As always, apologies if this has been covered a thousand times already but I did some searching and couldn’t find anything. I’m pretty new to “needing” to sprint and have always been pretty much solely endurance focused in my training before.
Basically if I launch my sprint from Zone 2 or low Zone 3 or so my peak power is easily over 1000W (did 1100 at the very end of a Century the other day). My ‘season best’ is 1248W, 5s@1150, 15s@~900. Nothing particularly impressive, but not too pathetic for a Sunday club rider.
However, if I’ve been dragged up to threshold or above in preparation for the sprint (which is almost always the case if I’m not launching a sneak attack) my sprint is pathetic. For instance yesterday at the end of a fairly easy, short ride I sprinted against a clubmate on the same sprint I got my peak power on, but only managed 952, 5s@920, 15s@782.
Obviously I’m aware there are environmental, dietary, condition things which affect this, but these are fairly typical numbers if the sprint has come out of a state where I’m already working.
I guess my questions are:
- Is this typical and I am overthinking it?
- Is it likely a physiological thing, or a technique/mental thing?
- Any advice on how to train this, or is it just the obvious answer of ‘do lots of sprints from threshold or above and you will get better at it, dummy’?