Training - Going Nowhere?

I started cycling seriously in my mid 40s, to lose weight, improve my health and in anticipation of my forthcoming retirement. I was working at the time for one of the worlds best run companies whose century and more of unending growth and success was built on a constant desire, shared by all who worked for it, for continuous improvement in every facet of its business.

I expected, almost by definition, to find the same ethos in my chosen sport. After all what is sport if not the pursuit of excellence and how is that possible without innovation? And at first I was not disappointed. I purchased my first power meter in 2007 as it was clearly obvious that it provided a step change the quality of information available to me as a rider and that this would provide the basis both to understand my performance and improve it.

However looking back now I feel that I was lucky. I entered the sport at exactly the right time, at a point when it was undergoing a seismic change in many ways, not just the ability to measure things that really mattered.

It is perhaps totemic that my first significant cycling exploit was to ride the route of the 2006 Tour de France, starting in Strasbourg and eventually, after 5 and a bit weeks and well over 3000 miles later returning there. To see Floyd Landis start his own journey. One that would end in ignominy for him but in hope for the future for the sport as his chagrin eventually led the excision of the cancer that had been eating at its heart for decades, reaching the point of being close to terminal.

So my early years were one of continued discovery and constant improvement. But as time wore on I waited for the next step forward.

And I am still waiting.

From the point of view of improving the cyclist, as opposed to their equipment or their training environment, I am not aware of one single major advance that could even be mentioned in the same breath as the introduction of power based training.

There has been no shortage of hype and consequent alphabet soup of new TLAs to try to comprehend. But in terms of something that has changed the sport, to the extent merely that it is fairly universally agreed to be an improvement? Nothing that I am aware of.

I did think, and still do for that matter, that there was a glimmer of hope when Wattbike and the Garmin Vector provided new insights, into the skill of pedaling. Using this information has, I believe, made me a better cyclist. But mainstream opinion seems still, despite the best efforts of enthusiastic souls like Hunter Allen and, more recently, Adam Hansen, to be that this is just useless information.

It has taken the vast majority of the sport, including at the highest professional level, near 15 years simply to catch up with where I was as a novice. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than Team Sky's hegemony based on nothing more than applying the basic principles outlined in "Training and Racing with A Power Meter". The approach they used towards detailed stage planning for Chris Froomes famous 2018 Giro stage 19 win is the same as the one I used 10 years earlier when planning to ride my first Marmotte.

I think things are about to change. In a big way, one that I am not sure that even I will fully enjoy. But change they will.

And the change will not just be to cycling. It will be to all sports where the expenditure of energy be it measured in seconds or hours is a major determinant.

But before looking to what the future may bring I'll return to the past.

I accept my view my be wrong and I have overlooked something. I hope so as it will help me get better.

So a challenge.

If you feel that I have missed something significant in, lets say the last 10 years, let me know what it is.

Let me be clear I set the bar high. I do not want to hear about FRC or MPA or XYZ or any other measure that can only be obtained via the black box of an app used by a minority of, albeit committed, adherents.

It must be something similar to power based training. Something so clear and obvious that 95% of cyclists believe it has the potential to make them better cyclists and that everybody except the diehard 5% will be training that way in 5-10 years time.

And it has to be about the cyclist. Not their bike, or clothing or VR trainer. Them, the human.