Originally Posted by danfoz
Repeatable power is certainly important for racing, but wouldn't an FTP greater than one's peers be helpful for crossing gaps that take longer than 10 minutes to bridge especially when doing so alone, prevailing on longer climbs when the hammer goes down where wheel-sucking expertise is less helpful than on the flats, and spending less overall time depleting glycogen stores and more drawing partially on fat reserves for fuel during a longer road race? Wouldn't less time at red line mean a deeper reserve of short term power at the end of the race? And all things being equal, i.e. compared to a rider with similar 5 minute power and aerodynamic/wheel-sucking efficiency, wouldn't a deeper FTP allow one to recover faster once the gap is bridged as the rider will effectively be riding at a lower intensity of their overall power?
In the past I have finished shorter flatter races (35 miles or so) on par with some of my teammates (or even better) who are markedly better time trialists with a higher FTP than myself, however I have more years of racing than they do (albeit spread out over decades without the benefit of cumulative gain) and can hold a tighter wheel and move around the group out of the wind more effectively, and because of my physical makeup can beat a few of them in a sprint. I even had one comment on barely being able to hold my wheel once during a VO2 type effort, but at a race like the 65 mile Nancy Morgenstern memorial with a bunch of climbs those guys have trashed me. What you indicate about strengths working for one as I've described above holds true, but as I'm already pretty lean my deficiencies seem like they would be clearly addressed by raising my FTP, no?
