mike868y

^your vid was good matt.

Doge

Length is always hard. I generally cut to about 8-10, then 3-4 then just the finish or sprint - :20 and post all three (kid's Facebook). Whichever gets posted first is generally the only one watched.

mattm

Definitely; I usually try to keep my vids to 3 mins or less. I know I have a hard time watching anything longer than that..

But I made an exception for this race since it's so special.

Doge

Well if you hear Dave at the start you kinda let people know its special right there.
Always hard to understand, but always special.

Ttoc6

Saw one of my teammates from Seattle in there at 5:30. Grey kit, hedrick Frame. Goes by PB. Not sure if he was around when you race in the PNW, but he just finished racing all across the country. Did Super week, Boise, Intelligentsia and San Rafael. Think he ended up 8th at SR twilight.

Ygduf

I missed it! Saw it now!

Want advice?!

mattm

Actually, yes. Last time you were spot on.

Ygduf

When I saw the part where you were bridging to a 4-man chase group that had a Mikes rider in it, knowing Reichert was off the front.



Of course that fell apart the moment they felt they were caught. Hard to know in the heat of the moment but that looked like a prolonged mistake. Dunno though if you were close to the front two at that point. Can't tell in the video.

Later on, when it looked like you guys had neutralized with 3 to go you could have given a half-hearted jump to ignite the rush then slotted back in. You can accelerate and do that and I think you'd have been in a better position with less work than where you ended up starting from the middle of being swarmed.

./coach

Doge

I really think you should.

mattm

In hindsight, I agree. At the time though, I had no idea who was off the front.. I didn't see them get away, didn't even know Riekert(?) was in the race until they announced he won.

I think at that point they had maybe a 15 second gap, can't remember.. also the other guy was on that pro team with the all-black kits, who also had someone in the break.. who I also didn't know was in the break.

The next time I went with a move (just three of us), it had a Mike's guy who seemed somewhat motivated; which is confusing in hindsight given he had a guy in the break.. maybe he didn't know either?

Yeah. What I need is for you to ride next to me in the race, then shout all this in my ear as it happens (or even before, preferably).

But yeah I wonder why I didn't go with the swarm with 3 to go.. I think I was gassed because that's the only explanation I can think of!

Ygduf

not knowing who is otf changes things. it's a lot easier on tape than the road.

I did shout at you what we should do. We would have been 1-2-3 at the district crit Aaron won if you'd have listened!

spectastic

new camera

mattm

thanks man.

hopefully you’ll like this one too:

spectastic

nice job holding them off. I find that I'm the same way in that I have to attack early and catch people off guard, because my sprint isn't that great anymore, compared to the other guys. how fast were you guys going when you attacked, and what speed did you have to maintain in the last 2-300m to get first?

Ygduf

32mph last lap, 33mph in that corner, 34.6mph sprint. (15s from the corner)...

East-Coast cat3 numbers, honestly.

mattm

Thanks.

Looks like we were doing about 33 mph when I attacked. Peaked at 37.6 mph (into a big headwind!) before the 3rd corner.

Then 34.8 mph avg from the last corner to the line.

(that's from TrainingPeaks/my Garmin speed unit; I think Strava calculates it based on GPS but that's crap)

But honestly it's not about the speed/numbers. I was just trying to go as fast as possible the whole time, there was zero pacing involved.

High-speed sprinting is something I practice, a lot. Putting out 1k watts is neat if you're starting at 20 mph, but it's harder when starting at 30+ mph. (I don't use a power meter when racing anymore, so no idea what my actual power numbers were besides "enough")

wktmeow

Beautiful! Nicely done, pretty much exactly the sort of move I want to emulate in a sprint. How much of that was standing vs seated btw?

spectastic

couple of questions.

1. why is gps based speed crap?

2. why don't you use power meter anymore? how do you do intervals, tempos, ftp tests? RPE and HR? how do you know if you're improving or not?

mattm

Thanks, me too. Most of the races I've won have been from some sort of early attack on the last lap, very rarely do I win drag races (if ever, against the guys I beat in this case)

Started the attack standing, it was an all-out sprint to get separation. Then seated through corner 3, out of corner 4, then out of the saddle for a little bit out of corner towards the line, then seated for the last 100m or so. Maybe one more standing spurt at the end, I can't remember.

mattm

1) "crap" might be a bit strong, but speed based on GPS is a pretty rough estimation. I see guys who are pretty slow hold KOMs in crits, that's mostly why I doubt Strava's speed #'s. Especially across corners in crits, Strava/GPS gets it wrong because maybe the samples were off by a few meters, maybe it cut out the corner. The point is a speed sensor is more accurate, even though it's also an estimation.

2) Mostly because the bearings pooped out in my G3 hub, but I don't miss it too much because I never did that much structured training/intervals anyway, mostly used the power meter for max sprint #'s, and TSS values (feeing in to PMC in TrainingPeaks).

I had been using power since 2009, and I've basically plateaued - the TSS numbers for rides were super predictable. About 100 for a 60 min crit, 200 for the Saturday training ride, etc. Same for max power, I get 1200w or so on a really good day (in training), but less in a race. But I've won races on 800w and lost them on 1100w, so I think it comes down more to tactics and timing than raw power.

