Thursday, July 21, 2011

Thursday Crit - 1st tt'ing off the field

Fun crit out in Richmond... I sandbagged it in the C group and just TT'd to the finish.


The race started slow so following my usual reaction to that I jumped... and got a good 300m gap... so just kept going.

Did about 40.8 kmh average (top blue line in chart) for the first 10 minutes (to the preme) and about 39.0 kmh average for the rest of the race (bottom blue line).

There are two long 300m places on this course that you can look back to see how close the rest of the race is getting. Tonight I just kept my gap at that distance. If I couldn't see anyone I slowed down a bit. If I saw them at the far end I just picked up the pace. There was at least one pair of riders that made it about half way across just before the preme lap, but they eventually gave up and fell back.

So could I do this in the B group?

First its likely I was helped by Ryan, Mark and Scott working hard to prevent anyone from getting away to try and bridge up. So hopefully any attempt for the B's would get helped by some EV guys...

Second looking at some power files from two years ago it looks like the average speed (then) for the B group was about 40.5. So no, unlikely I could stay away for the entire 30 minute race.

But possibly (maybe) there might be some hope trying to get away for the last 7-8 minutes. Say about 4 or 5 laps to go. Far enough out that possibly most of the B's wouldn't think to try and cover a jump. But within my best 10 minute window for 40.8 (which could be pushed higher with some motivation for and end of race effort.)

1 comments:

Mark said...

By going early some folks said they didn't even know you took off. The "out of sight out of mind" principle also helped if you can't see how far it is a daunting task to bridge.
So when you move to B it will be harder to break away because people are more attentive, you have less margin of power to establish a break and those guys have more power to track you down.
I am trying to claim some credit here... :-)