Theo Bos says, "It's an aerobic sport, damnit!"

[DancenMacabre]

You'd probably do a lot better than I have in the men's races I've been doing lately (one-hour flatter crits, basically good training and skills sharpening for me). I'm well within myself for most of it, but anytime there's a major surge I'm straight back through the bunch desperately trying to grab a wheel as they go by.

It is no small feat just to hang with the bunch in a men's race so I'd think you are doing well. But when the surges hit, it sounds like what Steve said - the raw AP:NP is a limiter and possibly the short term power needed to handle the surge. I've seen a couple of race files from men's events and the surges are usually well in excess of 500 watts.

Being in a break and taking pulls at 25mph+ is out of the question!

ha ha, I relate to his whole-heartedly.

But for women's racing, what I really need to work on this season to improve my likelihood of getting and staying away in longer races (and won't hurt my chances in shorter races either) is my 10-20 second and 1-2 min power. At the moment, my FTP is a bit useless without the ability to get a good jump away from the bunch followed by a head-down hard minute or two to put some distance between them and me. The higher-level road races here tend to be a bit hilly but not enough to really give me an advantage, just enough to split up the bunch. So I usually make the front group of a few dozen without a problem, but getting away to attack/bridge has so far been a weakness (also one of confidence/experience, I'm sure).

You've obviously given this some thought & I think you've made the right conclusions for crit/flat racing where w/kg isn't as quite as important.

Sounds like you've got a triathlon background - (elite at that ) - and it makes sense that the left side of your profile maybe hasn't been quite as developed as the right. Even so, 13w/kg for 5-sec is very solid & doubly so for someone who maybe hasn't spent a lot of time working on sprints and focused on developing a very high FTP. 1 MMP is highly trainable so the great thing is you probably have lots of upside to balance out your profile.

It's my first full season where cycle racing's my prime focus (after a few years of Ironmans where I did cycle races as training for that) so I'm looking forward to a big season of learning and hopefully some good improvement over last year.

Tough when the level of competition is so spread out like you say. Nonetheless I bet you'll get better as the season progresses.

It would be great to hear about your results.

 

[smaryka]

It is no small feat just to hang with the bunch in a men's race so I'd think you are doing well. But when the surges hit, it sounds like what Steve said - the raw AP:NP is a limiter and possibly the short term power needed to handle the surge. I've seen a couple of race files from men's events and the surges are usually well in excess of 500 watts.

Fortunately my fiance races with me so I get the benefit of looking at his power files too. He's a 3rd cat (entry level is 4th cat in the UK). But the raw FTP is ultimately my limiter, as Steve said. I've observed that the women who tend to do well in men's races are just bigger with more watts, regardless of w/kg. I'll never hit much more than 250 FTP even with serious training so the girls who outweigh me by 20lbs already have at least 10-15 watts more to play with.

Sounds like you've got a triathlon background - (elite at that ) - and it makes sense that the left side of your profile maybe hasn't been quite as developed as the right. Even so, 13w/kg for 5-sec is very solid & doubly so for someone who maybe hasn't spent a lot of time working on sprints and focused on developing a very high FTP. 1 MMP is highly trainable so the great thing is you probably have lots of upside to balance out your profile.

Glad to hear it! Improving my 1-min and 5-min MMP is what I've just started working on. With my sprint I think I'll focus more on technique than watts (at nearly 36 I think this is probably the best use of my sprint training time).

Just joined this forum really so I will be back to ask questions and give some race reports...