I compared the power files between my 4-Man TTT race and my 2-Man TTT race back in July to see what went wrong last weekend. What’s interesting is that both races lasted about the same amount of time (~1 hour 30 minutes) but I actually averaged a *lower* wattage at the 4-Man than I did at the 2-Man. How is that even possible?
One thing that can explain that is the sharp spikes in power at the 4-Man race. At the 2-Man race I was basically in two zones all day; either I was pulling at 90+% (but not above 100%) or drafting at 70-80%. At the 4-Man race I was all over the board. Some of this was due to the fact that when I was drafting in the group I didn't feel comfortable dropping into my aero bars until I was in the 2nd position, so I wasn't taking advantage of the draft as much as I could have. I see my peaks when I was pulling at 100-110%, but more telling I see peaks shortly after that at 120% as I accelerated to latch back onto the back of the group after a pull. Overall all those spikes took a hard toll on me and that resulted in me popping. It was definitely a hard workout for me that day and now I see that I should have tried to keep a smoother power output going instead of being so erratic. Next time I need to work on staying within specific ranges so I don’t risk running out of gas before the race is over.
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