Originally Posted by
mollusk
The kid must have some raw physical skills or else there is no discussion. It sounds like he has a bit of a sprint and a decent FTP based on the race plan. That is not a bad combination.
This is exactly what I saw when we recruited him. That and the right personality.
As someone mentioned earlier, his results in the lower cats were all a result of individual efforts. My hope was that we could bring him along over the season and increase the number and complexity of assignments as he gained experience. I never expected him to become our designated guy, just a better domo.
I did this with another rider in 2006/2007 and he has now gone on to be one of the better riders in the country. The first season he rode with us I gave him minor tasks and increased their difficulty and complexity as he progressed.
For instance, I really wanted him to work on the big climbs with our designated climber but I needed to know how hard he could go and for how long.
He also needed to know this. We had a 'C' race that finished with a big mountain (the finish was at over 3000m) so I told him to go with the climbers, no matter what, and to stay with them until he blew up. I told him I didn't care where he finished the point was to see how long he could survive with the pure climbers.
He made it about 75% of the way to the finish with the climbers and we had our answer and now we knew how long he could help our climber. Useful information that helped us down the road.
I was hoping for similar results in this race in terms of establishing some metric for this rider. His PT data is one thing but it's his head I wanted to learn about.