All:
Here is some PT and altitude data from a tough early season race in SoCal with the Cat IVs. I never fancied myself a great climber, although I have been working hard on this weakness. I've made progress, but clearly still have work to do to. I think in races with a bit less climbing, I'll be in better shape, but I'm still going to work on my climbing. At 76kg, losing a few pounds wouldn't hurt either.
I got dropped twice in the race, in pretty much the same place on both laps, on the second part of the second climb. I was well above my FT of 285w for almost all the climbing on the first lap, and for the portions of the second climb where I stayed with the group. We had a fun chase on the second lap, that ranged from 2 to about 10 guys, and we caught on with the field of the remaining 30 or so riders that didn't get shelled completely on the first lap towards the bottom of the 2nd lap descent. I started to recover and stuck it out on the first part of the second climb, but then the old drift back commenced as we got closer to the finish, just watching the field pull away. Oh, what a feeling that is. At least I wasn't alone. Part of me says I could have dug deeper and stuck it out with the group, but that's for another discussion.
As you can see from the file, I averaged 20.9mph for the race. To me, with 4K feet of climbing, that's a pretty fast pace a bunch of IVs. I really thought I had a good chance of a top 10 in this race. My two teammates, both of which I knew were stronger than me, both did better. One took 3rd in a 3-man break in the last kilometer, and the other took 13th. Man, I was only a few watts off of making the field, which would have made me much happier about the effort, although I'm as okay with it as I can be given that I've done very little L5/L6 work to date. It's early February, ferchrissakes! Where do these people come from?
Anyway, thought I would share. There should be a depository for race power files for those who don't mind sharing. It would be interesting for a variety of reasons. Always appreciate any comments or feedback, espcecially from those who might have perspective on my burnt match situation. Did I have more to give by the numbers?
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