Monday, March 26, 2007

National Lampoon Pursuit

Ouch!

Wow - that hurt. Today was my Individual Pursuit qualifier. I rode a PB, which is good but I was hoping for a better time.

Time was 3:47.770 - about 1/4 second faster than Sydney a fews weeks ago. I set out to ride a 3:45 schedule and was on bang on target at the 1km and 2km marks but the last km got me I'm afraid.

But here's the rub....

Average power: 420W - that's 35+W more than Sydney. I'll have to check the atmospheric conditions but that's a whole lot more power for not much extra speed. Yikes, no wonder I was crawling on the floor looking for somewhere to be sick after that.

Leading riders in my Div were doing low 3:30s. Wow.

World and Australian Masters champs were getting knocked off their perches everywhere today.

Anyway, for the record - here the pursuit file with three second smoothing applied. Click to see a larger version.



When I get more details, I'll post some stuff about my buddies who all did well. Tanya rode her target time (4 seconds better than Sydney) and Michelle won gold with a solid 3:36 in the final as well as catching her opponent.
Tomorrow is sprint day, so I get a day off from competition although I have a ride planned.
Cheers!

3 comments:

El jefe said...

Crazy stuff eh Alex... lots more watts.. for not much more speed... Its starting to sound more like an art-form than a science. Let me know if you find the results link. Good luck with the next event. Cheers Jeff

djconnel said...

Nice data! (and nice ride!). But from the plot, it looks like your time was 3:37, rather than 3:47. You start no earlier than 2:05:40, and are clearly done by 2:09:20.

Dan

Alex Simmons said...

Hi Dan

Nah - it was definitely a 3:47 ride. Pursuits are not decided on what my power meter says but by the timing system used at the track. The x-axis on the plot probably cuts off the start and end times and you also miss some time between when the timing system's gun goes (and/or you start the effort) and when the power meter starts registering data. It takes about a second for the PT to fire up. So when I look at the data file - I see a range of about 3:45.5.

Also, you will never get a precise interval time on a PM with a 1.26 sec recording rate - at pursuit speed I would travel a little over 17 metres in that time.