Andy Somnifac 

Every race of the day was 50 minutes, with the exception of anything that was juniors under 14.

Flatballer

Yes, and no. Dunno if maybe I should, but I didn't.

topflightpro

I'm kicking myself a little for my poor tactics during our speedway race last Tuesday.

In the 4/5 race, the winds were really howling, so I did everything I could to hide. Nothing was able to get away because once your turned into the wind, it was like hitting a wall. With about two laps to go, I had a good position within the top ten and then the pace slowed. It always slows about then as everyone tries to recover and strategize for the finish. I know this happens, and yet I once again let the field kind of swarm me.

Despite my poor position, I hammered around the last lap on the outside of the track - going all the way up to the wall - and moving quickly around gassed riders to finish 12th out of about 45. Given how I've been riding and how strongly I finished the race, I know I could have podiumed had I held a decent position.

By the time the 3/4 crit started, the wind had died down some. I sat in for the first half of the race, hiding and recovering from the earlier race. A group of three riders got off the front and got about a half a lap on us. They each had several team mates in the field who were content to let them ride off. I moved up to the front and started chasing them down. I ended up bringing the field almost all the way to them. My effort got some other guys chasing as well. With about 5 laps to go, another three guys from those same teams attacked. I again chased them down. At that point, it took all I had just to hang in with the field. Still, my teammate took fifth. He was in position for a top 3 finish, but two guys passed him just before the line.

jwible

I managed about 8.5 hours last week without feeling like I was over doing the time:family ratio. So I think I'm in a good groove training wise.

The dang hill intervals were killing me. Between 750 and 1050 watts twice a lap drained the tank fast. My fatal failure was not moving up the field on the last straight before the final turn. Live and learn.

11 times over 900 watts and 21 separate times over 700 watts. I'd be curious how that matches up with other folks power spikes during crits. Especially in the masters fields.

shovelhd

I'm not sure what the point would be. There's so many variables.

rkwaki

True but I think jwible is just trying to see how his progression is coming among like riders.

Jwible I think what you will notice is that a lot of higher cat riders (P/1) would have a smoother line - not as many peaks and valleys (not on/off as much) thereby making them more efficient and having more in the tank.

Just my $.02

Homebrew01

Played the domestique role at 2 Bethel races. Teammates did well, but not sure I contributed that much to the result. Rather unsatifying day for me.

My current bike has aluminum tips. Carbon tips wouldn't need nailpolish, but it won't hurt either. Might make them shiny again.

Aerodee80

Heres the order of difficulty from my experience.

Lap 4, 2, 1, 3, 5

At the last climb, I could barely hang on...then lost it when someone crashed right in front of me. My JR teammate did much better. My friend finished 4th after giving him a mental boost when he was getting dropped halfway thru the climb.

Nice sprinting with you David. I could barely jump out of my saddle haha.

GrrRrr...

agoodale

That seems about right. When you say experience do you mean that the race plays out like that year after year?

Did someone crash on the sharp turn in the descent on the last lap? I saw several people over the side as I was crawling up to finish my 4th lap.

Creakyknees

mmmm no... one sign of a well-ridden race is a power file that has lots of zeroes in it... coasting more means working less. That's what it looks like when you pick good lines, good wheels etc.

Aerodee80

I didnt do this last year so the order of difficulty varies (CAT 4's order of difficulty at 2010 was 1,2,3,4). If Im to "A" target this race next year, I will work on 4-5x10min 105-110%+ intervals instead of my usual 3x20mins.


Yes someone crashed at the last descent. He was chasing us since he dropped his chain during the climb at Lap 4 (dropped chain).

At the last climb, 2nd crash happened when the other rider lost his balance after giving his struggling teammate a hand boost. As he hit the ground he just lay still. I hope hes ok!

jwible

That's really what I'm curious about. How much smoother are the efforts in the higher cats and masters races. Not the number of peaks and wattage, but just the variation in efforts.

rkwaki

I completely disagree.
Imagine you have to drive 30 miles to the office. One highway allows you to go 60 mph constant the other you can go 90 mph for a couple of miles then have to slam on the brakes then accelerate back to speed then slam on the brakes then accelerate and so on. Where do you think you are going to get better gas mileage?

Jwible is not talking about coasting he's talking about having to hit peak wattages, very different. Coasting insinuates that he can maintain speed without pedaling, peak wattage insinuates having to mash the pedals to keep up hence the 'rubber band' effect of the peleton.

