Most people don't realise how little power you need to ride reasonably well over a long distance. Here are my figures.
Agreed.
When I was riding the TCR in 2016, by the time I got to the alps, I was riding on the flat and up modest climbs at around 100W. The first steep climb, the Grosse Scheidegg in the afternoon of day 4, forced me out of my comfort zone - I had to go up it at 120W. I probably did similar up the Giau two nights later. And I came 33rd out of about 105 finishers.
How much did you weigh tho? how fast were you going up the climbs? A lot of it also depends on the gradient. The Italian Parcour in TCRNo7 had some 30% gradients, I don't know how many people actually rode up that bit.
Of course, you need a lot more power to be at the sharp end. James Hayden shouted a greeting as he passed me as I was packing away my shopping outside a supermarket just before the start of the Grosse Scheidegg. He had had a day out at the first checkpoint with a chest infection and was now storming back through the field. He got through the parcours in about half the time that it took me. I would guess he probably did the GS climb at something around 350W (his data is public so it will be in his Strava) - but that is not typical of most riders.
It is surprising how slow you can go on a bike when going faster is not possible.
Yep, I completed RatN2019 by not sleeping much, rather than going quick. I still walked every hill in Limberg as I had no power left.
Looking at my PBP 2019 I was 68 hours elapsed start to finish (including sleep and other stops) and according to strava I was averaging 101W and at just shy of 90kg that is about 1.1w/kg.
If what is being discussed is ftp then that is a different matter. You obviously don’t want to be having to go anywhere near ftp on a long event.
Remind me, how many 1300m ascents are there on PBP?
The CP2 parcours has a 1300m height difference between start and highest point. It does that over 27km. Which if I understand my maths is an average gradient of 4.8%. If I'm doing 5kph (which sounds about right given fuck all power numbers such as Frank suggests, and being 2000km into the event, means doing it for over 5 hours.
When an effort is that long, then FTP does come into it, as by definition you're basically doing your FTP. For hours on end. If your FTP is low that is. Frank may have an FTP of 350w*, and may do this climb at 120w. That's about 1/3rd of his ftp pre race. If mine is 120w, and I do that climb at 1/3rd of my pre ride FTP, then that's 40w...
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
This is why Frank rightly persuaded me to remove the usb-werk from my bike. Because the ~7w it uses to charge my battery pack up, is a significant proportion of the little power I currently have. That 5w reduction (Dyno hub is still going to have 2w resistance when off), is relevant when your power is so damn low.
I'm not sure how to ride up a 72% incline... I'm guessing I'll walk that bit...
That's veloviewer's take on CP3. I think there are some mapping errors in there.
J
* Apologies if this is insultingly low. It's based on the number I've seen a couple of other TCR riders produce in recent FTP tests they put out on twitter.