Tadej Pogacar leaks his outstanding numbers - threshold power estimate up to 450 watts!

Wednesday was a busy day for the road cycling world champion Tadej Pogacar. While out on a 3-hour training ride on the coastline near Valencia, the Slovenian had an unpleasant encounter with one of his fans, a story he later shared with the rest of the world via his Strava post.

For most, the headline story dragged away all the attention, however those who dug deeped uncovered a tough training session with recorded speed of 41 kph on a 130-kilometer ride. Definitely the type of effort Pogacar will be expected to deliver to win through one of his iconic solo rides. But that's still not all.

UAE Team Emirates - XRG are usually quite strict with keeping Pogacar's power data a bit of a secret, with the only reliable information to go by being Pogacar's interview on The Peter Attia Drive Podcast in 2024, stating that his Zone 2 power, at the time, was between 320 and 340 watts.

However in his latest Strava upload, the Slovenian left this crucial information public to view.

For a long time, it's been estimated that Pogacar's threshold power (also known as FTP) was around 415 watts. This was based on calculations of his in-race efforts and listed weight of 66 kilograms. But what lacked until now was a solid proof. Until yesterday.

Strava app automatically analyzes every ride being uploaded by its users equipped with power sensors, which is the case for almost any professional these days. In return, it generates a rough estimate on one's power zones. This piece of information can be made public or private with a simple click.

A closer look into Pogacar's Strava power file shows a zone distribution as follows:

In his training, Pogacar spend most of the time alternating between zones 3 (100 minutes) and 2 (60 minutes), averaging 303 watts. This value is on the higher end of Pogacar's Z2, however we shouldn't simply assume this has been an "easy Z2 ride" from the numbers alone.

"If you're doing a five-hour ride, your zone two after five hours may not be your zone two anymore," Pogacar further explained how the zones can change even during the same ride. "On the flat you will not recover, and five hours of riding 320-340 [watts] for me also means that the next day I’m not riding my bike. So when going on the flat for longer, I drop my power to 290-300."

What is more intriguing is the estimate of Pogacar's threshold zone in which the predicted value of 415 watts falls exactly in the middle of the interval, indirectly verifying the analysts' assumption.

However Pogacar points out that we shouldn't rely on power meters too much, as the devices are prone to generate inacurracies due to the many factors they use to calculate data. Rather, the Slovenian prefers to trust his heart rate monitor, which showed a steady average of 144 beats per minute across the entire effort.

"I’ve been training with a heart rate monitor since I was 12 years old," he said. "I could go by heart rate only, but it’s always good to compare heart rate to power."