so my last race was at chattanooga so had some hills. not crazy but enough to create a bit of separation in watts between my NP and Avg power. NP ended up being at the top of my goal watts and my avg power ended up about 12 watts below that. on the last half of that course there are some long downhills where some zero watts got averaged in as well as I have a tendency to dial it back a bit too much over the past 10 miles which is something I need to work on. so my question is how do most STers approach racing looking at NP and avg watts? Do you just stick with looking at NP and going with that since it's likely to be higher? Or is it just factoring in both and considering RPE as well? I never looked at my current power during the race which I feel like is something I should consider in the future. I just have a screen with time, distance, NP, avg power, cadence, and heart rate and leave that on the entire time.
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Re: do you look at just NP during a "hilly" race? [mickison]
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I don’t do longer races so take this with a grain of salt. But i’m Generally looking at np. Ap is just so far off of its really hilly that it becomes irrelevant.
Re: do you look at just NP during a "hilly" race? [Grant.Reuter]
[ In reply to ]
Grant.Reuter wrote:
I don’t do longer races so take this with a grain of salt. But i’m Generally looking at np. Ap is just so far off of its really hilly that it becomes irrelevant.I don't think I've ever done a hilly sprint or olympic distance so they've all been flat so np and ap are close. at chattanooga I tried to spin up the hills which may or may not be the best approach but I did have my best HIM run on a fairly hilly run course. I always feel like I need to push more on the bike.
I live in Colorado so I don’t really have a non-hilly ride. I was pulling some of my rides up and it’s not uncommon to have a 160 ap and 190+ normalized.
I think how it feels is probably somewhere in between the two and will depend on how you deal with punchy efforts. However, it is easier to put more power out on up hills, and for a longer race resting on the downhills can make more sense so you could end up with an even more wonky AP to NP difference.
I think how it feels is probably somewhere in between the two and will depend on how you deal with punchy efforts. However, it is easier to put more power out on up hills, and for a longer race resting on the downhills can make more sense so you could end up with an even more wonky AP to NP difference.