Steve, after losing my bottle on lap one at Bonelli but having a miracle at the end of lap three where I was handed a bottle…I ordered these on Amazon and plan to place a bottle or two at races that allow outside support or have feed zones:
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Brilliant!
Seriously. I would love to do one of these rolling/punchy XC races in CA. CO is just like, here’s your 10-20 min fire road climb to dwindle everyone out, good luck!
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I used these at the Bonelli Race they work great but are a little short. I accidentally left mine at the track and have to buy another. I prefer the double. 1 stake, two bottles. Good stuff.
I raced Bonelli. My PM for my XC bike is on backorder so I can’t speak to that but I can tell you my HR was at or close to max the whole three laps. I race Cat 2. SoCal XC is just flat out brutal. Our weekly series at Castaic “Pedalfest” is literally max HR the whole time. Can’t wait to see what power distribution looks like for me on some of these courses. I am guessing it will look just like yours.
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I have seen those. I took an old bottle cage and zip-tied it to a plastic fence post. Works the same way.
To transport, I strapped it to one of the horizontal parts of my hitch-mount bike rack.
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It also seems like you are already pretty strong at shorter efforts, never really having an issue with 3 minute repeats at 120% and laying down that big first lap in your crit a few weeks ago, way above threshold.
what was your IF? You’ve got some really good power numbers, are you able to put the power down on dirt though? It’s definitely a challenge. My targets for this year are about .95 or so for an open race and .90 ish for my xterra bike legs. I might race on my SS though for any open races so that .95 might not really hold (and I can’t measure it anyway on that bike)
IF was .86 for Bonelli and .88 for Vail on a pretty outdated FTP, so one conclusion could be that I have trouble putting down power on dirt, but I don’t that that is the right conclusion. TBH I don’t really look at the exact power numbers from these races, just more at the distribution. My MTB power meter also reads a bit lower compared to my road bike.
My biggest issues right now:
- Knowing how deep to go/pacing. I think Vail was only my 5th XC race ever (?) so I’m pretty unfamiliar with the dynamics. I have a lot to learn here compared to the XCM races (sit just below threshold on long climbs and repeat).
- Coasting too much, not digging for speed, corner exit
- Courage on the descents
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Just search “bottle holder ground stake” then click the amazon link.
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Hello guy’s,
I raced Bonelli Cat3. Just moved out here from Houston… I seem to do good on the sustained Climbs. But the punchy Climbs Spike my Heart out the roof… Would Punchy Hill Repeats be tye best to fix this?
Regarding the OP and MTB/XC-racing Zone Distribution, I did a race simulation this past weekend (with a full race warm up) on a trail that is in my XCO race series. I rode two laps of 100% punchy twisting singletrack. My first lap was 30:22 and my second lap was 30:44, so a pretty consistent effort. I would say I put in a pretty hard effort (95%), but not a full all out race effort. I took 2nd place (Cat 2) last year at this 1 lap race (TT style XCO race) with a lap time of 32:04. Side note, my second lap this weekend was 1:20 faster than my only lap on last years race day (thank you TR 
).
I have a power meter on my MTB now, so I’m finally able to analyze my outdoor and trail efforts. I was very surprised by my effort zones. It appears I was mostly either at endurance and below or in V02 Max/Anaerobic. A quite on or off effort with not a whole lot near the middle zones. Previously I would have thought my efforts (50%) were much more steady state (threshold), interesting to see I was way off 
. I may need to adjust my calendar to Short Power Build instead of General Build.
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I’m a strong believer of training ones weakness so I’m doing GB again but this time medium volume. Doing the Tuesday/Thursday indoors and the rest outdoors from this week on.
Had my season premiere yesterday racing. Went fine I guess. My NP is way above what it was last year and I improved my laptimes by 18%.
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This isn’t even a race, but a medium hard ride… So hard for 4-5 minute portions then back off a bit for another 4-5 minutes.
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cool thing from that article… most of the time at and above Max aerobic power were only 10s durations or less.
sometimes when we look at off road power data it can get a little bit discouraging to see what looks like a “low” power number, but it would probably be good to see how many times you went above a specific Watt value for 10-15 sec.
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I have an XCO Race this weekend. I will load the file in the DCR Analyzer and play with power smoothing to see if I can tease out those 10-20 second efforts to see their frequency.
Are we sure that today’s power meters are accurate enough for off-road purposes? I am especially suspicious that cadence is not measured at a sufficiently high rate to prevent serious signal aliasing. Also, what about when you are ratcheting over an obstacle? Pumping is another one that would cause more (zero) spiking in power.
Thanks, I was not aware of that function.
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