Hey all,
I’m signed up to do a 200k ride with 8000+ft climbing next month. On ride profile it looks like most climbs are short and there is a lot of up and down. I live in an area with less elevation so just trying to decide on power targets for the ride. I’m thinking I want to average about 70% ftp overall but I am kind of wondering about pacing on the climbs. Should I set a ceiling power that I shouldn’t exceed? I was thinking most climbs I’d try to ride around 90% ftp but I have a tendency to get carried away on climbs.
I have pretty solid endurance and my last century my NP was 80% ftp for 4:53 with about 3000ft elevation gain.
I’d appreciate any insight!
Thanks
Austin
Race or ride?
If it’s a ride, keep the flats in mid to low endurance and climbs at mid tempo. Second half you can look to push those targets higher if you’re feeling good.
If it’s a race, just hang on. Let other people cover, stay off the front, etc etc.
Thank you…it’s a gran fondo type ride. I’m sure many will treat like a race but I’m hoping to find a group around my pace that I can sit with. Sounds great I’m planning on doing some longer race pace type ride with some hill repeats in the next couple weeks so hopefully I’ll work out a good strategy just thought I’d see if I could get some experienced opinion
I recently did a 150mi gravel race with 8000ft of climbing and had a IF of 0.69, and I still could have done another 50 miles. I just rode by feel and did not look at my pwr meter or hr. If you fuel well and are well trained you can probably do 70%FTP forever. In conclusion, I would just go by feel and remind yourself at the beginning of how far you have to go. I think Phil Gaimon said the first third should feel easy, 2nd third feel like your keeping it steady, and the last third feel really hard but steady.
Awesome thanks for the advice…yeah I agree I feel like I can do 70% forever. I plan to do a 4-5 hour pace trial ride this week and hopefully have a better idea after that.
I’m mostly worried about my tendency to go too hard on climbs. Especially the punchy climbs that I expect I’ll find on this ride. I think I just have to force myself to not exceed threshold on the climbs. I’m thinking I’ll just display 3s power, avg power, HR and cadence on my garmin. Looking forward to the suffering!
This may or may not be helpful, but my pacing strategy for a MTB race or what I would guess is similar-ish duration was to aim for SweetSpot up the climbs (90%). Obviously that’s also factoring in that there’s a bunch of short punchy climbs that the steepness forces you over threshold.
I was aiming at .75IF for the race and trying to be pedaling at 0.8 when I was doing any steady sections.
My computer was set up with 3s Power, NP, distance (for fueling)