Three minutes at threshold. A short questionnaire. Every seven to ten days.
That is what John Wakefield has Primož Roglič doing. It is the same thing he has Jai Hindley doing. And, he tells me, the same thing he would have an amateur targeting Badlands doing.
This is a coach at the very top of the sport. WorldTour. Bora-Hansgrohe. Previously at UAE Team Emirates. Before that at Science to Sport, where he turned Matt Beers and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio into world-class machines. And the centrepiece of how he monitors fatigue in a Tour de France contender is a three-minute test you can run in the first ten minutes of any ride.
That is the through-line of the whole conversation. The stuff that works at the top is not exotic. It is honest, repeatable, unromantic. Most amateurs are doing the opposite — chasing every shiny new tool while neglecting the thing that would actually move the needle.
Listen to the full conversation on the Roadman Cycling Podcast →
The Fatigue Test Most Coaches Are Not Running
Wakefield calls it the submaximal fatigue test. The protocol is built off Lambert's research, refined by his team at Science to Sport.
Three minutes at a fixed power. Anywhere from threshold to 110% of threshold, prescribed by the coach. The test slots into the first ten minutes of whatever session is on the plan that day. Recovery ride, intervals, long endurance — does not matter. You do the three minutes, fill in a short questionnaire after (RPE, time to exertion, sleep, mood, bodyweight, training load), and carry on with your day.
Then you do it again seven to ten days later.
What it gives you is the thing every amateur cyclist actually wants and almost nobody measures. It tells you whether your training stimulus is working. Not in six weeks at a lab. Now. This week.
Wakefield says when athletes report honestly, the data is almost bulletproof. You can see whether you are progressing, whether you have plateaued, or whether you are quietly digging a hole that will surface as a bad result in three weeks. It also catches the rider who is unconsciously fudging their RPE — the metrics stop correlating, you have a conversation, the plan adjusts.
This is the kind of thing the WorldTour does not consider fancy. Bora are running it. UAE were running it before him. Most amateurs are not. We pay for HRV apps, sleep scores, glucose monitors, and ignore one of the most useful three minutes you could spend in a week.
Torque Is Where Ultra Races Are Won
Watch the cadence files from any long gravel race. Badlands. Unbound. Traka. You will see the same pattern. Cadence does not stay where it started. It drops. Hour by hour. By day three of a 780km event you are not turning a 95rpm cadence anymore. You are grinding.
Wakefield's blunt take: at that point you are not running on watts. You are running on torque.
Newton metres of force. Strength through the pedal stroke. The ability to keep producing power when fatigue has stripped your ability to spin.
Which is why he builds neuromuscular work in from day one with a new ultra athlete. Off the bike — gym work, properly heavy. On the bike — low-cadence efforts, deliberate force production. Allen Davies calls them torque intervals and Wakefield is in agreement.
Most amateur ultra plans miss this completely. The plan gets built around volume and zone-2 endurance, then a few threshold blocks, and the strength side is treated as an optional extra. The pros are doing the opposite. Strength is non-negotiable. It is the thing that keeps you moving on day three.
If you have not built low-cadence torque work and a real strength training programme into your week, you are going to find out how much it matters somewhere around hour eighteen of your event.
Sustainable Power Beats Aggressive Aero
Dylan Johnson has made the case that slower riders should care more about aerodynamics because they spend more time on the course. Wakefield does not disagree with the maths. He disagrees with the application.
Aero only works if you can hold the position. If a slammed, aggressive setup forces you out of it at hour four because your back has gone, you have not gained any time. You have lost it.
His framing: 220 watts held for the full duration in a non-aggressive position is faster than 220 watts held for three hours in an aero position you bail out of. The maths only matters if you are still in the position when the maths happens.
For a serious amateur targeting an ultra event, the bike fit conversation is not "how aero can I get." It is "how aero can I hold for 36 hours." Those are not the same question, and most riders are answering the wrong one. Our aero versus weight breakdown goes deeper.
The Periodisation Is Boring On Purpose
I asked him whether he is an advocate of reverse periodisation, the structure where you do high intensity in winter and your endurance in spring. The answer was a polite no for most athletes.
