spending your matches/energy in the right place is the "fastest" way to ride a course OPTIMALLY. The tricky part as the courses go longer is not burning yourself up early.

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

It is about speed and energy. There are some decent apps for this type of work nowadays (Best Bike Split), but I strongly feel that the best riders at pacing non flat time trial and triathlon courses have an innate sense of how to get to the finish the fastest, combined with practice, practice, practice. It is certainly not a steady state application of power (AP=NP) that results in the fastest time.

I wrote a blog post about this a just a couple days ago.

"When the opportunity arises to view a data file from a rider who is skilled in pacing, I am often left with the impression that I am watching an artist at work. I see the rise and fall, intersection and divergence of multi-hued lines on a graph representing power, speed, heartrate and elevation. Paced correctly these lines can not only be described as artistic, they are indeed brush strokes of effort laid down by maestros."

Nice blog post.

One of the other things I find difficult to judge is when you're riding that moderate incline where you're not quite sure if you're better off staying on the aerobars or sitting up. That's why I display current speed on my computer now along with other stuff. If I sit up and there is no penalty for doing so I'll stick with it.

Yeah. I think we've all ridden or run a course we think we know because we've studied the map and profile but when you actually ride or run it there is a sneaky hill you didn't realise was quite so severe. That can ruin your day!

As a relatively heavier 80kg and MOP rider, I agree with you on the difficulty of maintaining consistent watts. I do a periodic time trial in NYC's Central Park to see how I am improving (of course along with FTP tests) and it isn't flat. If I were to try and maintain 230-250 watts on the two climbs which I hit 4 times each would just lose so much momentum as I crawl up each climb. They aren't particularly steep but in order to maintain good cadence, I need to drop to small ring. However, I think it really is an MOP heavy rider issue, the more watts one can maintain, the easier it is to be consistent and I have to say I always feel much better running after flat rides where I can maintain more consistent watts.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

I raced Bahrain last year which was essentially flat bike course. It was nice to ride consistent (although actually I went too hard) but I wasn't used to pedalling constantly for hours which is another challenge in itself. I tend to work, then rest or at least soft pedal.

There is a significant aero advantage available even down to 10-12mph or so. Hence world class marathoners are mostly all tucked in while running close to 5:00 pace. If there is a big discrepancy between aerobar and sittiing up power, that can skew the correct decision, but I think riders would be better served by shrinking the power gap between those two positions, rather than sitting up sooner.

Work the position (crank length?) and training so that aerobar power suffers minimally, and then pick a number (10, 11, 12 mph are good choices) and simply stay aero until you drop below that.

I posted a similar thread recently (link at bottom) asking for feedback on the importance of minimising VI.

I've started implementing some of the advice in that thread and have come away with the strong impression that "riding the course" (i.e. pushing the hills harder and easing off slightly on the faster downhills) is certainly faster, but riding a smoother power will leave you feeling a lot fresher at the end.

If you're riding a TT and can collapse at the finish line then I would certainly hit the hills hard otherwise you're giving up a lot of time that you just won't get back from pushing slightly harder into the wind on the descents/flats. However, that comes at a high physiological cost and will quickly destroy any subsequent run if it were to be part of a duathlon or triathlon.

As an example, when I posted that thread my typical long weekend ride (~100 miles) was maybe an AP/NP of 160/180, VI of 1.12 and would be pretty knackered by the end. Now I'm trying to keep a lid on the surges uphill, and have stats more like 165/175, VI of 1.06, avg speed has taken a small hit but feel like I could ride another 100 miles at the end.

This will be old and obvious news to a lot of people, but as some of the posts above allude to, a lot of it comes down to experience rather than "riding by numbers". You can read about it all you like, but it's best to get out there ride some different pacing strategies and look at the numbers yourself. It's certainly given me a new appreciation for the art of pacing!

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...I_P6446093/#p6446093

I’ve had a similar experience doing a cross duathlon. Didn’t have the luxury of riding even efforts, was very spikey. Running after was survival.

This can be largely mitigated with specificity. Train to run off a higher VI, and you will improve. It will maybe never be as good as running off lower VI, but it is definitely trainable.