Predictions please.

Ewoud Dronkert said:

15:42
You will hold on, in part due to the headwind.

15:41 and you're the hero because the hills were also into the wind and you did
your diesel thing.

Ron

On Jun 22, 9:55 am, "[email hidden]" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

On Jun 21, 1:24 pm, "[email hidden]"

Quoted message said:

Downhills equalize to a point and only if sucking wheel is acceptable.
That's why in our team when we get to the 2 real descents, I along
with another heavy (95kg*) guy get to pull us down. The others are
probably riding their brakes behind us, but as a group we are going as
fast as possible. When the road is on a slight descent and we are
doing our rotation at 50km/h or more I and a few of the other bigger
riders are just cruising, while I see the smaller riders seriously
struggling to even pull in front of their guy when they get to the
front of the rotation. When the road is flat and we are going 40km/h
they don't have any problems.

In such a situation, the smaller riders could just hang
onto the back and never go to the front of the rotation.
Also, you're not really supposed to have to pull in front
of your leader when you get to the front. The leader
should pull over and ease up and naturally fall back,
exposing the second rider to the wind. The second rider
stays at constant speed (assuming the road grade is
constant). If the second rider has difficulty keeping
that speed, he just rotates off right away. This can
be difficult to do, given ego, changes in road grade,
and other things, but is needed to prevent burning
people off too quickly.

Ben

The way we do it everybody rotates off right away. Anyone who has
problems are the guys who feel like they hit a wall as soon as the guy
in front moves over. Indeed it is hard particularly when some people
ar ein a bit over their head. They have to jam on so much extra effort
to keep the speed up that they end up increasing the speed the whole
time until everyone is wated.

Joseph

Quoted message said:

On Jun 22, 9:08 am, Ewoud Dronkert <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

15:42
You will hold on, in part due to the headwind.

15:43, and you'll get dropped.

We have a winner!

It was the worst weather conditions anyone I spoke with could
remember. Even a guy who has done the race 20 times. I didn't speak
with the guy who has done it 41 times though. I'm sure he's seen
worse. Anyway it was acknowledged that the weather added about 1 hour
to any halfway fast times. My team managed 16:36 and I got dropped
with 130km to go when we hit the rolling hills.

My pre-race concerns were justified. We went too hard up the
"mountain" and this took it's toll on the average speed for the next
leg that should have been very fast but wasn't. Because of the wide
fitness variation in the team, at times the strong guys got the pace
up so high, that everyone else dropped out of the rotation, and had to
go rest on the back. This just made everythign go slower, and we'd
have to restart the rotation again with everyone only for it to repeat
a few minutes later.

My pulse was up in the 180 range for most of the steep part of the
climb up to the high point at 170km and this wiped me out, but to show
the huge variation is effort levels, on the flat sections after the
climb from km 200 to 350 my pulse was all the way down in the 125
range. But when we hit the hilsl again, I couldn't keep up. After I
got dropped, I had to stop at one of the food stations to borrow a
blanket cuz our support car with the clothes stayed with the team and
I started to freeze. I fell asleep for about an hour in the red cross
tent! But I was at least warm, so I rode the rest of the way alone. I
ened up with a time of 18:51 including about 1.5 hours of stop. My
team managed 16:36 including 19 minutes of stop. Next year!

Joseph

PS: Anyone intersted in what I look like suffering at max hr up the
mountian pass at about 180km:
http://tinyurl.com/29uwfz

email hidden said:

On Jun 22, 9:41 am, [email hidden] wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

15:43, and you'll get dropped.

We have a winner!

I'm sorry I was right.

Quoted message said:

My pre-race concerns were justified. We went too hard up the
"mountain" and this took it's toll on the average speed for the next
leg that should have been very fast but wasn't. Because of the wide
fitness variation in the team, at times the strong guys got the pace
up so high, that everyone else dropped out of the rotation, and had to
go rest on the back.