What he runs is conventional. Three weeks on, one off. Or four on, one off. Build, preparation, medium intensity, high intensity, taper. Standard Joe Friel framework, refined to the athlete sitting in front of him. Reverse periodisation has its place — he uses it for one or two specific cases — but as a default for an amateur entering an ultra event, it is not where he goes.
Sprint work also stays in. Even for someone training for an event where they will rarely go above 250 watts. Why? Because raising the ceiling raises everything below it. Your VO2 max improves your threshold. Your peak power improves your sustainable power. The body does not care that you do not plan on sprinting — it just adapts to the stimulus.
This is the bit where amateurs love to over-optimise. They cut sprint work because "I do not need it for a 700km event," and they leave watts on the table. The full breakdown of how a structured year fits together is in our periodisation plan guide.
The Reason You Are Not Recovering
The thing Wakefield kept circling back to is one most riders do not want to hear.
Rest is the lever.
Massage. Compression boots. Ice baths. The whole apothecary. There is no robust scientific evidence any of it does much beyond placebo. He is honest about that. He still uses massage himself because it makes him feel like a different human afterwards. If your placebo works, keep using it.
But the actual lever is simpler and harder. Stop training. Let the adaptation happen.
Most amateurs are scared of rest. They go bad on the bike, panic, train harder. Go worse, panic more, train harder again. They yank at the only two levers they have access to — frequency and intensity — and end up doing 6×4 minute VO2 max efforts on legs that needed two days off.
The phrase Wakefield uses is one I keep replaying. Take one step back to go two forward. The rider who can do that consistently while their training group push through every session is unicorn-grade — and usually the one quietly making the biggest gains. The recovery tips guide covers what to actually do with that rest day.
The Bit About Doing Less
Wakefield said something I have heard from several WorldTour coaches now and never quite as bluntly. Some of his serious amateur athletes are doing more than his pros. Not in volume — they cannot match the volume. In intensity of focus. In micromanagement. In stress.
The accountant who is paid to be an accountant but treats cycling like he is being paid to be a pro. Nails the sessions. Nails the nutrition. Nails the recovery. And then cannot let any of it go. The spreadsheet. The race weight panic. The inability to go for a beer with friends.
Wakefield's read is direct. That rider needs to do less. He does not need a new training plan. He needs a different relationship to the one he is on.
This is the trap. The serious amateur has the brain, the resources, and the discipline to apply themselves like a professional, and they assume that means they should. But they do not have the recovery time of a professional. They have a job. Kids. A stress load the WorldTour rider has been mostly insulated from. Layer pro-grade training on top of that and the outcome is the one you do not want.
How you do anything is how you do everything is true. So is the corollary. If you cannot back off, you will burn out.
What Amateur Ultra Riders Should Actually Take From This
A few principles, lifted directly from the conversation:
1. Build the fatigue test into your week. Three minutes at threshold to 110% of threshold, every 7 to 10 days. Track RPE, sleep, mood, bodyweight. Use the trend, not the single number. If you are unsure how to set the power range, ask the Roadman AI coach.
2. Train torque from day one. Low-cadence efforts on the bike. Heavy strength work off it. Do not wait until "base is finished." Strength is the foundation, not the final layer.
3. Sit comfortable, hold the watts. Pick a position you can stay in for the duration. Aero only counts if you are still in it when the gradient kicks up at hour twenty.
4. Keep sprint work in. Even for ultra training. Raising the ceiling raises every ceiling beneath it. The fancy periodisation tricks are rarely the unlock — three on one off, build, prep, intensity, taper.
5. Rest harder than you train. When the week is heavy on stress, drop training, not sleep. The riders who progress over years are the ones who can take the foot off when the rest of life demands it.
6. Fuel adequately, but train the gut. Wakefield has athletes at 130g of carbs an hour now. Gut training takes weeks, not days. The carbs per hour guide covers the build.
If you are training for Badlands or Unbound and want a structured way to apply this to your own week, the Roadman coaching system is built around exactly this kind of programming.
Listen to the Full Conversation
The full episode with John Wakefield is on the Roadman Cycling Podcast. It covers the fatigue test in more detail, the post-race darkness ultra athletes have to learn to manage, and how nutrition scales through events that take three or more days.