Jancouver

My first time doing this race and it wasnt easy course so kudos to anybody who can hang on for any number of laps. In my case, I even feel like a winner just finishing the Cat4 race ... and to my surprise I wasnt last. Quite honestly, at my size I'm not even sure why I keep signing up for these hilly road races. I should go see a shrink

carpediemracing 

I think you guys agree but are disagreeing with how you agree. It's efficient to have a lot of zeros. It's also efficient to avoid peaks.

My power files have a lot of zeros in it. Usually it's by far the tallest bar in the bar graph by power/time. A lot of times I worry that I had no power (bad pick up, wire broken, etc) when I first glance at the file stats (in WKO the stats load on a separate page from the graph).

There's efficiency and there's efficiency. I know that's not technically accurate - if you go from point A to point B you get there regardless.

But if you look at hypermiling (driving techniques to improve gas mileage), the most efficient way to drive is to spike power, accelerate as hard as possible to a point where air resistance becomes a significant factor (about 40 mph), then turn off the engine and coast back down to about walking pace.

If you translate that to a bit more reasonable habits, it means you should accelerate hard from stops then coast once you're up to speed. Then you goose the gas pedal to keep your speed up, and if you don't want to shut down the engine, you coast in neutral. In highway traffic you can coast for about 20-40% of the time without changing your pace too much (+/- 5 mph from target speed, so 70 to 65 to 75 to 70). In the highway situation you're not seeing major peaks, just a lot of coasting.

To put it in "mileage terms" you're using the law of averages to tilt things in your favor. The absolute worst mileage you can get is zero, if you idle in one place and burn a whole tank of gas. The best mileage you can get is infinity, where you are coasting with the engine off. Realistically you can get 100-200 mpg while coasting in neutral. If you get 5-10 mpg on acceleration (say 8 seconds) then coast for 8 seconds (150 mpg), your average for those 16 seconds will be about 75 mpg.

If you put things in power terms, if you spike power then coast, it may be more efficient from an average wattage point of view.

However, because it's a person pedaling the bike, the spikes cost the rider in other currency, i.e. it burns matches. So although you can go 1000w for 15 seconds then zero for 45 and average 250w for that minute, that's a very difficult way to sustain 250w.

At the same time, if a rider is sitting in and coasting a lot, then does a few pedal strokes at 300w, then coasts, although the graph is spiky, it's still efficient.

In a Cat 1-2 race you rarely get to use tactics alone to break apart a race. Basically everyone tries to ride each other into the ground. At the Tues night races a Cat 1 went to the front for 4 laps, going about 30 mph the whole time. I had very little chance for recovery since the pace was so steady. He drifted back, saw me in trouble, and went to the front and kept going. I came off shortly after.

I can't sustain 350-400w for too long, like a little over a minute. To force me to continually pedal at that power, even with coasting in turns and a little bit on the straights - I blew up. So no real spikes, just a very steady 350-400w lethal power graph.

On the other hand I can stay with good riders on a course with a short hill. I can spike going up the hill, 800 or whatever peak watts, sometimes 1000-1100 watts (basically my sprint), coast for 30-45 seconds during the rest of the lap, and repeat.

Neither one is ideal for sustained power. I don't time trial by sprinting for 15 seconds and coasting for 45. But I also can't time trial at 300w because I can't sustain that output (at least to my knowledge).

rkwaki

You're such a good diplomat

Well put though.

waterrockets 

I think Creaky is quoting what winning power files often look like (from Allen/Coggan, IIRC). I believe the winners often managed ~50% coasting, depending on the course. It's been a while since I read it.

At any rate, obviously, P/1/2 races are faster than 3, 4, or Masters. Higher speeds end up being smoother for those in the back, which would seem to trend toward rkwaki's point, but that's smoother speed, not smoother power. I did two P12 crits on consecutive days: the first day, I was blown out the back because I started at the back of the pack and never got past the last 20 (field of 100). The 2nd day, I elbowed my way to the line at the start and lasted about 2x as long. The first day power file was smoother, but at a power that I couldn't maintain. The 2nd day's power file was a lot more variable, but more manageable intensity. I believe speeds were pretty much the same for both days.

TMonk

RE: SLR

yeah... I could do MUCH better if that climb was like half as long.
it was so congested starting the last climb w that tailwind that by the time it thinned out the lead riders were about 300m up the hill ahead in a strung out line
not that i couldve climbed wit them anyway .

also wtf at that guy crashing going up hill... that was right infront of me too. i looked at him right in the face when i went by and it looked like he didn't get up because he was trying to catch his breath.
as far as results go let's just say Aerodee and I came in somewhere barely in the top half of the finishers.

