Vekta

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