer, lower intervals is that riding at a low cadence increases the force demands on the muscles, which in turn leads to greater recruitment of Type IIa (fast twitch) muscle fibres, helping to bring about aerobic adaptations in a greater proportion of these muscle fibers.

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Ideal races / events

Rolling endurance events, events with rough terrain or difficult weather conditions like rain, wind, cold, and or mud, short and long time trials, and endurance time trials. 

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How you can ride events better / win races

In a hard, long race of attrition, break the group down to a select few. Win with a strong solo attack or ride away from the other riders. 

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What do you think? Does this rider type match you and your events? What type of rider do you want to be? What type of events do you want to ride? Find out more about rider types by clicking here: RIDER TYPE RESULTS