Since TrainingPeaks can do "hrTSS", I'm getting most of the value I got from the power tap with less weight/maintenance.

When I do actual intervals of some sort, they're usually all-out sprints, so the power meter didn't help except to tell me what # I got, but that didn't change how hard I went. If I do something like a 5' interval, I go based off of HR/RPE/time.

I feel like guys (myself included) get so caught up in the numbers coming out of the head unit they forget that there's so much more that goes in to racing than what you put in to the pedals.

Race results - otherwise you're just measuring how good you are in training, which doesn't help much if you're always losing at races.

spectastic

to be totally honest, I don't use my power meter like it's supposed to be used either.. it's there to tell me how much I'm putting out, and I'd just be like, "ok"... other things it can tell me is how much effort I'm putting into a race. my average power gives me some indication of how efficient I am racing, or how much effort I'm putting into a breakaway. However, speed and RPE can easily replace those, I think.. during 5' intervals though, it's helpful in helping modulate the power so it's more steady, and not high->medium->low. But I rarely do those anymore. intervals suck... why so serious...

I agree that it can kind of give people tunnel vision and forget that they're riding for fun, not for the tour de france. been thinking about selling my stages too.. free up some data fields on my garmin.

also true. I can probably compare the rides i do these days to similar rides I did in 2015, and see no distinguishable difference in average/normalized power. However, I'm pretty sure if I were to race against my 2015 self, i'd kick his ass. I feel like power meter is useful for those hard ass cat 1's who put in 15 hour weeks. I only have about 8 hours/week, and I want to have fun doing it. so while power meter may be a good training tool, it might not be a great value for me after all, all things considered..

mattm

Overall I (obviously) agree, but two things:

1) I don't think I would have reached where I'm at without training with power; it's just that I feel like I don't need it as much anymore

2) I think a power meter is more useful the less time you have - if you have 15 hours to throw around, it matters less what you do in those 15 hours. If you only have like five hours per week, no time to waste. I've always been able to put in 15+ hour weeks in the winter, that allows me to be way less structured.

spectastic

1). how did having your power meter help you get to where you are now, as opposed to not having it? If you were to take a break from cycling (pick a reason, any reason), do you see yourself using a power meter to get back up to peak fitness?

i agree on 2). I just see it differently, in that i only get 8 hours/week to ride my bike, so I'm going to try to find the optimal balance to make it effective training, as well as something fun to do. otherwise, it's going to just feel like 8 more hours of work, which I already have enough of, and I'll burn out mentally, which happens all too frequently to people, I think. If I had the choice of doing structured intervals up and down the same piece of road, verses doing intervals by just doing a hilly, scenic route, or going on a hammer fest group ride, then I'd pick the latter, and I think the training benefits would be similar. at this point, I should ask myself why I'm spending my time the way I do, and using my free/fun time to lock myself in a pain cave isn't worth the potential payoff on any given weekend with 8 hours/week.

aaronmcd

On using a power meter:
I'm finding it more useful after a few years in that it allows me to compare RPE with power over longer efforts which gives me insight into when I can better spend my 10 minute intervals etc. I find I'm riding harder and fresher this year at only 10 points lower CTL.

Also the power meter is helpful to know how hard to pace efforts, especially when super fresh at the beginning of a long ride, but also when super tired it tells me to not bother trying to smash a few 20 minute climbs.

Helps me know if I'm still riding tempo 3 hours into a long base ride. This year I discovered a few hours of tempo fresh is better for base than a zillion hours of sluggish zone 2.

On intervals:
I agree they kinda suck and staring at a number takes some of the fun away. I can only do a couple months of hard intervals. Sometimes I like to do a few repeats and then a ride, or as spectastic said, work a few efforts into a ride. I can ride around the city and hit a few hard climbs. Or do a long ride and pick terrain to match what I wanna do.

I used to think it was either/or. Intervals, or JRA. Starting to figure out I can kinda mix em up and still get what I'm looking for.

globecanvas

I like the @mattm AMA thing here.

How do you practice sprints from a high speed start? A stretch of road that is a slight downhill into a flat or slight uphill?

100 TSS for a 60 minute crit... I have never been anywhere near that, regardless of how hard the crit is, how well I did, etc. 70 is typical, 50 is not unheard of, and the highest ever is about 80. I think that means something I already knew, which is that I suck at suffering. Well, I'm really good at suffering for the last 5-10 minutes of a race, which never feels hard regardless of how hard it actually is, so I maybe need to find some mental trick for thinking of the whole race that way.

I still sometimes think about something you (I think you) wrote years ago, which was about going as hard as possible for every single pedal stroke of a sprint. I go back and forth between trying to do that, and trying to do multiple jumps in the same sprint. I think it's a completely mental thing. The latter seems mentally easier to accomplish but lulls you into going not very hard at all in between the jumps. Earlier this year I tried a 1 minute attack against a strong field that I think I should have been able to stick, but I focused on jumping out of the last two corners instead of just burning hard for the whole minute, and I feel like I got caught because I eased up before the last corner.

How many hours a week do you ride during the season?