Great to read through some of the race analysis, thanks for sharing! I’ll add in mine here:
- Strava link: Follow Brian on Strava to see this activity. Join for free.
- Normalized power for the ride: 258 (IF of 0.89), average power: 220 watts
- One of my goals was to draft and save energy on the first half to save the legs for all the climbing that started past Alice Lake. This worked out well; but it meant a hard effort up Taylor Way onto the highway. Normalized power for this stretch was 350watts for about 10 minutes - a new power PR
- On the climbs, I found I could hold my own (previous year I lost ground) - the earlier climbs (Furry Creek, Britannia Beach) - I was averaging around 300 watts and for the climbing past Alice lake, I was averaging around 260watts (threshold is around 290).
- I had strava live segments running on my Wahoo head unit (I starred the major climbs the week before), so I had extra motivation to get PRs on the climbs and when they came in; it was positive reinforcement
- For the second half, I was usually in a small group - around 10 to 20 riders. This helped a lot as the fatigue mounted with about 10km to go (and a calf cramp with 5km to go)
- Nutrition and fluids worked out well; took in 260 grams of carbs (around 70/hour) from Gu Roctaine drink mix and gels plus honey stinger chews.
- Last year, I lost 10 minutes in aid stations; this year, I stopped at Alice Lake for 30 seconds to refill a bottle.
Last year; I finished the fondo in 4:26 and this year, I came in at 3:43! I think a big part of the success was the structured training via TrainerRoad which started in Oct 2018 (sweet spot base 1 and 2, sustained power build, sweet spot base 2, sustained power build, climbing road race). Over the season, I averaged 5 hours per week and a weekly TSS of 360. This was my second year of structured training.
With 2020 coming up, I’m motivated to started base training again in October!