Originally Posted by
carpediemracing
On the other hand the headwind favors a late jump for those with a sprint. I have yet to publish my next clip (Limerock) but I jump very late in a headwind sprint. I checked, my sprint was only 9 seconds long - I was waiting until then. However I pass a number of riders - 8? 10? - in those 9 seconds. I didn't jump earlier because I was waiting, but I wouldn't have jumped more than 4-6 seconds earlier even if things were clear. I knew the guys in the wind would just wither in the last 50 meters and they did.
I had my first experience with this in Sunday's RR when I went for the QOM sprint (on a ~400m hill). We were in the break of four and one girl went really long, from about 600m out. I immediately jumped on her wheel and just waited. I saw what power numbers we were doing and figured there was *no way* she could keep this up to the line. So I just sat in and sure enough she slowed big time. I waited another five seconds or so and jumped with about 10-12s left and by the time I hit the line had a 10+ bike length gap.
So...all that to say that if you have an idea of what power numbers you can do over different lengths of time, you can start to get a better sense of when to expect *others* to blow up in a sprint. It's extremely useful information.