Originally Posted by
briandelmo
This is my second year just racing bikes. I have 5 years of triathlon before this. Steady power is there, it's the multiple jumps in racing that tend to wear me out. My legs tend to feel great just my lungs recovering from all the spikes tend to kill me later on. I have done a few longer circuit races that are around an hour and I tend to do a lot better than the 20 minute cat 5 crits. I'm hoping the longer 40 minute crits will suit me better but I don't know for sure.
Strong tri folks are generally considered awesome lead out or tempo riders that are easy to break by those spikes you described. As the races get longer you'll keep making the selections and, if you don't take a solo flyer at a well picked moment, continue to get broken down at the end by a lot of folks that you'd destroy in a 20 or 40 km TT.
In the sport you came from endurance kills. In the sport you're entering speed kills. 0-5 minute stuff. Work on it, especially the 0-1 minute stuff. If you can get separation, you can use that big motor to your advantage. On and barely off efforts...the off effort you're pushing as hard as you can while still very slightly recovering.
Originally Posted by
Doge
It is very common for the less experienced to get into debt they can't get out of and HR can help with that.
HR tells you where you were, not where you are. It's also highly variable as has been discussed ad nauseam here. Using it as a tachometer redline is something I've seen too often used as an excuse not to push physical and mental limits. Without a lot of experience, and the certainty that you're within the usual delta, and constant monitoring of the numbers, seeing your HR is "X" tells you that and not much more; you don't know if you can sustain "X" for 5 seconds or 5 minutes. It has utility in later analysis, but not in the immediacy of most races, where it comes down to the Yoda "do or not do".