How to avoid repeating this power disaster (reading involved)

GoFaster - 2010-06-22 10:57 AM To answer some of the questions, and maybe help provide a little more insight:

 - Race was just a Sprint (and a short one at that, with just a 19km ride)
 - HR for me leaving T1 is usually quite high, but settles down a bit after a few minutes on the ride
 - Training leading up to the race had been reasonable with a mix of longer outdoor rides (2hrs) with 1 hr sessions on the trainer.  The week of the race I only rode once for 45min, swam a couple of times and ran once.
 - FTP of 220 came from a 20min and 5min test about 6-7 weeks ago.  Goal watts for the race was right around the 213 (similar to the training ride).
 - NP for the race was around 190, and for most training rides it's around 215-220, and avg watts are usually between 185-200 depending on the ride.
 - Swimming usually 3x a week, just short 30min sessions since I have to swim on lunch.  I went hard on the swim, but didn't feel that it was overly hard.  Although I did feel a stitch after I came out of the water.
 - Run was a nightmare.  The stitch stayed with me on the bike (but was manageable), but on the run turned into full blown GI/pain issues.  I walked/shuffled a 7:00min pace for the first couple of km, where I'd been expecting to run around 4:30min or better.

GoFaster - 2010-06-22 8:20 AM My first race of the year was this past weekend, and things did not go as planned.  Here's a little background:

I had gone to the race course 2 weeks in advance and ridden the course a couple of times paying attention to my PM.  First time, I didn't push overly hard and my avg power was 187 (FTP around 220), second time I pushed myself at what I considered to be race pace and my avg power was 213.  With that 213 I figured I had a little left to play with on race day.

Fast forward to race day and I decided I was going to ignore HR and only pay attention to power.  I knew where I wanted to be and the idea was to stick with this plan.  Didn't work out so well.  After a decent swim, I hopped on the bike and promptly found I had no power (in my legs).  By the end of the ride my avg power was 176, almost 20% lower than intended/expected.  But there didn't seem to be anything I could do to increase my output during the ride, I had nothing else.

I did look at my HR data after the fact and found that my avg HR was 175, which is rather high.  On the 213 watt ride I'd averaged in the 160's.  During the race my power yo yo'd all over the place, but the HR was between 173-177 from start to finish of the bike.  It's as if I was maxed out before I even got going.

So after a very long winded intro - are there thoughts on what went wrong for me, and what I can do to avoid this in the next race?  Is this a case of just bad swim conditioning leading to a poor ride (only spent 16min swimming)?  Is it a case of just a bad day?  Other thoughts?

I have 4 weeks before the next race, and would like to do whatever necessary to avoid a similar power failure at that event.  (Logs are not updated, so please avoid saying training is sporadic. )

JorgeM - 2010-06-22 3:48 PM
How long was the race?
RPE wise 1 to 10, how hard was your swim?
What was your VI. How many power spikes over your FTP for 5-10 seconds did you have through the race?
How much taper did you do for the race?

GoFaster - 2010-06-23 6:51 AM



Jorge - This was just a short Sprint.  750M, 19km, 5km.  RPE on the swim was somewhere around 7-8 (8 on the swim back in due to a little bit of current).  I'm not sure what VI is (Power Agent software doesn't show it), but my IF was 0.766.  I had a few power spikes on the hills but not many, and these were all at a considerably lower wattage than what I am accustomed to seeing.

Taper for the race was essentially the week leading up to the race.  One 60km ride the previous weekend, 2 OWS swims, 1 run, and one spin on the trainer - that's it.