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Crafting performance for cyclists through personalized coaching, and on-bike skill development.
Fueled by @never.second
Team @contour.racing

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Four riders attack at 400 W. Who cracks first? ⚡

Breakaway, sprinter, climber, all-rounder. Their Critical Power sits within 36 W, so on paper they look alike. They don’t race alike.

The climber cracks first: 2:54, against 3:08, 3:08 and 3:52. The rider with the highest CP is the first one dropped.

Three numbers explain it:

🚴 CP (Critical Power): the highest power a rider can sustain in a steady state. It marks the line between heavy and severe intensity. Below it, the effort settles. Above it, there is no steady state, and the effort runs on a clock.

🔋 W′ (Available Work Capacity): the fixed amount of work available above CP. Every watt over CP spends one joule of it each second. Time to exhaustion = W′ ÷ (power − CP).

⚡ Pmax (Peak Power): the highest one-second power. As W′ is spent, the power a rider can still reach falls from Pmax towards CP.

At 400 W the climber is 78 W over CP, drawing on 13.6 kJ. The sprinter is 114 W over, but carries 26.4 kJ, nearly twice as much. At this power, a bigger budget beats a higher line.

Ease to 350 W and the order flips: the climber lasts 8:06, the sprinter 6:52. Between those two riders the crossover sits at about 360 W. There is no single strongest rider. It depends on how hard the race is ridden.

Then the finish. Stop the attack at 2:00 and sprint: the sprinter still has 48% of W′ left and can reach about 870 W. The climber, with 31% left, can reach about 550 W.

And W′ only refills below CP, at a rate that differs from rider to rider. In a real race, the gaps between attacks decide what each rider has left for the next one.

Vekta estimates CP, W′ and Pmax from training and racing, and updates them as new best efforts are recorded. Every athlete’s curve, from their own data.

The type names say how a rider races. The numbers say why ⚡

👉 Swipe through the attack.

#Vekta #CriticalPower #WPrime #Pmax #DreamBig by @contour.endurance

AI or a coach? It’s a question I’m hearing more, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you want out of the process. I wrote up how I’d think it through: where AI helps, where it runs out of road, and what a good coach adds.

What are your thoughts?

Full post at the link in bio.
#cyclingcoach #ai #connection by @contour.endurance

There’s a counterintuitive principle in skills coaching: sometimes you have to teach someone the “right” way to do something before you can teach them how not to rely on it.

Braking is an easy example. Front brake for power, rear brake for control, smooth and progressive. Once that’s second nature, the real progression starts: feeling when to favor one over the other, when to brake harder, and how to ultimately use the skill less to go faster. (Death to comfort braking!)

Training works the same way. Structure gives you the language and the baseline, and it’s a tool, not the destination. Swipe through to see where it starts to cost you, and how I build unstructured sessions into a plan on purpose.

Reach out if you want to chat about how this could play out in your training

#cyclingcoaching #endurancetraining by @contour.endurance

Three things we built with the Vekta API ⚡️

The Vekta API went live this week. Since then, one question keeps coming up.

What would I actually do with it? So we built three examples to show you 💡

Connect the API to an AI assistant, then say what you want in your own words. It reads your data and builds it. None of these took longer than a conversation. None needed a line of code.

🚵‍♂️ Race Day Simulator
Upload the GPX of any race and it builds the day. An estimated finish time, every climb broken down, and a power target for each, set against the athlete’s current model. Most athletes start a race guessing what they can hold. This one knows.

📈 Training Response Report
Pick a window, a week, a block or a season, and it opens with the verdict. Everything the block contained, judged against how the body responded. The report you always wanted and never had the means to make.

👨‍💻 Coach Command Centre
Every athlete you look after, every sport, every morning. It reads all of them before you sit down, and opens with who needs you first and why. The hour you used to spend finding that out, back every day.

These are three examples, not three products. Anything you have ever wanted to build, you now have the means to do so with the Vekta API.

Free with every Vekta subscription 🤝

DM us for your key 🔑

#Vekta #VektaAPI #CyclingCoach #CriticalPower #DreamBig by @contour.endurance

Coaching is the largest part of this program, because it’s where most of the hours go. We aren’t just there for race day, but the whole process. Unlike many programs, coaching is at the core of what we do and is included with the team fee.

