Hi All,
Just had my entry confirmation for the 100 mile tour of Cambridgeshire road race which will be my “A” race in 2021 assuming it goes ahead.
My question is what I should categorize the event as in plan builder. The obvious one would be “Road Race” but I did the event in 2019 and other than the wind the course is pretty non selective and not technical in the slightest. I think it might suit riders with higher steady state power.
I’m wondering if a long TT plan might be better?
I’m considering this as my A race. And I’ll be going for climbing roadrace even though its flattish being a heavy rider.
I’d take a different view. High steady state power is great if you’re expecting to be solo or in a small group for much of the day. For a flat, non-technical course like ToC however your best finish time is going to come from getting and staying in the fastest group you can and benefiting from the draft. Which still means having good endurance as you’re going to be out there for 3.5+ hours, but also means being able to surge above threshold repeatedly - doing pulls on the front, moving up the pack, closing gaps, responding to surges and accelerations, etc.
I’ve done ToC and quite a few other similar events with lots of riders and not many hills and my power profile is normally characterised by lots of time spent spinning along relatively comfortably in the pack at Z1-3, interspersed by periods of drilling it above threshold, and not much in between!
Me too.
You clearly don’t know me…
Your post makes a lot of sense though - food for thought.
Feel free to replace “doing pulls on the front” with “launching punishing solo attacks”, “sprinting to glory” or “desperately trying to reattach after being popped off the back” as necessary!
Hi,
Just had my place confined for the GF TOC. Wondering about fuelling/hydration.
Anyone got any strategies/experience? Would like to stop as little as possible
Thanks
It was really hot in 2019 - I had to stop for water.
There was a Belgium team there that had people handing them out water at various points - I was so tempted to steal one.
I’ll expect to stop for water then. Unless I’m feeling confident and my German is good on the day… 
Despite the best efforts of the Kaiser and Hitler, Belgians speak Flemish and French not German
Oh. I thought it was a mixture of French, Flemish and German. My apologies.
Hi, I’ve done this event and it is pan flat not one hill or ramp. I can see why you’d go for climbing road race and bear in mind this course , whilst flat, is exposed to pretty blustery winds. I wouldn’t even think about solo breaks unless your exceptionally strong and destroying all local races. It’s a fairly brisk ride, I think I averaged 26mph, no stops, get used to eating at pace and at a high heart rate.
I remember there was a lot of accidents due to the big groups, mixture of abilities on the road and the eyeballs out first 10 miles of effort.
I won’t do that event again, even though I did quite well it was like the Wild West.
Was that the Fondo or the road race? My road race group wasnt too bad.
Unlike we shamefully Brexit Brits I think they are masters of many languages! Up in the Ardennes they certainly used to be German speakers. Regardless of language a lovely nation and lovely people
Race. I still qualified for the so called “worlds”, which was quite a good event, although someone died in my category.