kmill23

Louisiana-Mississippi District ITT Championships. 1st place Cat 3

Course is 40K on pancake flat roads . . . in Louisiana . . . in August. It's always ridiculously HOT and HUMID.

I set my goal on winning the Cat 3 TT Championship this year. Last year I rode a 58:12 on 273W and didn't do well. I think the heat really affected me since I was training indoors quite a bit due to weather (rain and heat) leading up the race. This year, I made a better effort to train more in the heat--though I still didn't do a lot of it.

I did a 30-mile TTT three weeks ago in lower heat/humidity conditions in 1:02 with a NP of 290W. With that in mind I was hoping I could be between 290-300W for the 40K ITT.

I was the last Cat 3 to start with 1-minute intervals between riders. I knew the guy 1-minute ahead of me was my biggest challenge. I had set my Garmin to auto-lap every 5K. We had a bit of a head/cross wind on the way out. I started out a bit ambitious (don't we all) and averaged 307W for the first 5K. I knew that wasn't smart, so I dialed it back to 290-ish. I ended up catching my 2-minute man before the turn-around, but the gap to my 1-minute man was still holding at about a minute. I made the turn-around and set to work over the next 6.2 miles--averaging 297W and 290W respectively for those two 5K intervals. I ended up making the catch/pass around mile 18.3.

At that point, I knew I had the 'W' but I didn't want to let myself back-off. Although, without thinking about it, with the tailwind, I did ease up a bit, averaging 285W and 288W over the last two 5K intervals. As I got close to the line, I swapped screens on my Garmin and saw I was really close to going sub-56. I didn't have a whole lot left, but ended up finishing with an official time of 56:00 and the Cat 3 title this year. Goal accomplished.

MDcatV

^nice, on the win and shaving over 2 minutes off your prior time! analyze your pacing a bit, if you flip your 5k intervals to go 285->288->290->297->309, etc. you might be able to go lower.

Hermes

Tempus Fugit TT yesterday M60+ open, 5th of 8 with 3rd, 4th, and 5th within 16s. Fun race.

revchuck 

dz_nuzz

I am sitting here thinking about all the ways I F'ed up yesterday's crit. Should have attacked with 2 laps to go but I decided to try and wait for a sprint and got myself placed on the front of the break in the last 1/4 lap, then I didn't start my sprint early enough and everyone jumped past me. Goddamnit, took 5th out of a 5 man break. Embarassing as all hell.

Question for you crit-savy types: I have a "long" sprint but lack a jump. Go early, or go late?

Ygduf

mattm

Go early I'd think.

If you have snap/big jump, later works.

cmh

I recommend the opposite. Going early only works if you have enough jump to create a gap. If you don't get a gap others latch on and come around as you inevitably fade in the end. Unless you are talking about way early (like 500-600 meters). In that case you might get a gap due to the surprise factor, and the others looking at each other in hopes that someone else will close the gap. Disclosure - mattm has won many more sprints than I have.

mattm

Yeah I meant early enough that the "real" sprinters will think you're stupid/doomed and won't go. Or if they do go, they'll be too gassed because they're lazy and fat.

Ygduf

they are rarely too gassed because they can jump hard enough to get the early-bird's wheel pretty quickly, then they sit in and the final sprint is anaerobic and they just need to get 1mm ahead.

So, they let you go, or you lose. <- this is my experience.

jdms mvp

early but not from the front of the group. get the jump (even if u don't have a jump) on them from like 400-500 out. Everyone looks for that last corner or 200m signage. If that's what u have a long sprint, look up standard vs GVA , in last year's omloop. He's someone who goes long

not exactly a crit, but for hilly finishes my power is pretty good in the 1 minute range and i usually go somewhat far down the hill , and even if people are on the wheel or next to me, they give up before i give up.

save10

i think stannard also went long in this years Omloop except he outfoxed like 5 quickstep guys. much to the chagrin of quickstep

globecanvas

Going long from 10+ wheels back is key in my experience. If they have time to get on your wheel you're screwed. The ideal setup is a stutter or hesitation in the field at 500 out as guys start gaming the sprint. You also need some luck to have a clear line to the front.

grolby

Silver lining: you took 5th in a crit. You're better at them than you used to be, right? Not sure what you should've done. It sounds like the problem wasn't just timing, you found yourself tactically outmatched before the sprint even started. Sprinting off the front of the break is pretty hard to pull off unless everyone else is really spent. I'd say the big thing to keep in mind is that a long sprint means a fast sprint - whether early or late, you want the speed to already be really high when you launch, right? If you have a long sprint but not a big jump, going from a cat-and-mouse game into the sprint is probably disadvantageous for you.

shovelhd

Congrats kmill.

On sprinting. My jump is good but not good enough to beat the guys with stripes. If the field is full of antsy sprinters then I try and attack 5-10 minutes out and stick it. If I'm in the field or a break with stronger sprinters I try and position myself on wheels 3-6 and wait for them to jump, look for the hole, and out drag them to the line. Sometimes the hole just appears, you have to be patient.

dz_nuzz

MMmmm good suggestions, I probably should have tried the long game and gone with 2 laps to go. Still don't know if it would have worked though, the NCC Junior champ and his teammate were in the break so every time I tried some sort of long game early on one of them was there to jump on it. Oh well, lesson learned, teammate got 3rd so in the end I can't really complain. Need to up the sprint game though.

kmill23

Yep. I suspect you're correct. I struggled with the correct strategy for pacing with the slight headwind on the way out. I thought it was smarter to go a bit harder into the wind, and hope for the best on the way back with a slight tailwind. I'm not sure whether I chose correctly or not.

STRAVA FILE HERE for anyone who likes TT pacing analysis.

johnybutts

Congrats!!! That's pretty special.

echappist

Congrats on the win!

The thing is that you always risk blowing up by going out too hard, and while you can decrease the risk of that, it can't be eliminated.

I did some back of envelope calculations and have this question for you, how much slower do you think you'd have been had you started off at 285W?

I had a similar sort of time trial in May when there was a howling headwind and went out way too hard. Ended up spending minutes 15-35 pedaling way below average power. the strategy i adopt these days for long time trials is to cap avg power for the first 5 minutes at FTP regardless of wind, and if i'm feeling well, i can always add power afterwards. I need to think of something similar for shorter TTs as spending first 5 min at FTP may lose me too much time.

It also depends on the person as i've always preferred to do negative splits. Some may be able to handle the initial bursts better.

Enthalpic

Yes that is right. If you ended up with the exact same average power MDcatV pacing would be slower.

Ygduf

bf.net where states wins garner advice

furiousferret

Awesome job @kmill23

dz_nuzz

@kmill Nice job. That Strava file was impressive just by the consistency, far better than any TT I have ever done.

Wylde06

MDcatV

guilty. point taken.