Athens Twilight

Here's a wko file of the USCF finals in Athens last weekend. It was 20 laps of 1k (shortened from 30laps). I finished with the pack at the back and suffered pretty bad.

My NP for the race was right at my FTP (280w...I weigh 155lbs) but as you can see from the file it was basically forty 20 second efforts at upto 200% of my FTP. I had to qualify earlier in the day and got 10th in the 40+ crit (I'm 40 and a semi competitive Cat 3). I finished 15th in this race last year.

http://www.ellaweb.com/Athens06.wko.zip

or just the screenshot:

i went to school in Athens and remember going to the races in the spring. What a day!! It looks like a demanding race judging by your graph. All this decel and accel can be brutal. It must be a totally different race to race than to just watch.

Ian

have you done a fast find to see if any or all of the efforts were "matches" if so using up your match book would probably be the answer.

There is a couple of other posters that could give you more insight. I'm only getting to the "application" level of all this new info.

HR

Where did you start? In races like this it is so important to ride near the front (but not necessarily on the front). Very hard to do if you don't get to the front before you even start (or don't have the legs - but you made it to the end so must be going OK?).

I see it time and again, riders happy to start in mid/back of pack and then they suffer/get dropped due to the elastic whip that is the bunch when there are lots of accelerations. Especially important in U-turn races, its great when you are 1st couple of riders around the turn, you don't even really need to go that hard and everyone else has to work so much harder to close the gaps.

I had good position starting on the second row and was one of the first 30 guys through the first turn. The problem was the first 5 minutes was extremely hard (that was one big match I burned) and once I was fried it was pretty hard to make up those places and you start to lose a few places every hard effort...I wanted very badly to quit with 8 laps to go but gutted it out and finished with the pack.

Last year I started dead last (over 100 starters) and slowly worked my way up during the race and finished 15th which was the first cat 3 finisher. But that race was 30 laps.

In looking at my training for this year I've been focusing on lots of threshold and 3 to 5 minute VO2 intervals...I obviously need to do lots more of the shorter 30 sec intervals next year. That's the beauty of racing with a PM.

Cool. The absolute power demands are one thing to look at but what's also useful is to understand the way that power is produced.

Have you checked out the following on Quadrant Analysis? It will highlight the demands of this type of race and help you better understand the training required to prepare for those demands. Can also plot training sessions to see if you are actually mimicing that part of the race demand that you are seeking to improve.

http://home.earthlink.net/~acoggan/quadrantanalysis/index.html

sample excel sheets you can enter your ride file data into are here:
http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411.html