Every athlete gets a custom plan delivered weekly, built by a professional coach around their goals, strengths, and current limiters. Partnering with @joinvekta brings access to advanced performance analysis ensuring we are hitting the mark.

Every week includes a check-in call to look at what happened, what it meant, and what comes next. Between calls, the line stays open. Feedback flows both ways building trust and driving progress.

Applications close September 1.

#team #getfaster #cycling by @contour.endurance

Some honesty about fit, since applications close Tuesday, September 1.

This team suits Junior and U23 athletes who are ready to lean in and show up fully for themselves, and the team. Not just on race day, but all the days.

It’s probably not the right fit if you’re not ready to be challenged, looking for shortcuts, or are in it for the flash.

The 2027 team fee is $6,650, with a $750 non-refundable deposit at signing. Contract runs November 1, 2026 to November 1, 2027.

Think we might be a good fit, but costs are the barrier? Reach out— we offer flexible pricing for performance + potential.

Applications close September 1. Link in bio.

#fast #focus #fit by @contour.endurance

Applications for the 2027 Contour Racing team close tomorrow, September 1 at midnight.

If you’ve been sitting with it, this is the moment. The application takes a bit of thought, which is intentional — it’s the beginning of the conversation, not a test.

XCO, XCM, and gravel. Coaching, community, and a season built on process.

Link in bio.
DM any questions.

#focused #fast #fun by @contour.endurance

As the dust settles and we look back on Nationals we couldn’t be more stoked.

Sure, the week was great; filled with fun times and some stout performances. But, what we are most stoked on is all the work everyone put in to get this point. All the training. All the camps. All the race prep. All the challenges along the way. We couldn’t be more proud of how our athletes show up day in and day out.

While Nationals may be over that process of improvement continues on with plenty more to come!

And if you want to be part of it, keep your eyes peeled 👀

@stokersstudio
@never.second
@orbeamtb_
@weareorbea
@schwalbetires
@julboeyewearna
@abus_cycling_usa

📸 @drewbykes

#xco #nationals by @contour.endurance

$Applications for the 2027 Contour Racing team are open.  We’re a process-first team focused on crafting performance. Racing is a small fraction of the season — 10 to 20 hours against hundreds of hours of engaging in the process— so that’s where we put our attention. Results follow the work, not the other way around. What that looks like: We provide a full performance ecosystem that includes advanced coaching from professional coach, comprehensive race support, in depth team camps, and a group of driven athletes riding in the same direction as you.  Applications close September 1. Review and interview calls happen on a rolling basis, so earlier is genuinely better. Link in bio.  #ContourRacing #XCO #XCM #Gravel #Endurance by @contour.endurance$

XCO Nationals 🇺🇸

Thank you to @contour.endurance and @contour.racing for getting me dialed throughout this whole season and helping me build. And thank you to my parents @kathleen_harrell and @jaharrell for always being there for me in my racing career.
@abus_cycling_usa
@stokersstudio
@never.second by @contour.endurance

I competed in my last three junior races this past week at mountain bike nationals. After a week of ups and downs, where I was third in marathon, twentieth in XCO, and failed to qualify for short track, I’m walking away feeling overall neutral.

Looking at the bigger picture I’ve made some big gains from last year, producing 14% more power in marathon and 9% more in cross country so a big thanks to my coach @contour.endurance for making that happen and trusting me to be part of his team.

Focusing to the remainder of the year, I’m looking forward to some less serious and longer races(possibly with a few less gears😉), and my senior NICA season to round it out. by @contour.endurance

XC Marathon Nationals 🇺🇸

Ended out the race with p27 which wasn’t near the result I was hoping for but I am still happy with it considering how stacked of a 17-18 field there was this year. Congrats to my dad @jaharrell for also getting p27 in his category. Thank you to @contour.endurance for great training to get me dialed for this race and to @contour.racing for the support. Also thank you to my mom @kathleen_harrell for nailing the bottle hand offs. by @contour.endurance

John Cox

@contour.endurance