It's kind of surprising how narrow the window of sustainable power is,
and how a couple of strong guys can shatter a group -- intentionally
or unintentionally.

Quoted message said:

On Jun 25, 11:03 pm, "[email hidden]"

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

15:43, and you'll get dropped.

Quoted message said:

We have a winner!

I'm sorry I was right.

Quoted message said:

My pre-race concerns were justified. We went too hard up the
"mountain" and this took it's toll on the average speed for the next
leg that should have been very fast but wasn't. Because of the wide
fitness variation in the team, at times the strong guys got the pace
up so high, that everyone else dropped out of the rotation, and had to
go rest on the back.

It's kind of surprising how narrow the window of sustainable power is,
and how a couple of strong guys can shatter a group -- intentionally
or unintentionally.

The effects of this narrow margin can also be seen with the difference
between me and the other big guy on the team. He is 94kg vs my 98, and
his bike is about 2kg less, but I am marginally stonger, in terms of
sustainable pace and ITT. He has a higher burstable power. We haven't
tried, but I think he would waste me in a sprint. He suffered, but had
more or less no problems sticking it out for the 16:36. There is hope!

Joseph

Joseph said:

Quoted message said:

It's kind of surprising how narrow the window of sustainable power is,
and how a couple of strong guys can shatter a group -- intentionally
or unintentionally.

The effects of this narrow margin can also be seen with the difference
between me and the other big guy on the team. He is 94kg vs my 98, and
his bike is about 2kg less, but I am marginally stonger, in terms of
sustainable pace and ITT. He has a higher burstable power. We haven't
tried, but I think he would waste me in a sprint. He suffered, but had
more or less no problems sticking it out for the 16:36. There is hope!

I don't think "burstable" or sprint power is the issue. You may think
that the ability to go high and recover is what you lack, but I
strongly suspect that the issue is functional threshold power. When I
said "narrow window," that's not exactly correct: there's a wide
margin on the lower side but a very narrow margin on the upper side,
so a cliff is more like it. Being able to go high and recover is a
good thing--but being able to sidestep recovery because you never go
over the cliff is better. Earlier, in some other thread, you were
talking about 5x8 minute intervals at some relatively high heart rate.
All intervals are good but I suspect you need to raise your tempo
power so you might consider slightly longer FTP-building intervals.
The difference between getting dropped 130 km from Oslo and sticking
on could be just a handful of watts in terms of threshold. Lose 5 kg
and gain 10 watts.

Quoted message said:

his bike is about 2kg less,

Time for the fatty master solution. Do you really need another excuse ?

Donald Munro said:

Quoted message said:

his bike is about 2kg less,

Time for the fatty master solution. Do you really need another excuse ?

I don't, but my wife isn't convinced...

Joseph

Joseph said:

Since power is what I need, power is what I should be looking at.

Well, these things are power meters, not bolt-on motors. Though you
could probably use a bolt-on motor.

Quoted message said:

A few times on the rollers I have done intervalls using speed as a
proxy for power instead of HR. With HR it takes 30-45 seconds to get
it up to my 170 target which I would then hold for the rest of the 8
minutes. When I tried holding a constant speed instead of paying
attention to HR, it took much longer to reach the 170, and it was much
harder to maintain the speed for the whole 8 minutes. I tried with
severla different speeds to find the right one. What was very
interesting is the speed range in the HR based intervalls was very
narrow (no need to switch gears and not even a perceptible change w/o
looking) but it is apparently big enough to get dropped.

HR doesn't work well as a pacing device for shorter intervals
(actually, I'm not sure it works well as a pacing device for longer
intervals, either), or when the terrain or conditions are variable.

Joseph said:

Donald Munro said:

Quoted message said:

his bike is about 2kg less,

Quoted message said:

Time for the fatty master solution. Do you really need another excuse ?

I don't, but my wife isn't convinced...

A True Fatty Master would have a solution for this, too.