When he is not breaking records or competitors’ hearts, three-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar can seemingly turn his hand to breaking the internet. Earlier this week, Pogačar appeared on author Peter Attia’s ‘The Drive’ podcast where, among other things, he revealed that his zone 2 power extends to 340 watts.
For anyone who uses a power meter while riding, this is quite a mind-boggling statistic made even more unrelatable when you account for his (reported) 66 kg body weight. The lofty heights of that “zone 2” ability (we’ll get to why we have that in quotes in a bit) may also explain some of Pogačar’s superhuman efforts.
It is no secret that professional riders are physiological outliers from the general public, but this particular stat might just solidify the claim that Pogačar is an outlier even among outliers. These numbers are dizzyingly far away from what even a seasoned amateur could look to achieve, so what do they actually mean and what can they tell us about Pogačar?
Without access to Pogačar’s raw power files and more context around his power zones and the model he uses to define them, there is plenty of room for interpretation. But based on the data we do have and from historical performances it is possible to estimate Pogačar’s FTP and power zones as well as offer some level of explanation behind these monumental numbers.
320 watts for five hours
Of his typical hilly rides around his Monaco home, Pogačar said, “It is really hard to get big time in zone 2 because there’s a lot of climbing and then you have all the downhills [where] you can not keep at zone 2. So I try to hit really high zone 2 on the climbs that are 20-40 minutes long and then you recover on the downhill. But when I go home to Slovenia or Spain for training in Calpe where it is flatter, I really like to stay five hours in zone 2.”
After revealing that he can remain in zone 2 at outputs of up to 340 watts and keep his heart rate at around 150 beats per minute (bpm), Pogačar went on to give more context. “If you are doing five-hour rides your zone 2 after five hours might not be your zone 2 anymore. Riding on the flat you will not recover anymore and five hours of riding at 320-340 watts for me I am not riding the next day. When I ride on the flat I drop the power down to 290-300 watts.”
Based on this answer it does look like 320-340 watts is right at the upper limit of what Pogačar considers zone 2. His reason to ride at this intensity around Monaco is likely so that throughout the full five-hour ride his power averages out closer to 300 watts when the recovery on the descents is taken into consideration.
As Neal Henderson, founder of Apex Coaching explained, “Those values thrown out there don’t seem ‘obscene’ or ‘impossible’ to me. I have multiple lactate tests on ProTour riders that I’ve performed, as well as tests done by their teams, with athletes pushing up to 360 watts with lactates below 2mmol/L.”
In terms of power zones, a blood lactate level of 2mmol/L is widely accepted to sit at LT1, which is defined as the lowest exercise intensity at which there is a measurable increase in blood lactate concentration compared to resting lactate concentrations.
Having seen firsthand other pro riders pushing big watts in zone 2, Henderson goes on to say, “I’m not at all shocked by Pogačar’s numbers. Of course, they are extremely high, but you don’t win the races that he’s won without extremely high capability and capacity.”
What do these power figures mean?
Pogačar has displayed multiple times this year that when the road points upwards he is almost unbeatable; six stage wins at the Giro d’Italia and six more at the Tour can attest to this. When attacking a mountain climb, power-to-weight ratio is the key determining factor in riding speed. A very well-trained amateur cyclist might have a functional threshold power (FTP) of 5 watts/kg with a pro rider considered a climber if they can hold close to 6 w/kg for a sustained climb.
In stage 15 of this year’s Tour de France, Pogačar put on what is regarded by many as the best climbing display in the sport’s history. The summit finish up to Plateau de Beille saw Pogačar storm away from his two main podium rivals, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, putting 1:08 into Vingegaard, the nearest man on the road. The 15.8 km climb that gains 1,250 meters took Pogačar 39:50, smashing Marco Pantani’s record from 1998 in the process. By the best estimates to achieve this, Pogačar averaged an eye-watering 6.98 w/kg for the entire climb, coming at the back end of a stage that featured four first-category climbs before reaching the base of Plateau de Beille. Converting this power to weight back to raw output we reach a figure of 461 watts.
If we assume that when Pogačar is talking about his zone 2* he is referring to the parameters of the standard seven-zone training model created by Dr. Andy Coggan, then Pogačar’s zone 2 power equates to between 56-75% of his FTP. Using 340 watts as his upper limit of zone 2 we can calculate a hypothetical FTP of 450 watts (6.84 w/kg).
So far, all the numbers check out.
An FTP of somewhere around 450 watts (6.84 w/kg) does indeed put his zone 2 power range from 252 to 340 watts. In the context of racing, this means that he can spend a lot of time – even when the race is seemingly fairly spicy – at a pace where he is quite comfortable. For Pogačar, 340 watts equates to 5.15 w/kg, which for an endurance pace would keep him comfortably in the peloton on some of the earlier mountain passes within a stage. The concept of a rider sitting in a purely aerobic state at over 5 w/kg is hard to comprehend but does go some way to explain how he can perform so well towards the end of a stage.
