Training with Power

[Bill Gates]

I have never competed, but I do ride an awful lot of long and/or steep hills and descents. I am fairly sure that this is not the best strategy!

Climbs are where you are going slowest and will lose a lot of time so making an effort there will save quite a lot of time. Descents are where you are going fast anyway so there is little time to save. It takes a huge effort to go even faster than very fast and you won't gain a lot of extra time for the effort.

For example, I could save 5 minutes on the Cragg Vale climb by trying hard. I do the descent off that at up to 90 km/hr with little effort so I could not save more than a few seconds no matter how hard I tried. Better to save the energy for the flat or the climbs.

Thanks for the reply. This was a strategy for racing 100 miles. And this was about conserving energy and not time. For sure a short distance TT and then you would attack a power climb. There are no big climbs on a normal TTs that might appear in a road race so you are not going to be losing that much time anyway. In the last 25 miles then time is all
Running out of energy on a 100 is very painful and I learnt the hard way, when I had no helpers and no race experience

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

Given how bad tempered this thread has become, it is best if it comes to a close. We are happy to have sensible discussion about the merits or otherwise of powermeters and other training devices - this isn't it though.

No more to see here folks.