Race season has begun here and had my A event completed. Overall satisfied with my form as I think I’m stronger than last year trying structured workouts for the first time. It was a 90 km race (9 laps of 10km) against a decisive peloton. I decided to go early and hoping I’d get some support but I ended up 7,5 laps alone for a total of 1h45 smashing the pedals pacing around my 90%. One lap after the other I felt good with time gaps ranging from 25s to over 2m. I was hoping to have enough legs for the last 10 minutes but I was pretty much at my limit (it would’ve taken a good 360w and maybe a 400w for the last 4-5 minutes). I ended up being caught my the train that was formed by our main competition so I’d say it was pretty much controlled to isolate my other team mate in the pack. Good for them but my team mate went for the sprint and ended up on the podium and they didn’t. So overall good results.
my AI ftp is 350w and I paced at 320 which I felt good until the last lap I couldn’t hold the power anymore especially trying to go above for a while the legs started loading up. I had 3 gels of 40g each and 2x 750 ml 80g each. So total of 280g minus 10-15g waste for a 2 hour race.
Now that the recap is done to put you in context. I have a 16 km TT with my road bike on Saturday and a 90km road race again on Sunday. They are both indépendant.
How should I manage the effort ? Starting with a full on headwind at 40kmh with gusts up to 60 km/h!
I was thinking gradual long ramping up from 340 to 370w in the first 2 minutes and holding 370-380w for the start and then finishing with 340-350w with the tailwind. It puts me around 105 to 98% for a 22 minutes effort.
Any comments or suggestions?
