Hi! I´m 35, 192 cm, 87 kg, riding for three years sporadically, but now trying to improve as the kids come to age leaving me a bit more time. I´ve recently got a PT and have tested my FTP to 278. I´ve always been poor at aerobic efforts, but seem to handle anaerobic efforts reasonably and find short steep hills to my liking.
I´ve never really considered myself any good in a sprint, but recently I was hanging on to a much more experienced racer as he tried to dump me on some short hills after a 100 k hard group ride - to hang on required power surges of up to 700 watts. I hung unto his wheel for dear life and outsprinted him at our local sprint roadsign (he was quite bitter so i guess he tried his best). Now this story got me wondering on what I should do to improve my sprint. In the given case i did 1124 watts max with the whole sprint being 17 s 957 watts av. But I was surprised that my cadence was only 80 - since sprints are usually described as being 120-140 rpm.
I´ve tried training a few sprints since - which I have never done before - and consistently hit 1100-1250 max with a best 10 s power of 1180. But my power drops when rpm gets above 100!!
My question is: should I accept that I sprint the best in high gears, or should I train to get better cadence and if so how?
I´ve never really considered myself any good in a sprint, but recently I was hanging on to a much more experienced racer as he tried to dump me on some short hills after a 100 k hard group ride - to hang on required power surges of up to 700 watts. I hung unto his wheel for dear life and outsprinted him at our local sprint roadsign (he was quite bitter so i guess he tried his best). Now this story got me wondering on what I should do to improve my sprint. In the given case i did 1124 watts max with the whole sprint being 17 s 957 watts av. But I was surprised that my cadence was only 80 - since sprints are usually described as being 120-140 rpm.
I´ve tried training a few sprints since - which I have never done before - and consistently hit 1100-1250 max with a best 10 s power of 1180. But my power drops when rpm gets above 100!!
My question is: should I accept that I sprint the best in high gears, or should I train to get better cadence and if so how?