After that little 100km attack we witnessed yesterday, I found myself watching parts of an interview Tadej did with Peter Attia recently. I’m going to dive deep into that this week, but here are a couple of highlights for you data junkies. I hope it doesn’t depress you too much.
Peter asked Pog what his wattage is when in Zone Two…are you ready? 320w to 340w. To be fair, he did seem to indicate that Zone Two is flexible, i.e. your Zone Two when you go out for 2 hours is not the same as it is when you do 5 hours (I need to think about this). When he rides 5 hours he knocks that down to 290w! Yes, 290w for 5 hours…on a training ride. I am pretty sure my highest-ever FTP is not even that high.
Another humorous takeaway is that his VAM is around 1700 when climbing. He did say it was this when doing a 20 min climb, so maybe it’s less when going up Ventoux. I’d say it is because if you did Ventoux with a VAM of 1700 you’d climb it in well under an hour. Find this handy piece of data on your cycling computer and go out and climb something 8%, then compare.
The Vicious Cycle 
its all impressive and to good to believe it’s clean.
AND it makes men’s cycling boring. Saturdays race was great, compared
And that’s a topic for another post!
I enjoyed both races, although I really wished the chasers would have got their sh*t together and cooperated to bring Pog back.
It was such an impressive ride yesterday. He’s had a fabulous year.
He sure has. I’m kind of hoping someone else does next year, though!
Understandable
This was fun to see for me, as I am something of a devotee of Attia, who has done a lot of research on increasing lifespan and quality of life. He has much to say on exercise, nutrition, emotional health, and other related topics. On exercise, he argues that almost nobody does enough and what they do isn’t varied enough. He talks about Zone 2 and VO2 Max (both very beneficial) so I’m not surprised he goes to these topics with a worldclass athlete like Pog.
I’ve also watched quite a few of his videos and interviews, particularly the Zone Two ones, since that is my bread and butter if I’m doing the Tour du Mont Blanc. I’m glad Pog concurs that this is a good way to train!
Have you ever done a VO2 Max test? It’s ‘fun’…
I haven’t had the “pleasure” of doing it with proper gas exchange equipment. There are some simple at home tests that I’m considering. For the moment, I’m happy knowing that I occasionally push myself as hard as I can while exercising. But data is good so I really should start measuring it!
If you like Attia’s videos, I recommend his book, Outlive. I wish I had read it when I was younger. Of course, it wasn’t written when I was younger so there’s that.
It might be a nice birthday present. I’ll suggest it to Maureen!
I’ve seen a few of his ‘longevity’ videos, which were definitely interesting. I particularly liked the idea of killing your own game!
My opinion is he is clean, just supremely gifted. To me and I imagine to millions of fans, watching pro races is entertainment and the doping processes are I’m sure very sophisticated and getting more so daily…so if they decide to dope and climb Ventoux in 45 minutes, I’ll just eat my snacks faster. I love watching a racer who loves to race…hangs it out there..Hinault was like that and he too did OK.
I don’t have an opinion on this, but I agree with the rest. If you want to win you need to attack!