I know many cyclists will disagree with the basic premise of this post, but I’ll explain my thought process below. The concept is to challenge the commonly held belief that we peak for races and put forth our best efforts in races. I’ve owned a powertap for 3 years, but I’ve never raced more than a few races with it. Some will argue that races produce your best numbers, but I will challenge that concept by suggesting that training should almost always produce your best numbers if you are racing correctly.
The concept that races should produce your best numbers and races should produce your best efforts is based on the idea that races are hard and “motivation” is highest in a race. However, I’ll challenge that concept with the following two points.
1. If you have never trained at a certain effort/duration (i.e. 450 watts for 5 min), then don’t expect to be able to produce that effort in a race for the first time.
2. If you are producing your highest efforts constantly in races, then you are probably doing one of the following:
Not training hard enough.
If you can produce 320 watts for a 60 min crit, yet you have never achieved that number in training, then you are probably not training and testing with a structured approach. Peak efforts should be pleasant surprises built on foundations of peaking numbers near race day, not anomalies produced only during races. Go back and review your peak efforts. If more than 1/3 of them are happening in races, then I’m going to suggest that you are not training hard enough to prep for race efforts.
Riding too hard in races and burning matches.
If you generating peak numbers in races, then you are either racing above your ability (i.e. may need to downgrade if you see peak numbers prior to getting dropped in a race), or you are burning matches in races.
In races, it is common to see riders struggle with the pace. Maybe family, work, or injuries have made the season very difficult compared to past years. So, a rider may be riding what was once their proper category, but now it is beyond their training level. They can either ride out the season or downgrade until they can hold the pace. The WKO+ / Coggan / Allen Power Profile Chart is a great way to quickly get a feel for a rider’s strengths and weaknesses for a given category. While I find that the chart can vary depending on your weight (i.e. heavier riders are slightly over penalized more than real world conditions), it is a very close indication in my experience. If you are touching the top of the category below you on the chart, you’re likely fine and need to improve. However, if you are nowhere close to your category on the chart, you may want to downgrade until you can ride efforts closer to your peers at that level.
The key is that most races should ridden at efforts below where you have trained. For example, if you have trained and tested correctly, then you have ridden an all out 20 min effort. There are very few cases where you will be replicating that effort in an actual race. I can only think of one, a solo breakaway 8 – 10 miles from the finish. Anything else would leave you depleted and unable to continue racing. Unless you are throwing down an end of race effort, you should never produce a peak 20 min effort. If you do, then that tells me you have never tested an all out 20 min in training. An all out 20 min training effort is designed to leave everything on the road because it is training, however, if you do that in a race, you’ll have nothing to finish. So by definition, only a race ending effort should even remotely have the possibility of a 20 min peak. If you are in a two or three man breakaway, I’d suggest that you also need to hold a little something back to sprint at the end, so I’d question if that would produce a peak effort either.
The net/net is that training is the time to test, train, and extend your peak efforts. You have the ability to test and train your 1 min, 5 min, 20 min, and 60 min in a variety of conditions and often with different levels of freshness so you are prepared to race on race day. You should always try to make your hardest training days harder than your hardest racing days. While this may not be possible for the entire race effort, it is definitely possible and suggested for shorter efforts. If you find that all your peaks are coming in races, then try to determine if your training isn’t hard enough, you’re racing too hard in races, or your racing above your ability/fitness level.
