Help - to analyse poor race

peterwright said:

Hi all

Having raced pretty well for the past 2 weekends and really feeling like the form was coming..well today was a nightmare. From the outset I was struggling and towards the back of the 60 strong bunch. Never seemed to get on top of things. Soldiered on and over the forst two climbs but feeling like it was taking me a huge effort to get over with the bunch. Last and decisive climb of the day, was dropped at the beginning and laboured over. Went from a regular top 20 to 48th today and was beaten by guys I would normally not even see.

Power for race was 260NP which is odd because the previous 3 races have been ; 246,253,249 (249 was 35km longer though)

Peaks for the race are generally down on last week in all areas except 20 min power which is up by 8w;

1min -34
2min -5
5min -21
10min -24
20min +8
30min -5
60min -16

The last climb was climbed at 290NP (103%FT) and the last 2 occasions I have climbed this climb (and done ok) have been at 271 & 282 and it has always fallen in the same place.

Last weeks training load was relatively low with only 5 hours and a 7 day rolling TSS of 601 and 28 day of 2406. I did feel tired and failed to complete my scheduled 2x20 on Friday.

Sleep has been less than 100% and stress slightly higher than normal.

What I am struggling to reconcile is that the numbers do not look too shabby but the RPE level was very high throughout and I always felt on the back foot. My peaks were low which was because I lacked any snap and so had to slog back after any jumps. By the time we reached the last climb I had no jump at all to go with the initial acceleration and so lost the bunch (although I do not think I climbed it that much slower than they did)

So, given that the bunch has not increased its fitness in a week..my question is do you rhink I need a hard weeks training to get me back on track or a few easier days.

Any thoughts really appreciated as this has got me baffled and also really down.

Thanks

Peter

Postscript - the main gap in performance looks to be in the peak 5 min segment where today was 314NP versus 336-365 in my other performances this season.

peterwright said:

Postscript - the main gap in performance looks to be in the peak 5 min segment where today was 314NP versus 336-365 in my other performances this season.

Post post script....back brake block rubbing on carbon rim :... :o

Maybe I should be banished from the forum.. :eek:

peterwright said:

Post post script....back brake block rubbing on carbon rim :... :o

Maybe I should be banished from the forum.. :eek:

Sounds like Lance in 2003 or so he claimed 😉

rmur

rmur17 said:

Sounds like Lance in 2003 or so he claimed 😉

rmur

Well I guess I may be kidding myself - had changed back to training wheels after unloading bike. Put race wheels back in and touched nothing and they were rubbing but still cannot be 100% sure..

peterwright said:

Well I guess I may be kidding myself - had changed back to training wheels after unloading bike. Put race wheels back in and touched nothing and they were rubbing but still cannot be 100% sure..

A bit off topic maybe; but which carbon rims are you using?

Die fietsryer said:

A bit off topic maybe; but which carbon rims are you using?

Reynolds Cirro KOM.

Guessing you are in SA ? Where ?

peterwright said:

Reynolds Cirro KOM.

Guessing you are in SA ? Where ?

Very excellent quality climbing wheels.

I'm in CT. 🙂

Die fietsryer said:

Very excellent quality climbing wheels.

I'm in CT. 🙂

Maybe you did my race today ??

peterwright said:

Maybe you did my race today ??

I sure did. My legs were dead and now they are even more dead.

I'm avoiding standing up unnecessarily and definitely NO STAIRS!

...maybe I will even be at Killarney (Wednesday)

[font=Times New Roman] [/font]

Die fietsryer said:

I sure did. My legs were dead and now they are even more dead.

I'm avoiding standing up unnecessarily and definitely NO STAIRS!

...maybe I will even be at Killarney (Wednesday)

[font=Times New Roman] [/font]

Now my curiosity is piqued...

Chris perhaps ?

peterwright said:

Now my curiosity is piqued...

Chris perhaps ?

sure is...you will see allot more of me. (You wanted me to go outside) :o

[font=Times New Roman] [/font]

peterwright said:

1min -34
2min -5
5min -21
10min -24
20min +8
30min -5
60min -16

Could it be that you were burning matches in the FT zone? From your notes, you say that you couldn't do your workouts, tired, etc. Bad week. Take a week off and recover. It is tough to be fried in February!

Maybe stop racing and do some high quality training sessions.

