globecanvas

With respect, incorrect.

But, learning to do more with less is a couple of racecraft level-ups beyond the scope of this particular conversation.

wens

Bah, you can finish on a podium with like 700 watts 10 seconds following the right wheels. The numbers being thrown around in here are boosting my sprinting ego though.

canuckbelle

Sure. However, it often depends on who one is sprinting against. If it's against other sprinters with big snaps (>1300w for 5sec)...good luck winning without breaking 800w.

Racer Ex 

The best answer is always the simplest

furiousferret

Apparently, the people of Norristown have a different definition of sprinting.

Doge

Did you post about your fitness/recovery? If you can recover faster than the others you can surge more often and they will break first. When my son rode with less fit/more powerful riders (adults) this was his regular technique. Surge, back off, surge back off and when they stopped following he knew he had a better chance of going. It is of course, not how you would TT.

Zedmor

bursting bubbles is a whole reason why I ride bicycle It keeps you humble all way.

Back to topic, after all that great info and ideas from this thread (thank you guys!!!) I came out with this blueprint for rest of season (haha) to have better chance:

0. Start working on sprints (given) - any good workout examples? Well I have an idea in general - like 2xftp for 30 sec and so. I guess I will find plenty on trainerroad.

Regarding race, let's say 30 miles crit or flat RR:

For first 28 miles:

1. Do not attack, do not chase, do not do any work. sit in in back/middle. Goal - ride that 28 miles with least power as humanely possible. I go to weekly training crit - will go there since now with this exact goal - ride first 28 miles spent as little energy as humanely possible. Like 180w or smth.

2. For a last 2 miles: Attack from about 7-10 ppl from behind, preferable after corner or when I will be exhausted more (after group chased somebody or smth like that).

Attack with my sprint power and use my ability to recover better after hard work and drive 5 min for more power than others. So like 500-550w for first 30 sec and then settle up for 280-300 watts for rest of 5 minutes.

3. Pray that will work.

4. Win a water bottle.

sounds good?

Zedmor

Yeah I did some of OU intervals, and other similar intervals where you "rest" on 90% FTP ftp and work on 120% for 15-30 sec.
like this: https://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/...4878-Sassafras dedicated specifically to address this (surge/recovery)

MDcatV

I have a teammate that always wants rigid plans like that. I hate rigid plans like that, but then again, I specialize in getting dropped from the early break.

canuckbelle

If you want to work on power sprints, 30sec is *way* too long. 10sec is the max for your sprinting sets if you're working on snaps. That's enough time to shift two gears, spin it out, and stop pedaling. Start from max 15mph when you do them, do 3min of easy spinning between each.

furiousferret

Man, all that tactically planning stuff goes out the window after the first attack. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Besides, that plan is just a recipe to tow others to a win (unless you add about 50 watts). Just learn energy conservation in the pack (i.e. not hitting 500 watts every corner) and how to relax in a non cooperating bunch. I'm a firm believer that unless your power numbers are exceptional, being patient and jumping on other peoples moves is the best thing to do.

mattm

It's all relative though.

I've won races that were more or less field sprints (nobody was off the front, no time gaps) on way less power.

If you time it right and go early enough, you can beat people with better power.

I guess my point is it doesn't matter if it's a true "sprint" or not, just get across the line first and you can call it a true win.

Ygduf

please follow up and let us know how this goes.

my recommendation in the 5s is just to do enough to stay with the lead group and once the lead group is <10 people try to ride away. If they chase, stop. Try again about a minute later. Eventually no one will want to be the person to close down your stupid 11th attack and then you just keep riding away. If you can't do that, your TT power isn't going to be enough to win cat 5 races solo.

p.s. I do not expect this to work. It's way hard to win solo in the 5s because guys chase every goddamn thing. I am the rider you say that you are; I can't sprint so I've won more p12 races than I ever won in the 5s.

carpediemracing 

I'd caution you against taking that approach at every race, but I think it's something to try at least once. Everyone seems to gas themselves before the critical last couple miles of a race. In Zwift (I know, I know) it's even more revealing because you can see the power other riders are putting down, maybe their heart rate. When I go for a sprint on Zwift I'm riding at 80-90w until I get to the sprint area (so 20 minutes or so). My heart rate is 120 bpm or so. After the first sprint I'll do a lap - 35 minutes for me, while most do it in 15-20 minutes - at a slower pace, maybe 70-80w, while I recover. Then I sprint again.

