Thanks!
It’s all relative - Josh and Chris passed me and John along there in a similar manner. There’s always somebody faster.
John,
I actually have to ask about your strategy, because I have been more or less like you in the past…attacking surging and recovering on hilly courses has worked for me because it maximizes my power to weight ratio advantage being 140 lbs.
In 2007 at Wildflower I split 31/2:46/1:35 using the attacking and surging and recovering strategy with no power meter In 2010 at Wildflower I once again split exactly the same 31/2:46/1:35 using a powermeter and holding back on climbs and hammering flats and downhills
Arguably the latter “even paced approach” works against my natural advantage on upills assuming the hills are not terribly long.
Let’s keep in mind that I was 5 lbs heavier this year, so in reality I got “more out of my fitness” than last time. I’m just wondering if I might benefit from an in between strategy and do hills more like 110% of FTP and recover more on downhills than trying to hammer them at 85% FTP. I also do a once a week 90K group ride, where the middle 40K essentially yoyos between 60% to 160% of FTP (goes from 150W all the way to 400W 30 second efforts) with lots of surges and attacks…then the last 45 minutes I do 2x10 min @ 100 FTP, so it’s not like all this surging and yoyoing is killing me at the tail end of the ride.
Just wondering if the “data” is based on mainly bigger riders who might have better flatline performance on rolling courses. I’d guess that the 85% FTP guidelines likely have less than 5% of the sample size under 140 lbs (maybe less). I’ve done half IM’s at 90% FTP average and still run very well…I might play around with that for Mooseman.