Sunapee Analysis

I still haven't managed to figure out a way to get my Garmin data into excel, but I did some crude power calculations for the Mt. Sunapee Race the other week by printing out graphs from motion based, measuring them with a ruler, and applying the White Mt. speed/power calculator. This is a really ghetto way of producing power data but it gives me a pretty good idea of what I want to know.

There was an article on Velocity Nation a while back that provides a basis to compare your power data. I'm not sure exactly how all this data was derived, but it seems like some of it may be based off of a TT hill climb local to the author. It may or may not be accurate but it makes for a fun comparison.

The picture above shows an elevation profile of the first lap of the Sunapee race. I used this graph and the elevation vs. time graph to determine the time, distance, and elevation change of a couple different hills. I put this data into the aforementioned speed/power calculator assuming a number of different things, the most significant being aero drag factor (CdA) and weight. I toggled the input power until the time output in the excel sheet was equal to the time it took me to cover the ground.

The first real climb was about 1.1 miles at 3.9% grade for a vertical rise of 222 feet. Prior to this climb the pace was super mellow and my legs were good and fresh. I stayed tight with the pack and did the climb in 4 minutes which translates into 365 watts or 4.7 W/kg. This effort had me breathing hard, but was not quite a 100% effort. Unfortunately I was not wearing my HR monitor but I'd estimate a peak of 180-185 here. I normally get dropped once my HR exceeds 190. If I were to sustain this 4.7 W/kg effort for 5 minutes (which I did not), I would fall into the "good" or "cat3" category according to the Velocity Nation table.

This table seems a little misleading to me because it's not clear exactly what their ranges represent. Is the 5-minute effort a one shot deal? Should it be when I'm fresh or two hours into a suffer-fest when my legs are toast? Seems like it'd make for a better comparison if it were a one shot deal on fresh legs, but who knows.

I certainly burnt a match in this effort, and I know I wasn't the only one. The pack stretched out a bit here as several other riders seemed to be struggling (more so the bigger boys). I think 1 or 2 may have even dropped here. Is it fair to say this was a cat3 effort here? Certainly not, but this number does seem to suggest that our pack was on the high end of the range given on the VN power table.

On one of the rollers following this first hill the pack split up a bit, and I found myself in a 5 man chase group 100 meters behind the pack. We managed to bridge the gap by pushing on the downhill and up the next climb. This climb is the second climb in the picture that I crunched some numbers for.

This climb was a 2 minute climb at 4.8% grade which is about a 426W, 5.5 W/kg effort for me after a good effort on the previous downhill and flats. Numbers for a 2 minute effort are mostly meaningless as I have no grounds to compare them. The VN power table list W/kg for 1 minute and 5 minute efforts. 5.5 W/kg is at the rock bottom of the scale for a 1 minute effort, and all the way up into the cat1 range for a 5 minute effort. This suggets that my fitness is somewhere between an untrained cat5 racer and a cat1 racer, great! I suppose I could use the VN power data to make a multivariable regression so that I could interpolate, but what's the point? This is already enough of a wag.

The last climb that I crunched numbers for is the climb that I got dropped on. 7.3% grade, 3 minutes, average 304 W or 3.9 W/kg. I was probably tired going into this. I imagine that my power started off fine and decreased once I dropped the pack. The point is that this wasn't enough power to stay with the pack.

So there's some power numbers, make what you will of them. Maybe some day I'll pick up a power tap and really have some fun data to play with, but till then I'll be using my poor-man's method.