TT Pacing Question

Bear the Bear said:

Hi all,
I have my state champs coming up this weekend and was going to fit my srm's to the TT bike and use a pacing schedule.
The problem is that the course is not flat and has a reasonable amount of climbing on it as well as changing road surface.
It was my intention to run a negative schedule of something like 360w(12.5k), 370w(9.5k), 380w(9.5k), and for the final 12.5k empty the tank.
The question I have is that because the course is up and down this is going to have an effect on the averages for each portion, and I can see myself pushing 400w+ on the climbs and not hitting the targets on the slight downhills(also the last 12.5k is downhill!).
I have ridden this course before quite extensively, and last month when I rode because of the weather conditions(cold) found that I pushed way to hard to the turn and was empty on the way back.
All advice apprecitated

Bear

here is the course profile

atta.asn.aucalga.htmlOpen ↗

In general, you'll have to ride at higher power uphill (and into headwinds) and at lower power downhill. However, it would depend to a certain extent how steep some of the grades are -- for e.g., on my local TT circuit i need to ride at ~360 - 400 W uphill (5.2 - 5.8 W/kg) just to get up the climbs, even though this up to 100 W more than my sustainable TT power. Consequently, going down the grades i'm often at really low power output (<100 W; although a higher power doesn't result in a significantly greater velocity, not that i'd want to go much faster down the hill!).

If your descents are shallow you'll be able to push on and keep the power up, on the other hand if they're steep you may not be able to.

Have you analysed your previous attempt? Why not look to see where you went too hard previously and ride under that effort, so that you can push on harder in the final sector. Of course, come race day you'll need to match your power and PE -- it could be that you've had a significant change in fitness since the last TT.

ric

The thing is that I am fitter😎, faster😕, and a bit leaner🙄 than three weeks ago.
The problem with the course is that the first 12.5k is uphill/falseflat, course chip seal, and this is where I blew it last time. I rode this part of the course at my limit(no SRM's) and I think because we have had a change in season here going from mild autumn to quite cold mornings. The cold dulled my response to the effort and I pushed to hard and paid for it later.
This is the reason that I am going to ride with the srm's this time to try to smooth the effort. However I have no baseline data for the course, I only have my own physiological data ie tt@370w, climb @410W.
I am more worried about going too hard, for the first section then too easy.