Granted, that's not necessarily great training, but my goal when I do these rides is to do a good sprint. I'll do a sprint that's much better than the other riders but of course I will, right? Because they're riding at 200w the rest of the course, or 170 bpm, or whatever. I'm doing 12 mph on the trainer (in real life) when I'm not sprinting. It's really, really easy. If I went 15 or 17 mph (150-200w I think?) then I'd be way more fatigued when I try to sprint, and, having done a few fatigued sprints, I know I'm a solid 3-4 seconds slower (25-26 seconds fatigued, 21-22 seconds not fatigued). Do they want to sprint? Then they need to commit to it and ease up a lot for a few minutes before they sprint. If not then they have to live with the limitations they set for themselves by not going super easy for a reasonable amount of time in order to hit the sprint zone in a totally recovered state.

There's this concept in war of the point of concentration, coined as part of Blitzkrieg, which has shaped the way major battles have been fought in modern times (although not that many, technically, since WW2). The phrase used is something like "hand as a fist, not with fingers spread". Military leaders would concentrate immense forces in a small area to achieve local victories against typically numerically superior forces. This is what you want to do in a bike race.

Strike when your opponents are either weakest, you're strongest, or both. You don't want to fritter away your strength pulling a bunch of fresh opponents along for the first 10 minutes (which it seems you did, going 180 rpm for a while at the start of the Strava activity above). Little efforts (and big ones) here and there will wipe you out. You want to throw everything you have into the battle when you make your move. Time naturally fatigues everyone. Similar efforts fatigue everyone, so climbs, tailwinds (not much draft), crosswinds (most people don't know how to draft in a crosswind or simply can't due to circumstances), etc.

The places where you must rest are in situations where there's a massive difference in energy expenditure between different parts of the field. Headwinds (front riders going 400w, back riders coasting and on their brakes wondering why they're going so slow). Downhills - riders drafting are wondering why the front riders are going so slow. Etc.

Now try to make those "equally fatiguing" situations work to your favor. Tailwind? Normally a place you might pull because not much draft savings due to the tailwind. Tailwind out of a corner? Now it's a different story! Massive dig as you accelerate out of that corner into a tailwind. Everyone will be scrambling for wheels, but they're not getting a great draft because tailwind.

Hill? If you're a lanky guy and hills make you smile, then go for it. But after you make sure the field starts the hill slowly. Going up a hill at a steady speed isn't super challenging. Accelerating while on a hill, that's challenging. So make it challenging. If you're going to go, go when it really hurts everyone to go with you. Accelerate halfway up the hill, not at the bottom. Or go at the top, when everyone is starting to ease. At the tops of hills most riders spin a bit faster, not realizing their heart rate is sort of linked to their cadence. Most everyone blows themselves up as they crest a hill. Shift up as you crest, keep your rpm within 4 rpm (means you need to be able to shift and accelerate confidently), keep your pedal force (i.e. power) about the same or more. You'll be surprised at how fast 400w is when you crest a hill.

Then when it's no longer in your favor then just shut down 100%. Sit on wheels. Sip some water. Relax, chill, wait for your next chosen battleground.

Racing is rarely predictable but the same situations repeatedly show up. Your reaction to those situations should be pretty predictable, based on what you want to do at that point in the race. Rest/wait? Hurt the others? The same situation will call for different action.

This way you don't have a super inflexible plan, but instead you have a wildly adaptive plan that can change as things unfold. A break gets away, for real? Like more than 10 seconds, and they're holding it for more than a minute or two? Start thinking of ways to drop the hammer, when you want to do it, how you can do it without bringing everyone with you. You have to be 100% ready to make a move and that means you haven't been piddling away at the front of the race for the last 20 minutes.

carpediemracing 

On sprinting, there's no real definition of a sprint other than it's a group of riders contesting the finish. About the only thing I can do is sprint and I've done some pretty massive efforts and not won or even come close winning. I've done some what I thought were piddling jumps here and there in the last bit of a race and ended up winning or placing really high.

If you watch my clip from April 12 I win the race barely breaking 900w. I made a series of efforts, happened to be ideally positioned for the move that made the race, and managed to get to the line first. The last lap takes about 2 minutes and a few seconds and this is the power data from that bit of the race. You can see that my power never really peaks, my heart rate wasn't super elevated when I started the lap (155 bpm) but it drops to 151 bpm at about 67.5 min before going into the 166 range at the finish (which is high for me). Peak wattage was 912w, I think (I have incomplete data since I manually started the SRM a few laps from the end).