There’s a slight twist, though. In an interview with Live Science, Pogačar’s former coach Iñigo San Millán revealed that the Slovenian has a superior ability to clear lactate. “With Pogačar, I noticed that his lactate recovery capacity was huge,” he said. “His levels would return to normal after two minutes, while some riders took 20 minutes.” That’s backed up by San Millán’s published research. While Pogačar is not directly named in them, in two studies San Millán co-authored in 2020 and 2023 on the metabolomics of WorldTour riders, one rider in particular – referred to in the 2023 study as “Cyclist 1” and widely thought to be Pogačar – displays exceptional ability to produce high power at blood lactate levels well below other study subjects. This ability to clear lactate could also skew Pogačar’s training zones away from the parameters of the conventional model.
The seven-zone model uses percentages of your FTP to calculate your zones. However, this is an approximation across a wider population. For a genetic outlier like Pogačar, it is possible that his power zones do not follow the general trend.
With a superior ability to clear lactate, it is fair to assume that his LT2 – which is defined as “the intensity that causes a rapid increase in blood lactate indicating the upper limit of equilibrium between lactate production and clearance” – would sit at a higher output than you would expect for most other athletes simply because he has the capacity to clear it quicker. This could mean that under blood lactate testing his power zones could all be shifted closer to his FTP value.
Without conclusive data, it is hard to say with complete certainty that Pogačar’s zone 2 power, in the typical seven-zone sense of zone 2, is correct. However, when viewed with consideration to his performances this year both at the Giro and Tour it certainly is plausible that a zone 2 ride for Pogačar could be at this intensity.
Pogačar is simply staying fresher for longer
If we take a look at Stage 15 of this year’s Tour de France we can see that in the climbs preceding Plateau de Beille Pogačar rode in a group containing Israel-Premier Tech’s Derek Gee, a top-10 GC finisher. Lucky for us, Gee shares his power files on Strava, meaning that we can take a look at what effect the climbs throughout the stage had.
Starting on the Col de Peyresourde, the race was on from kilometer 0 with the day’s break looking to establish itself on the category 1 climb. Gee completed the 6.94 km climb in 19 minutes and 13 seconds with an average power of 419 watts. At his listed weight of 76 kg, this equates to a power-to-weight ratio of 5.5 w/kg. With Pogačar sitting in the bunch, it is fair to assume that his power-to-weight sat at around the same figure which works out to be 363 watts, or on the lower end of zone 3.
Heading to the following category 1 climb, the Col de Menté, the pace settled down somewhat with the break established and up the road. Both Gee and Pogačar completed the 9.26 km climb in around 31 minutes. For Gee, this climb was ridden at an average of 392 watts (5.1 w/kg), a power-to-weight figure which as we know sits within Pogačar’s claimed zone 2 range. This means that on the slopes of the Col de Menté Pogačar was quite literally riding at a pace he could sustain for hours.
The next notable climb, the Col de Portet d’Aspet, was shorter in length, taking only 14 minutes and 54 seconds to complete. As a result, the pace on the climb was higher with Gee’s average power for the climb sitting at 420 watts (5.5 w/kg). This would put Pogačar back outside of his Zone 2 but still firmly at the lower end of Zone 3.
The penultimate climb of the day, before reaching the Plateau de Beille, was the Col d’Agnes. This 10 km climb took just over 30 minutes to complete. For Gee, this meant riding at an average of 400 watts (5.26 w/kg) which was enough for him to set the fifth-fastest time on Strava’s leaderboard. That 5.12 w/kg works out to be 346 watts for Pogačar, right at his claimed zone 2 ceiling and just pushing in to zone 3.
The fact that Pogačar is riding at an endurance intensity at this point in the race suggests his cumulative fatigue at the base of the Plateau de Beille, where the stage would be won and lost, was simply far less than most of the riders around him. Some of this has to do with his high FTP, but it also comes down to what seems to be a particularly high zone 2 relative to that FTP.
This can be seen when the race reaches the foot of Plateau de Beille. Gee holds a similar output on the final climb as he has done all day. For 45 minutes and 58 seconds, he averaged 411 watts (5.4 w/kg), which shows that Gee’s pacing strategy for the day was close to spot-on, as there was no drop-off in his power across all of the climbs. The difference here is Pogačar’s ability to significantly up the pace. On the 15.8 km climb, Pogačar managed to put 6 minutes and 28 seconds into Gee.
Pogačar’s aerobic ability goes someway to explain this difference in performance on Plateau de Beille. Pogačar simply spends a greater deal of the day at a lower intensity relative to his ceiling, meaning he arrives at the final climb fresher and better able to ramp up the intensity. On his Strava account, Gee has his FTP listed as 430 watts which means that on the Col de Menté and Col d’Agnes where Pogačar is sitting within his claimed zone 2 Gee would be riding at sweet spot, an intensity that sits at the top of zone 3 and bridges in to the lower end of zone 4.
To put it even more simply: When most of the peloton is racing, Pogačar is just riding.
*This is the biggest caveat that has been assumed. There are a few different zone 2 models that exist. The most common one is the one used in this analysis that defines zone 2 as 56-75% FTP. However, zone 2 can also be another name for LT2 which is the point at which you cross over from an aerobic to anaerobic state. It is also worth noting that the 56-75% band is an approximation to fit a wide range of athletes and it is possible for specific athletes to sit outside of this.
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