Free watts are all over the course. @Dominos likens it to grabbing those magic mushroom power-ups in Super Mario. You just have to reach out and grab them.
In bike racing, watts matter. But in cross, you can be more handsomely rewarded for good technical ability than any other type of racing. Why? Math.
The cross course has about 50-60 corners per lap and it has two to three "features" that require dismounting. Usually, the cat 3/4/5 fields will complete 6 laps. This means during a race you might face as many as 300 corners and have to get off and on your bike 12-15 times.
In a typical ~80-100 person cat 4/5 field, somebody finishing in the top 25th percentile will complete the race 2 minute faster than somebody in the 50th percentile--that's 20 seconds per lap. There is a similar time gap between the 50th percentile and the 75th percentile. In other words, if you can shave 2 minutes off your race (or 20 seconds per lap), you will beat 20-25 more people. But how!?
Shave 1/4 second off every corner: boom, 75 seconds. Now if you can save 1-2 second per dismount/remount, you are practically at 120 seconds. Combine this with a little extra fitness and its easy to see how you can go from a mid-pack finisher to somebody at the pointy end of the race pretty quickly. Cornering ability, smoothness, line choice, technique, etc.... These things matter a great deal.
@The Heckler and I were chatting about doing a cross technique & skills thread...something like the CXMagazaine Techique Tuesdays. These days, there are so many more resources available to learn technique than there was even a couple years ago including clinics/cross-camps, practices, articles, coaches, etc... He raised the question about how this would be different. We concluded that the difference is this is much more community oriented -- Q&A with people you know, about courses or course features you actually get to experience. There is already a lot of great technique info discussed on race reports and blogs which gets lost in the noise and is hard to retrieve. Hopefully this format will be more useful to more folks.
This first post will be the index to the various topics. There is rarely a right way vs. a wrong way. Different things work for different folks. The hope is that this thread will fuel some good discussion and we will all learn something to give us some free watts.
INDEX:
Race Starts: "What Just happened?? I think I ran over my buddy!"
Brown Lines (Don’t Do It): Cyclocross Line Choice
In bike racing, watts matter. But in cross, you can be more handsomely rewarded for good technical ability than any other type of racing. Why? Math.
The cross course has about 50-60 corners per lap and it has two to three "features" that require dismounting. Usually, the cat 3/4/5 fields will complete 6 laps. This means during a race you might face as many as 300 corners and have to get off and on your bike 12-15 times.
In a typical ~80-100 person cat 4/5 field, somebody finishing in the top 25th percentile will complete the race 2 minute faster than somebody in the 50th percentile--that's 20 seconds per lap. There is a similar time gap between the 50th percentile and the 75th percentile. In other words, if you can shave 2 minutes off your race (or 20 seconds per lap), you will beat 20-25 more people. But how!?
Shave 1/4 second off every corner: boom, 75 seconds. Now if you can save 1-2 second per dismount/remount, you are practically at 120 seconds. Combine this with a little extra fitness and its easy to see how you can go from a mid-pack finisher to somebody at the pointy end of the race pretty quickly. Cornering ability, smoothness, line choice, technique, etc.... These things matter a great deal.
@The Heckler and I were chatting about doing a cross technique & skills thread...something like the CXMagazaine Techique Tuesdays. These days, there are so many more resources available to learn technique than there was even a couple years ago including clinics/cross-camps, practices, articles, coaches, etc... He raised the question about how this would be different. We concluded that the difference is this is much more community oriented -- Q&A with people you know, about courses or course features you actually get to experience. There is already a lot of great technique info discussed on race reports and blogs which gets lost in the noise and is hard to retrieve. Hopefully this format will be more useful to more folks.
This first post will be the index to the various topics. There is rarely a right way vs. a wrong way. Different things work for different folks. The hope is that this thread will fuel some good discussion and we will all learn something to give us some free watts.
INDEX:
Race Starts: "What Just happened?? I think I ran over my buddy!"
Brown Lines (Don’t Do It): Cyclocross Line Choice
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