Experimental design. Bidirectional arrow indicates counterbalanced and randomized order. TT: time trial.
premature fatigue
On the last three visits, participants performed in a randomized and counterbalanced order: 1) a 4-km self-paced cycling time trial; 2) a 4-km cycling time trial adopting an all-out start strategy for the first 10 s, with further maintenance at mean power of the baseline trial for the remaining first km, and a self-paced cycling thereafter (all-out+mean); and 3) a 4-km cycling time trial adopting an all-out start for the first 10-s, with further maintenance 5% above the mean power of the baseline trial for the remaining first km, and self-paced cycling thereafter (all-out+5%mean). We chose to keep a power 5% above the mean power because a preliminary pilot study indicated that this was tolerated well and did not cause premature fatigue.All trials were performed on the participant's own bike attached to a CompuTrainer (CompuTrainer