The hardest races

How hard is Milan San Remo, and how does it compare to other grand races. First of all, what means “Hard race” ? Some easy races can become a nightmare when it starts raining or stormy winds set in . How can we appreciate the devastating efffects on the human body of the cobblestones in Paris-Roubaix ? We could argue until the end of times about distance, altimeters, type of pavements, short or longer climbs, wind, snow etc… but the bottomline is what it costs to the cyclists metabolic systems. Thinking of meaningful criteria, the first coming to my mind is the total amount of energy in kilojoule (or kilocalorie) needed to finish the race. Also, how demanding is this race on your anaerobic metbolism i.e. in what way and how many times did you exhaust and restore your anaerobic battery ?

I collected the power data of a particular WT profesional cyclist, made a full ECP analysis to determine his relevant thresholds.

Here are his ECP or Extended Critical Power data:

Recovery threshold RT = 345 W
Maximal Aerobic Power MAP = 449 W
Super Critical Power SCP = 475 W
Anaerobic Capacity W’ = 19.6 kJ
Estimated VO2max = 88 ml/kg/min

Next I chose 6 of his races and performed an Exhaustion-Recovery analysis with the help of my Typhoon software to compute the overall energy demand, the aerobic energy score, the slow death load SDL, and the fast death load FDL.
The results are shown in the next 3 bar graphs

This chart shows the total energy to be produced for finishing the race

Surprisingly the Amstel Gold race scores the highest total energy demand at 6570 kJ.
Liège-Bastigne-Liège comes second with 6118 kJ and Milan San Remo at third place with 5737 kJ

Chart of Aerobic Load AeL and Slow death load or SDL

Remember that AeL is calibrated to a 1 hour ride at RT level. Here 1 unit AeL equals 1242 kJ
SDL is calibrated to the anaerobic capacity W’. Here 1 unit SDL equals 19.6 kJ
Again Amstel Gold race scores highest on both criteria with Liège Bastogne Liège as a close second. Milan San Remo is lower and specifically its SDL is the lowest of all races, even lower than less renowned races such as the Flèche Wallonne and the GP of Quebec. This will need some extra attention and/or explanation.

Anaerobic FDL

FDL is calibrated on anaerobic capacity W’
Once again Amstel Gold leads the pack with an extremely high FDL score of 29,8
Strade Biancche is the second hardest with a FDL score of 24,3

In short; The Amstel Gold race scores highest on all dificulty scores, MSR scores only on third place and is also very low on the SDL score
In order to understand these somewhat surprising results we have to look at the details of the anaerobic balance W’bal

Detailed Analysis of Milan San Remo

**Milan San Remo.**
The red line represents the evolution of the actual anaerobic reserve, also called anaerobic balance, the black line is the heart rate HR. We see that the first half of the race, 3 to 4 hours , is almost like a leisurely vacation trip. The cyclists HR stays between 100 bpm and 125 bpm, the power level stays mainly in the aerobic zones and the anaerobic balance barely departs from a 100%
The race really starts after 140 km with the ascension of the Turchino when we see his HR climbing shortly to 150 bpm and his W’ balance dropping to approximately 65 to 70%, followed with a total recovery at around 4:40 h
Only the last hour of the race there will be deeply anaeerobic riding when we see 4 dips in his W’balance and corresponding rises in HR. These 4 dips correspond to the capo Bertha, Cipressa, Poggio di San Remo and to the final rush to the finish.
Altogether this race switches mainly between 2 power zones, the easy aerobic zone and the severe or Fast Death zone, with a very low contribution of the intermediate hard or Slow death zone. This explains the very low HDL score

Detailed Analysis of the Amstel Gold race

Fuzzy Threshold Power FTP

W/kg and climbing

TyphoonCycling