Originally Posted by jonestr

as you mentioned each course is different, but from your description of how you are resting, you may be doing it wrong. I have heard people on these boards talk about the importance of going hard on fast sections, but this is the exact wrong time to be going hard. At high speeds wind is the main thing you are overcoming so maybe you try and push it on a 20mph section to 22mph, but you have to go above your aerobic capacity to do this, then you have essentially gained a 10% advantage in speed while burning a match. Now say you do the opposite and drop to 18mph, but you are now well within your aerobic zone and are getting a bit of a breather.

Now lets say we go into a slow section where you might average 5mph, but instead you burn a match and go 7mph, again a 2mph difference, but instead you are now going over 28% faster than you would normally, so if the time you were on for both sections were the same, you would accrue much bigger gains by burning a match on the technical section rather than the fast section.

Also, I really like to save myself for technical section for the reason stated above, and the mental sharpness difference you have coming in to a tech section slightly rested vs on the verge of being gassed. A simple to make mistake in these technical sections can cost huge amounts of time, so I think it is really important to be sharp for them.

For your next few races really use the idea of relative speed gains to assess where you are going to attack a course, and you might find yourself moving up with out expending any more energy