Getting dropped

awesome and me toooo please :slight_smile:

In addition to fitness improvements, what type of tactics are you employing. Are you trying to sag climb? If you know the hills are coming (and assuming it is not a hill finish) do you try to get off the front in the approach to the hill to allow yourself to get brought back on the hill?

It could be purely watts/kg. You said that you were a heavier rider. It could be as simple as stopping eating pizza, burgers, and beer and starting to eat more whole foods and vegetables.

If the diet is not a problem and losing weight is not realistic, you could look at your training, get a coach and try to add some significant watts to your FTP.

You could buy some aero watts. Aero bike, deep wheels, aero helmet, bars, race fit jersey can add a substantial amount of watts though it may not be enough alone to get you over climbs.

If there’s nothing more to optimize, you may just have to accept your genetics. Some riders are good sprinters, punchy riders, or climbers. Do the races that go with your strength. There’s a reason that pros like Pogacar, Cavendish, and Ganna all win vastly different types of races. They race their strengths.

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Maybe you are more of a rouleur than a climber. You can work on your climbing ability, but if you don’t want to get dropped you could pick flat or rolling races that suit your ability best.
Then go out and train on the hills on your own, then you won’t get demoralised.
Your watts/kg won’t be incorrect if you have done the ramp test/FTP test on here. It will represent your current level of fitness.
If you are carrying extra body fat you can easily address that one! Eat less.Give up alcohol.
You haven’t given us many details about yourself, so I have made some assumptions that may not be correct.

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I have the same issue, I am more of a rouleur. In group rides , I suffer in steep long climbs.
As said before in this forum, you could just ride more conservatively before the climb, then try to position yourself at the front of the bunch right before the climb so that when you slide to the back, you have some time.
You could also aim to get better in the type of terrain that leads up to the big climb. If the course has some punchy short climbs before the big one, perhaps getting better in that sort of terrain will leave you in a better position to attack the big climb in a better way.

Ultimately, you could try to lose weight but it might be the case you are already at your optimum weight…

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In the midwest USA 275 and 3.5w/kg ftp is around cat 4 mid pack and you would likely get dropped in cat 3 so makes sense to me that you need more power for cat 2. Post covid seems like cat 4 is often the same as cat 3, lots of sandbagging.

Although it’s completely impossible to say with any degree of certainty why you are getting dropped, don’t underestimate the importance of good racecraft. Are you sure you’re not burning matches in the wrong places?

Which part of SA?
WC, KZN or Gauteng?

Which climbs are you referring to?
Argus, 947, other events?

What group are you riding in?
Vets or open seeded?

So, what are the standards for the other cats? Is there some kind of overview of what is good?

Or due to lack of racing there haven’t been many opportunities to get upgrade points or the number of races in to do a non-points-based upgrade??

You could ask the rest of the people in the group what their W/kg is and target whatever they’re at

I’d say a climb 3-6 min is a punchy climb. I second the advice to work on your 3-5min efforts. If you can’t meaningfully improve fitness, a smart technique would be to make sure you enter the climb first or in the front anticipating that you’ll drop back. This will better your chances of hanging onto some wheels by the end of it rather than getting dropped.

It also depends on the number of 3-6 minute climbs on the route and how far apart they are spaced. The ability to do 330-350W, up to 400W, multiple times with short recovery in between is key in age groupers.

Again, it depends on the course and how the bunch rides.

How are you measuring your FTP? Looking at your account, was there an issue with power reading on some of your ramp tests? Because right now your best 5min power is 600W which is pretty insane (and by insane I mean like best in the world type power) so it’s not giving me anything useable.

But as others said, 3.5w/kg probably isn’t enough for was sounds equivalent to Cat 3 in the US. To give you a straight forward answer you’d probably want to shoot for at the very least 4.25(?) but that’s a super rough guess.

  • What wkg are you putting down when you get dropped? Thats a simple lower bound of what you need to be able to hit.

  • Often in these kinds of threads what is happening in the leadup to the ‘getting dropped’ moment is left out and it is important. You might already be able to do the necessary power, but if you spent the last 50+min at threshold and then need to throw down close to your best 5 min power, it ain’t a 5min power problem. It is a FTP ‘problem’.

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You aren’t far off.
To finish with the competitive groups, in the top races, in SA one needs to be north of 4W/Kg or a really tactical rider.

The common power chart that gets bandied about is due to Coggan:

A few things to keep in mind: there are local variations to that. Secondly, usually younger, talented guys compete in lower categories, and they are just in a low category, because they don’t have a lot of racing experience and therefore, haven’t gotten the prerequisite upgrade points.

And lastly, I think people have done lots of indoor training in the last two years, so their fitness is quite high, but they lack race and group ride experience. (Just speaking for myself, I can tell my group ride and race experience has atrophied quite a bit.) So even though according to this chart, I should be quite competitive in races, I do worse than my power numbers would suggest.

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Could be you need train for better fatigue resistance.

Intervals.icu has a chart where you can see your power numbers after kcal numbers.

Check your race file, when did the selection occur? After you burned 600 kcal or 1500 kcal?

Someone posted research showing the FTP’s were about the same between U23’s and Pro’s but the Pro’s power didn’t fall off nearly as markedly as the U23 riders did. That always stuck with me.

I can smash a good 1min power number when I’m fresh, but after 1500 kcal…L to the O effing L.

Just something else to consider.

i hear you, maybe i am not accepting this! lol but we don’t have so many races around here in terms of discipline. they all the same 100km about with 1500m climbing. i just need to get over the hurdles to stay in the bunch. not wanting to contend for a sprint finish. normal 3 climbs of 3 to 6 mins in the race

i feel we are on the same page and that we are similar in riding capabilities

What is a rouler?