"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - workouts for 5 minute power?

I have a history of getting dropped in races during the first big power surge, say 10-20 minutes into the race. This happens on flat road. I estimate the surges are around 5 minutes. I can hang for about 2 minutes. My endurance is fine because I can keep the pack within sight working with other stragglers. I feel if I can just survive the initial surge I could hang with the pack during the "rest" intervals. Are there any workouts to train this duration other than the obvious, ie. 5 minute intervals? Is it better to start with short intervals at high intensity and increase the time or to hold the time constant at 5 minutes and increase the intensity? or both? Thanks for any feedback. Bill H.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=283626

I have a history of getting dropped in races during the first big power surge, say 10-20 minutes into the race. This happens on flat road. I estimate the surges are around 5 minutes. I can hang for about 2 minutes.
You don't say what the pace is like leading up to this big surge or how hard the surge is. I see two scenarios. 1) The pace leading to the surge is fairly easy and the pace in the surge is about the max effort for five minutes from a rested state. In this case, you need to work on your anaerobic work capacity by doing 1-3 minute intervals with about double the work time as rest. 2) the more likely scenario is that the pace leading up to the surge is fairly hard and while the surge feels hard at the time, the pace is below the absolute best that could be maintained when rested. In this case, the problem is lower functional threshold compared to the rest of the pack, so you are going deeper into your anaerobic reserves than everyone else and are exhausting them after 2 minutes. The prescription for this would be to do long aerobic intervals or long moderatly high paced rides.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=283626

ah thanks, same question.