Hello!
This year i started to ride Mtb and i already was in two competiton. 30km short distance xcm.
I had 8 place in my first and 6 place in my second race.
I will have my third competiton this weekend and i like to try a new strategy, because i felt in the first two round that everybody go all out from the start and then just try to survive the second half of the distance. My strongest point is the climbing and i am very slow in downhill.
Anyway i got a feeling that i should just start slower and dont care. Like ride zone 4 for the longer climbs and maybe only zone 5 for the shorter ones. I mean power zones. Usually after that we have down road so i can recover. And maybe if i can save energy and then go all out only in the last 5km, looks i can recover a lot of time, because that point i think a lot of people burning out a bit and going to slower pace. What do you think guys?
And one more thing, since i had my powermeter, i feel like i do higher watts in outdoor then indoor and looks still easier. Maybe my ftp improved that much, or i should do a normal 20min test outside? My ftp was last time 266 with 71kg bw.
Welcome to the forum. You can use the search function to find topics discussed previously.
30km is not XCM (in my book at least 
) so I would look more into XCO pacing.
If you’re not completely gassed and blew up in the first 2 races, I would not start slower, but at least as fast, fly by on the uphill (easy to pass) and just ride safe on the downhill (hard to get passed).
regarding the powermeter, maybe try to compare your indoor power with your mtb power, or just do a test outside like you mentioned, for some people indoor/outdoor is a big diference (with the same powermeter), for others it’s the same
Thank you!
Hi! They called xcm, but not really matter. Thank you for your advice! Yes i will try to hang on with the first group and i hope in the end i will have more energy. 
Yes i think about a 20min ftp test. Because i train in send and i think its a bit difference then the smart trainer. Or i just got stronger since i train there. The zone2 training and like that really hard to follow because the bike just super slow. I dont had powermeter before and i only looked for my heart rate. And now i realised that i always trained too hard.