HOW TEAM BORA BUILD ENDURANCE: JOHN WAKEFIELD ON ULTRA CYCLING TRAINING

John Wakefield coaches Primož Roglič and Jai Hindley at Team Bora-Hansgrohe. He spent 45 minutes breaking down exactly how he'd build a training plan for an amateur targeting Badlands or Unbound. The periodization structure, the fatigue testing protocol, the neuromuscular work — all of it.

Key Takeaways

Wakefield runs a submaximal fatigue test every 7 to 10 days with his athletes. Three minutes at threshold to 110% of threshold power, then a short questionnaire covering RPE, sleep, mood, and bodyweight. You do it in the first 10 minutes of whatever session is already planned and carry on. He says when athletes report honestly, it tells you almost immediately whether your training stimulus is right, whether you're stagnating, or whether you're digging a hole. That's every 7 to 10 days, not every 6 weeks at a lab.

On the neuromuscular side, Wakefield is blunt about why it matters for ultra events. Watch the cadence data from any long gravel race and you'll see it dropping hour by hour. By the back end of a 780 km event like Badlands, you're not turning over a high cadence anymore, you're grinding through torque. His fix is to train that specifically, both off the bike in the gym and on the bike with low-cadence strength efforts, from day one with a new athlete. And yes, he still includes sprint work even for ultra-distance riders. Raise the ceiling on VO2 max and peak power, and everything below that ceiling improves with it.

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If you want context on how pros actually structure their training year, the episode where I trained like a pro for 60 days covers what that looks like in practice. And if your aerobic numbers have stopped moving despite the work you're putting in, go listen to the seven fixable reasons your VO2 max is low.