My guess is that you set your FT too high and riding too hard to reach your target watts. How many mid to upper L4 threshold days you can do in a week? If 2 is the most and already feeling stretching it, you have been riding too hard.

peterwright said:

Hi all

Having raced pretty well for the past 2 weekends and really feeling like the form was coming..well today was a nightmare. From the outset I was struggling and towards the back of the 60 strong bunch. Never seemed to get on top of things. Soldiered on and over the forst two climbs but feeling like it was taking me a huge effort to get over with the bunch. Last and decisive climb of the day, was dropped at the beginning and laboured over. Went from a regular top 20 to 48th today and was beaten by guys I would normally not even see.

Power for race was 260NP which is odd because the previous 3 races have been ; 246,253,249 (249 was 35km longer though)

Peaks for the race are generally down on last week in all areas except 20 min power which is up by 8w;

1min -34
2min -5
5min -21
10min -24
20min +8
30min -5
60min -16

The last climb was climbed at 290NP (103%FT) and the last 2 occasions I have climbed this climb (and done ok) have been at 271 & 282 and it has always fallen in the same place.

Last weeks training load was relatively low with only 5 hours and a 7 day rolling TSS of 601 and 28 day of 2406. I did feel tired and failed to complete my scheduled 2x20 on Friday.

Sleep has been less than 100% and stress slightly higher than normal.

What I am struggling to reconcile is that the numbers do not look too shabby but the RPE level was very high throughout and I always felt on the back foot. My peaks were low which was because I lacked any snap and so had to slog back after any jumps. By the time we reached the last climb I had no jump at all to go with the initial acceleration and so lost the bunch (although I do not think I climbed it that much slower than they did)

So, given that the bunch has not increased its fitness in a week..my question is do you rhink I need a hard weeks training to get me back on track or a few easier days.

Any thoughts really appreciated as this has got me baffled and also really down.

Thanks

Peter

BlueJersey said:

My guess is that you set your FT too high and riding too hard to reach your target watts. How many mid to upper L4 threshold days you can do in a week? If 2 is the most and already feeling stretching it, you have been riding too hard.

Dont think so - I have tessted FT and have actually ridden 60 mins @ 280 at the latter stage of a race. I currently do 1 L5 , 2 L4, one high L3 and a race - thats why I am tired (I think)

Hi Peter,

Sounds like the back wheel rubbing would account for most of your problems...

I did the same thing in the Novartis ride in 2005 - crashed on the exit of the nature reserve. Chased flat out for about 15 mins to get back on, but couldn't get over 30mph even with the tailwind and never got back.

Ended up completely broken by Misty Cliffs, and crawled back to Noordhoek at about 10mph. Only when I got back to the car did I realise that I couldn't actually turn my back wheel by hand...
- Stuart

rmur17 said:

Sounds like Lance in 2003 or so he claimed 😉

rmur

What was Lance banished from the forum?

Hamish

peterwright said:

Dont think so - I have tessted FT and have actually ridden 60 mins @ 280 at the latter stage of a race. I currently do 1 L5 , 2 L4, one high L3 and a race - thats why I am tired (I think)

Ding ding...

Have a plan. Suggest reading Lemond/Friel/Ackland if you want to see how to train hard, yet recover for more training and racing.

peterwright said:

Last weeks training load was relatively low with only 5 hours and a 7 day rolling TSS of 601 and 28 day of 2406. I did feel tired and failed to complete my scheduled 2x20 on Friday.

Sleep has been less than 100% and stress slightly higher than normal.

What I am struggling to reconcile is that the numbers do not look too shabby but the RPE level was very high throughout and I always felt on the back foot. My peaks were low which was because I lacked any snap and so had to slog back after any jumps. By the time we reached the last climb I had no jump at all to go with the initial acceleration and so lost the bunch (although I do not think I climbed it that much slower than they did)

So, given that the bunch has not increased its fitness in a week..my question is do you rhink I need a hard weeks training to get me back on track or a few easier days.

Any thoughts really appreciated as this has got me baffled and also really down.

This is an interesting problem. If you had only struggled in the last climb, I would have thought the problem was the pace of the climb. But, the fact that you felt weak the entire ride leads me to look elsewhere. This is where a comprehensive ride file analysis tool would come in handy. Was this in fact a harder ride than the previous ones? The focus would be on efforts > FT. Where did they occur, how many were there, what were they in total. Basically, a match analysis. I've been looking into this issue a bit and have developed a crude tool for this (trying to take Hunter Allen's article one small step further). I'll be interested in any insights you gain from this analysis after you have had a chance to analyze this race compared with other races on this course. Let us know what you find.