Juan Antonio Flecha had quite a start in this year’s Tour De France. He demonstrated remarkable dedication to the team during the first stages as he protected the Team Sky leader Bradley Wiggins. After the misfortune of losing Wiggins in a serious crash, he went on the attack to try and win a stage for himself. Unfortunately, this effort was thwarted when Flecha was taken out of the winning break in Stage 9 by a French media car.
Flecha rides with an SRM power meter each day and uploads that data to his TrainingPeaks.com account. He granted me access to analyze his power data, which provides exclusive insights into the power needed to ride as a super domestique and then as the aggressive rider going for a stage win.
This year’s Tour de France has been brutally hard in the first stages with difficult finishes each day. In the first seven stages of the Tour, Flecha’s job was to protect Wiggins and shelter him from the wind in the final hours of each stage. By far, this is the hardest part, as the pace increases throughout each stage ending in a crescendo to the finish line.
During the early miles of each stage, Flecha spent the vast majority of his time in his endurance (56-75% of FTP) and active recovery (<56% of FTP) zones, which are between 235 and 315 watts and less than 235 watts, respectively. FTP, or Functional Threshold Power, is a term coined by Dr. Andrew Coggan as the best average power a rider can produce without fatiguing for exactly one hour. For novice, young male cyclists of average build, their FTP’s are usually in the 200 to 230 watts range, intermediates from 230 to 280 watts and more advanced racing cyclists from 280 to 350 watts. Flecha’s FTP is 420 watts and one of the reasons he considered one of the top riders in the world.
In the final hour of each stage, Flecha’s job was to ride very close to the front of the peloton and make sure he kept Wiggins as sheltered and protected as possible. This means that in that last hour, he had to expend a lot of energy producing wattages close to and above his FTP. If we look at Stage 5, from Lorient to Mur-de-Bretagne, Flecha averaged 380 watts in the last 49 minutes and in the last 13 minutes he averaged 468 watts! That was an incredible sacrifice as he kept Wiggins in the lead and then dropped off the front group, losing 3:43 to stage winner, Cadel Evans.
Stage 9 was a day of mixed emotions for Flecha, from the excitement and exhilaration of making the winning break and the possibility of a stage win, to the sheer shock and disbelief that occurred when a French media car collided with him and Johnny Hoogerland.
Reviewing his files, it is very clear that Flecha was incredibly strong on Stage 9. Based on his impressive power output on the day’s first climb up the Cote De Massiac, I’d estimated his Functional Threshold Power (FTP) at 420 watts for the first eight stages. And he certainly confirmed that, as his Peak 20 minutes was 446 watts up the climb.
One of the best ways to test your FTP is through a 20 minute all out test, and then subtracting 5% off of this number. This calculation will give you your FTP (your best avg. power for an hour). If we take 446 watts for that peak 20 minutes, and subtract 5%, we get 423 watts, which is very close to what I consider his FTP to be. A real shame as Flecha had a great chance to win the stage. I am sure he’ll recover quickly and be able to give another big effort later in this years’ Tour.
Overall stats for Flecha in the first 9 stages of the Tour:
Functional Threshold Power: 400 watts
Functional Threshold Heart rate: 168 bpm
Weight: 163lbs.
Hours Ridden: 39:02:43
Hours Spent in Active Recovery: 22:22 (55%)
Hours Spent at FTP: 3:09 (7.8%)
Max 5 second Power: 1119 watts
Peak 1 minute power: 667 watts
Peak 5 minute power: 493 watts
Peak 20 minute power: 446 watts
Average cadence: 81rpm
Average Heart Rate: 126 bpm
Average Calories burned in each stage: 3841 kCal
Total Calories burned: 34,569 kCal
(A normal person weighing 160lbs. would burn about 1800 kCal’s per day. Multiplied by 9 days= 16,200 kCals)
Hunter Allen is a co-Author of “Training and Racing with a Power Meter”, Co-developer of TrainingPeaks WKO+ software, and CEO of The Peaks Coaching Group.
Davida V. Munson Mack N. Rayner Agnes J. George James E. Curtis Thomas C. Johnson Raul J. Walker
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