No real peak power, not really a sprint per se, but the field was together at 1/2 lap to go.


A peak power sprint, Limerock in June (I got 3rd). The guy that got 3rd in the race above got 2nd. Clip is still in progress.


Note that my peak power is much higher, there's one sprint with two minor jumps for position (and one massive effort to get over the hill on the other side of the course). My HR was 155 going into the hill, ended up at 170 bpm after (HR lags time wise to efforts), managed to get down to 162 bpm before it got exciting, then HR peaked, after the sprint, at 175 bpm.

I've also realized that the harder the race is preceding the sprint, the lower the peak powers get and therefore the less important your short term power (1s to 10s). In other words if there's a 40 mph leadout into a sprint then the sprint isn't really about the jump as much as it is just getting to the line. Likewise if everyone is tooling around at 12 mph with 300m to go then you're going to see some monster jump wattages when everyone launches to the line. This means it's to your advantage, if you really don't have good peak power, to make the sprint as long and as hard as possible. btw that does not mean just leading it out from really far out.

I forgot I wrote these:
Sprinter della Casa: How to - Beat a Sprinter
Sprinter della Casa: How To - Working on sprinting

globecanvas

I was in this race. CDR managed to get himself led out and separated from the field at the last corner and it was a picture-perfect situation for a non-sprinter to win. He happens to be a sprinter so when he did win, at the time he was like "really? I won? that was weird."

CDR had a few seconds on the field at the finish but behind him it was a straight up field sprint. Because of the 1-2 attack it was a long sprint starting from a high speed and that was also a good setup for a non-sprinter, because none of the real sprinters got to use their jumps. I was 5th place in that race, but 2-5 were all within a wheel of each other and I was gaining, another 10m and I think I would have taken it. The sprint effort for me was 875w jump, 20s @ 740w. Definitely a case of contesting a real sprint without big watts.

Like mattm said, you can beat guys with bigger sprints if you time it right, but you also need things to fall out in your favor at the end of the race. A couple of weeks ago I took 2nd in a 1/2/3 field sprint against real sprinters thanks to a perfect, long fast leadout from my teammate. That effort was 820w jump, 20s @ 650w. The key was the 45s @ 500w preceding it, everybody else had to do that too (except my teammate who had to do a lot more, but then his race was over).

jdms mvp

winning a cat5 race wont happen through words on this forum. Go race, and cross the finish line first in whatever way your legs can manage. Dont think of the cat5 race as some TDF stage where there is an elaborate leadout and u blast fools at the end. Stay out of trouble and go earlier than later. EVERYONE in the field is thinking of the same thing u are.

Zedmor

wow. Pure gold! And footage from Nutmeg race literally made me giggle, that was epic.

Btw super lame question - how to figure out wind direction? Look up on phone?
Does it change often or ever? Never thought about that so kinda confused.

caloso

I look for trees, grass, flagpoles. But mostly you'll feel it and the more you ride/race, the better your sense of wind will become.

globecanvas

Wind can change during a race, that tends to make things interesting.

Wind management is an intermediate to advanced topic, especially in a crit. If you are thinking about wind in a cat 5 race, you are definitely ahead of the game. I have seen plenty of 1s and 2s fail to manage wind properly. At Lime Rock on the last turn before the bell lap I went wide to get onto the outside for the front stretch and got scolded by a cat 2 breakmate for not taking the "shortest line through the corner." He was then guttered and dropped before the hill.

carpediemracing 

Sprinter della Casa: Tactics - Out of Position Regarding Wind


Hard doing this on phone but everything is blocked at work and im here late tonight. Read and ask away.

Wylde06

Wind can be even more interesting when large buildings are involved.

Number400

Man, had a windy race where we had a change of direction before passing a large barn. I had never raced with 60mm wheels and did not even think about them until I came past that barn. I went 4 feet across the road with the burst of side wind. Lucky we were single file at that point or I would have gotten the bowling ball award. I was ready for it the next times past.

shovelhd

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a break with riders that should know better than to pull off on the wrong side.

rm -rf

I turn my head to feel where the wind is coming from. The noise in my ears evens out, and I can feel it on both sides of my face. This works better in fairly clear air, not as good in the middle of a pack. The best draft is to put the rider in front right where you are looking upwind.

The faster you are riding, a side wind shifts more toward your front. ( Hed has a calculator here. Click the "Apparent Wind Calculator" link near the bottom.)