The growth of women’s road cycling is one of the success stories of recent times, highlighted earlier this summer by the maiden edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. The event proved a resounding success as hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the roads, cheering on their heroines as Annemiek van Vleuten stormed to victory. And, according to research, the Movistar Team rider raced at a higher intensity than her male counterparts. Let us explain…
Physical profiles
Dr Teun van Erp is data scientist at UI WorldTeam Ineos Grenadiers, but formerly spent nine seasons with Team DSM. At the German team, he investigated the profile of women’s and men’s racing by collecting data from 10 female cyclists and 20 male cyclists for four consecutive seasons. Not surprisingly, the physical characteristics of the riders varied greatly with the women averaging around 170cm in height, 61kg in weight and having a 20-minute maximum power output of 256 watts. The men averaged 185cm, 73kg and their 20-minute max came in at 389 watts.
That power difference is heavily down to testosterone and fast-twitch muscle fibres. The hormone testosterone plays an integral role in muscle growth while males naturally possess more fast-twitch muscle fibres, which can generate higher levels of power albeit fatigue more rapidly.
As for the race profiles, again there were differences that were to be expected. The men completed significantly more race days than the women with their longest one-day efforts up to 200km and the longest stage race hitting 21 days. For the women, the longest one-day race is around 160km, while the longest multi-stage race is the Giro d’Italia Donne, which features 10 race days.
Intense racing
So far, the research paper featured in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance held no surprises. Until Van Erp and his team investigated the intensity profiles of the races. After poring through reams of power and heart-rate data, they discovered that the female riders completed their events at a higher intensity than the men, despite those genetic differences. Whereas the men spent just 3-4% of a race in zone five (around 106-120% of their functional threshold power, FTP), the women spent three to four times that at 12%. Zone four (91-105% FTP) saw a similar pattern, the men spending 20% of a race in this zone compared to 33% for the women.
The reason for this difference is heavily down to race distance and race tactics. Whereas the males can spend much of a long day in the saddle at a relatively easy pace – if the stage is for sprinters rather than climbers, of course – the shorter parcours of the women’s races results in less ‘dead time’, as they’re battling for position and the lead from the get-go. This is important as every rider’s training programme will work back from the races, and is why Van Erp suggests that it’d be much better for a female rider to, for instance, do a three-hour ride with five hard efforts of five minutes compared to the men doing similar but over a five-hour period.
Battling fatigue
Van Erp built on this platform with further research, published earlier this year in the European Journal of Sport Science. The paper, entitled ‘Demands of professional female cycling races: Influence of race level and race duration (single- or multi-day events)’, was co-written with Professor Robert Lamberts of Stellenbosch University (South Africa).
Data was analysed from 14 professional female cyclists (height 166cm, bodyweight 57.3kg) between 2013 and 2019. These cyclists were all on the same women’s professional cycling team, which in addition to competing at the highest level, was ranked in the top-10 female cycling teams.
Studies had already shown that in the men’s ranks, both the different standards of professional road riding and the different race formats (one-day or stage race) lead to varying intensity, load and performance demands. Understandably, the authors hypothesized similar in women’s racing.
What did they find? Perhaps surprisingly, when it came to the different standards of road cyclist and their respective level of racing, load and intensity didn’t vary significantly. But there were substantial differences between single- and multi-day races, with “single-day races presenting more load, more load per kilometre and a higher intensity”. In fact, this was a more significant difference than in the men's racing.
This drop-off in multi-day power is attributed to fatigue. Even though the longest women’s stage race is 10 days, racing at a higher intensity every day means fatigue is starker. Also, as the majority of female riders train at a lower volume than the men, it could make them less resistant to fatigue.
What does this mean? Ultimately, it strengthens the base on which sports scientists and coaches can build more specific training. Men’s cycling has years of research and academic papers behind it whereas the women’s has very little. Thanks to the likes of Van Erp, UCI Women’s WorldTour and its riders can only grow stronger and stronger.