Jasper: 24 minutes faster at a favourite gran fondo

Meet Jasper. I helped Jasper to refocus his training for durability and he cut 24 minutes off his previous grand fondo time. If you want to structure your training so you actually hold race power to the finish without adding extra training time, keep watching. All right, let's talk about Jesper. He's a guy in his 50s who honestly believed his days pushing physical limits were behind him. I think we've all felt that in some way, right? He first jumped onto a bike back in 2021, starting casually figuring things out and easing into it. At the start, his critical power, the watts that he could sustain at the time for 33 minutes, was less than 200 watts. A humble beginning, but a solid first step. Fast forward to early 2024, Jasper decided to level up. Before I got a coach, I was just cycling. Um, pure raw miles, you know, trying to get 5,000 miles a year, but no real plan. And I was probably riding way too hard on most rides or way too soft. And I knew I had to put some structure on it, but I I didn't want to figure it out myself. I wanted just to have a a plan to go hit. When I started coaching Jasper, he was at around 238 watts. Decent, but we knew that there was way more potential to tap into. That year, through structured, targeted sessions, we got him up to 286 watts. A massive improvement for a guy who started riding later on in life. Life threw Jasper a little break as it sometimes does. But in early 2025, he returned more determined than ever with his eyes locked on the Jiro de San Diego, a ride he'd done the year before. Our starting point this time was 261 watts. Over 6 months, we pushed his numbers upward again, reaching a new peak of 298 W. But the most dramatic leap came in those final 90 days, jumping from 279 to 298 watts, edging him close to that coveted 4 watts per kilogram mark. Incredible progress, right? I'm going to cover the training done in the final 90 days in detail in a little bit, but I wanted to start with his race performance. The goal for the race was to carve 20 minutes off his last year's time to smash his personal record on Palomar Mountain, the biggest mountain in the race, and to cut the gap to the age group winner in half. Now, we train by numbers. Watts, hours, intervals, grams of carbs, everything tracked perfectly. They're planned. They're optimized. But sometimes the number one thing that truly defines you is the one thing you never saw coming. But here's the catch. With cycling and life, really, race day rarely goes according to plan. Jasper started the race pacing too high. Adrenaline pulling him towards 260 watts when he should have held back at about 240. Then out of nowhere, a gardening pot in the road. He crashed. Jasper went down, sliced his thumb open. A tiny injury that had huge consequences later on because he couldn't open his gels. So now he's climbing Palomar Mountain, the biggest mountain of the day. And he's holding 250 watts without any carbs in his system. But thanks to his training, he still topped Palomar 4 and a half minutes faster than his best ever time. At the top, he felt dizzy, shaky, thinking, "I'm burning down the house just to stay warm." The next climb, Mesa Grande, came next. It was a hot, steep, and miserable climb. Power dropping to 200 watts, riders passing him by, and he nearly quit. Quitting felt logical. Finishing felt impossible, but somehow he kept turning the pedals, and he hit another personal best. At mile 47, Jasper stops. Legs cramped, blurry vision, utterly spent. Luckily, his mate was there. Gave him some carbs, some caffeine, and some encouragement. And Jasper thinks, "If he doesn't drag me out of here, then I am done." But 40 minutes later, he's rolling again. Not great, just less terrible. Holding around 210 W borrowing strength he didn't think he had. So, how did Jasper manage this? Here's where the hidden number emerges clearly. So, let's talk about his training, including durability, Jasper's secret weapon. Here's how his last 13 weeks of training before the event actually looked. In weeks one to three, this was a threshold foundation block, a mix of over unders and steady state threshold. In week three, we introduced the durability elements, so efforts under fatigue and a big intense aerobic day to round out the block. In week four, it was reload volume and intensity cut in half. Then week five, we start up again. a short taper for a big day out on the bike, testing his mental resilience on a 9-hour ride. Type two fun if you ask me. Week six, he maintains some intensity and we do some testing getting ready for the full next block. In weeks seven to nine, we did a full V2 max block with mostly short efforts, so sprint style efforts, but also we kept progressing the durability work with some cadence work at fatigue and also some temp tempo work at the end of rides. In week 10, it was a rest week with some freedom for a V2 max fart lick session for a bit more type two fun. In weeks 11, 12, and 13, now we are switching to peak and tapering. We're working on stacking intensity, so mixed efforts specific to the event and what you would experience in a race and some lastminute short intensity while cutting volume. Now, let's look at the proof of this durability training and how it worked. For example, after 1500 kg burnt, a good 2 to 3 hours into riding. If you look at his 5minute power, it improved. In 2023, Jasper could hold around 231 watts. But in 2025, after durability focused training, his holding went to 274 watts, and that's nearly a 20% jump at the same fatigue level. Numbers don't lie. These strategic fatigue focused structure and workouts gave Jasper real measurable improvements. By the final climb, Cole Grande, Jasper had burned through 2,750 kg. Last year, that much fatigue cost him almost 30% of his starting power. Torque fell nearly 1/5 and cadence dropped 6 RPMs and heart rate drifted at 11%. This year, power down just 15%. Torque barely budged. Cadence 3 RPM, heart rate drift was 4%. So, that is durability made visible. So after all the chaos on race day, Jasper crossed the finish line in 5 hours and 25 minutes. He was 24 minutes faster than last year. The gap to the age group winner was cut in half and a new critical power validated at 298 W. Talking to him afterwards, you could see exactly what the numbers meant. It was kind of this effort where you hurt more than ever, yet you feel prouder than ever. I did the Grand Fondo the year prior and and it was my best day on the bike. I never had worked harder. I was really happy with the outcome. But the following year, I wanted to figure out what would what could happen if if uh coach and I really took it to the next level. So, we worked for almost 6 months together um 6 days a week. And in the end, I had a shocker of a day. I actually got sort of bonked in under eight and was really miserable. and I still shaved almost 30 minutes off of my time and set PRs on all the big clims. And this was not feeling well, which just goes to show how much capacity we had built. And um it was incredibly uh exciting and makes me wonder where else we can go from here because we live in a world obsessed with perfect data, seamless automation, total optimization. But Jasper's journey reminds us it's the messy moments, the crashes, the struggle, and the unexpected challenges that truly define us. Jasper proved that it's never too late to redefine what's possible to discover strengths you didn't know existed. If Jasper can dramatically transform himself after 50, imagine what you can do in the next 90 days. And a great place to start is the lessons that I've learned as a coach in this video.