Jason N wrote:
Super D wrote:
One of the things I learned was that I needed some rationale for when to start a sprint or other hard effort, regardless of what other people were doing, just based on my own capabilities. I needed to have some strategy, not just ride reacting to what everyone else was doing and letting others dictate my race. This is where training with power became a very useful learning tool and the info fueled race strategy. If you can train with power, you'll learn a lot about yourself, and it can provide some very helpful foundation for your race plan.
I would very much agree that you need some type of rationale for when to start a sprint or other hard effort.
I would disagree that rationale is "regardless of what other people were doing" or "not just ride reacting to what everyone else was doing"
Road racing is not about how much effort you put out, or how fast you finish the race. It's about finishing ahead of other people...best case, ahead of everyone. To accomplish that, you very much have to react to what everyone else is doing, and plan your moves accordingly to create the best opportunity for a gap. Riding a road race while monitoring your power and planning strategy around power is probably the worst way to do it.
Training with power helps build your fitness, and can help you train for certain moments on your own when you don't have a fast group ride available to you. But what you actually do in a race, at that moment in time, usually has nothing to do with a power strategy. You build that type of instinct by racing more often. Riding your local world's group ride on a regular basis.
I've made winning moves that are totally unconventional. Starting my sprint from around 30 seconds out instead of my bread and butter of about 12 seconds where I have the most pop in my power curve. It just depends on how any move will translate to creating a gap and situational odds of how the field will react. Very rarely will you know exactly how any move you make will turn out. A lot depends on luck as well. But the starting point of any decision to make a move always has to do with how the others around you are currently riding and where you are in relation to them...in terms of position, fitness, and fatigue levels.
I did a really poor job of sharing my thought, sorry about that. I suck at brevity sometimes, losing context. In the words of Steve Martin, “Some people have a way with words, and others, oh…not have way.” :D
I didn't mean to imply that racing while monitoring power is the path to success, nor that racing with power is more important than race craft, team work, racing instincts or peloton acumen developed through experience, and understand that luck is a factor as well as other variables. I shared that power was a useful learning tool and the info fueled race strategy (for me), and it can provide some very helpful foundation for race planning. That was the core of what I was trying to convey.
I used to race cars and endurance go-karts in a previous life prior to cycling, and understanding the power, gearing, handling, braking and other physical capacities of the vehicle through practice, combined with instincts, traffic management, aerodynamics and drafting, teamwork if that was a factor, recognizing temperament, habits and skills of other racers, course conditions, tires, spring rates and many other factors all go into the mix of race strategy (and that strategy can start pre-race and then evolves and is re-shaped as the race unfolds). Now as a relative newbie in bike racing, I see related elements; some factors are mechanical or physical capacities, and those are taken into account when strategizing pre- and during the race, and then getting into a good flow using instinct and drawing upon experience, and adding some calculated opportunistic risks taken at speed without pre-planning are all part of the moving chess game (which is great fun!). I believe this is all more or less in the mix of what you're describing. You're very experienced in bike racing and have much to draw upon instinctively; I’m not, so I’ve got eyes wide open to learn new things on the fly, and am continually building fundamental understanding and adding to the small but developing experience log. There’s no substitute for experience, as they say.
For me, understanding power capacities helps as one of many factors in formulating a basic strategy, so I'm working a plan A or a plan B, instead of just reacting to someone else's actions and not understanding the strengths I may be able to exploit, why, where and when during the race. I personally don't operate well without some sort of a plan, or plans, based on fundamental strategy. This doesn't mean plans can always turn out, nor that they can be perfect or even close to what was originally intended before the race. They're just a foundation to work with and learn from during (and after) the race, experiments, and sometimes the tactics in the experiment can lead to a good position, and maybe even a good result.
I made a race plan for myself a couple of years ago including lots of factors, course analysis, and positioning strategy to leverage power at the end—if that position could be attained. I worked my plan during the race, made continual adjustments along the way, and when it somehow led to the position I was wanting as we headed toward the last hill before the finish, I had the confidence to hit the gas a certain distance out, knowing I could hold power (because I’d learned about it with my power meter and training previously). I think I might've glanced at power on the Garmin maybe twice during the race, no more. There were so many factors, traffic management, drafting, luck, some teamwork, managing a bully who kept putting his shoulder into me pushing me toward the outside of hairpins, resting in the pack when I needed to save energy, responding to fake attacks hidden from others who wanted to see who was a threat, covering gaps, helping others who’d helped me, etc. In the end, I started my sprint at a much different distance out than in any race before, influenced by what I’d learned about power in training. Without getting in the position to do it, there would’ve been no way to execute. Without understanding capacity for power and duration, I wouldn’t have known where and when to exploit it. Power was just part of the mix that went into pre-race planning, and eventually led to a good race day.