It was a fun race though; I have no complaints/regrets.
Now if only I could find a race that was somewhere in between that and a pancake flat industrial park crit... Barrio Logan mayb?

mollusk

There are lots of ways to win races and hence lots of power profiles for winning. Here are two main ways to do it.

If you are smart and a good sprinter (CDR, for example), you will have lots of zeros and low numbers for power profile until the very end and then it goes through the roof. The guys that did all of the work in the race and on the losing teams hate that. But that is bike racing. They should learn from it.

On the other hand guys like RacerEx will attack from the gun to get into a break and his power numbers will fluctuate between "OMG" and "That is impossible" for the rest of the race. CDR-type guys could never win a race the RacerEx way if I believe CDR's self reported FTP which is equivalent to a typical 8 year old girl.

Mere mortals that win fall between these extremes.

agoodale

+1. wtf? Isn't it illegal to give a teammate a push? I wasn't there but my first thought was that he stayed on the ground out of embarrassment. I wouldn't roll through the finish line after a dumb ass move like that.

Yes, Barrio Logan & San Marcos. Hard enough to give guys our size an advantage. But not too hard. That new Majestic Circuit Race also works in our favor.

carpediemracing 

Hey eff you too.



Seriously though my sprint isn't all that, at least not anymore. I had a chance to see that first hand yesterday. There was some debate after the fact on exactly how the sprint unfolded in the 3-4 race (political talk in the evening). I didn't do well but I reviewed the clip to see if there was any collusion etc (none I could see). Watching the clip really illuminated my (lack of) sprinting prowess.

I knew I didn't have a good sprint Sunday but when I reviewed the clip I realized just how bad it was - when I jumped I didn't pass anyone, then the guys in front of me pulled away. It totally sucked.

mollusk

Actually I never believed your self-reported stuff, like "I can't ride faster than 15 mph on my own", or something very close to that.

TMonk

I won San Marcos (my hometown) in front of my family last year in the 4's...
Hoping to do the same again this year

added in edit: Alot of it might have been bcuz Jancouver disclosed to me who their marked man was.
he was my leadout

grolby

Aaron Schafer Memorial RR, Cat 4.

A very scenic 40 miles out in Sparta, TN and surrounds. I should know, we had ample time to admire the scenery. One of the local teams, Treehouse, had 9 starters out of 52 altogether, the next biggest teams had 4 or 5 each, including mine. Treehouse sent a guy up the road maybe three miles in and started blocking. We were all content to let that happen, since no one really thought the one lone guy up the road was much of a threat; even if his teammates blocking, it took him quite a while to get a big enough gap to disappear from sight. So my teammates and I mostly just chilled out, tried to move up when we could, but not to get too near the front, either. Moving up proved surprisingly difficult because of the slow pace, but for the same reason, that wasn't a major concern.

The course isn't very hard, though it was windy, and the one significant climb turned out not to be that significant after all, being mostly a couple of miles of very gentle average ascent with a bit of a kicker at the end for a couple of hundred meters or so. Once that was over, we came out of the woods and the wind became a factor. That must have had the guy up the road suffering quite a bit; the moto ref gave us a gap of one minute on the descent, and we caught him six or seven miles after that. With him caught, Treehouse didn't do anything else to try and dictate the race, and we maintained a fairly steady cruise toward the finish. I found an opportunity and moved all the way up to the front with a good five or six miles still to race, which was far too soon. It was windy up there.

My teammate Will, on the other hand - who is a monster - timed things much better, and I found him suddenly right next to me with about a kilometer to go. I told him that should go left as soon as the road opened up at 800 meters. I'm not sure if he was following my advice or not when he did it, but at the last little twist and slight rise in the road, maybe 500 or 600 to go, he opened up the taps and took off. Everyone else started sprinting, too, and I discovered that I was already going pretty much at maximum speed. Last I saw, Will was rounding the bend with a clear lead and seemed as though he would take it. And he did. I got passed by about 30 people and rolled in 39th. Treehouse placed four guys in the top ten, but none better than fourth.

All in all, a good day.

Jancouver

That guy is racing 3s this year too so perhaps he may be your leadout again
That being said, I havent seen him racing much this year.

BTW saw you at Fiesta last Thursday but you were too busy "cruising" around to at least wave at me