{"id":3336,"date":"2025-03-28T14:08:01","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T14:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/?p=3336"},"modified":"2025-03-28T14:08:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T14:08:02","slug":"race-planning-with-mywindsock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/discussion\/race-planning-with-mywindsock\/","title":{"rendered":"Race Planning with myWindsock"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

European race season is upon us, the National B road races, CTT time trials, IRONMAN Triathlons and World Tour stage races have hit Europe and according to our data – you\u2019re all using myWindsock to prepare. As you\u2019re doing it anyway, we thought we\u2019d go through how we, here ay myWindsock, use the app to get ready for events that we\u2019re doing. This will be quite comprehensive and will go over the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Course recon\u00a0<\/li>
  2. Duration predictions\u00a0<\/li>
  3. Pacing plans\u00a0<\/li>
  4. Fuelling\u00a0<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Running the risk of being self indulgent, I\u2019ll base the contents of this piece on a course that I\u2019m doing – namely the bike course at the Peniscola Infinitri Triathlon – my first race of the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Course recon\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Unfortunately, we don\u2019t all have unlimited money and time so can\u2019t often recon a course in the flesh – but myWindsock is the next best thing for it. It allows us to review the terrain, weather and their combination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    The plot above shows the gradient as a function of time, which is typically where I like to start. This allows me to think about gearing on a high level and decide between a 1x and 2x chainring set up. For this race, it\u2019s on the cusp but I prefer to pay the aero penalty rather than running the serious risk of being undergeared so I will use a 2x chainring.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    The second plot I take a look at is then \u201cWhere Power Matters Most\u201d – this essentially shows us where on the course larger investments of energy are best rewarded, typically the steeper gradients. The colour on the plot represents the wind direction where the outline of the elevation sits. This allows us to see where attacks might come and what parts of the race are going to be the hardest – in this example we can see that the bike leg is essentially only 55km long and that from this point it\u2019s just about recovering for the run. This leads us to start thinking about how long the race will take and what pacing strategy we should make use of\u2026\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Predicting duration<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In order to predict duration I do a worst case scenario and best case scenario which to me, looks roughly as follows\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    From this we can see I\u2019ll be around the two hour mark plus or minus a couple of minutes depending on how I feel. You\u2019ll notice a wide cda range as well – this is because on a bad day I also typically sit up a bit more and shift around on the saddle. With these constraints we can come up with a pacing plan and look into the course demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Pacing plans\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Firstly we can look into the distribution of speeds and we can see it\u2019s a very wide range – we spend a lot of time under 30 kph, so we will look to minimise this by going harder and setting a rule that if we are under 30 kph, we\u2019ll do 400W, if under 20 we will sit up and do 450W. To balance this out, we\u2019ll also stop pedalling over 55 kph. Let\u2019s see how this impacts a middle case scenario (remembering that in triathlon we are looking to balance going fast with saving energy for the run).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    The above case is without the aforementioned pacing rules, and with them we get\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    We notice it\u2019s actually 14 seconds slower (probably within the margin of error). Changing out the speed at which we stop pedalling from 55 to 65 kph adds 20W to the average power and saves 2 minutes over the course of the event. This information allows me to make better decisions during the race, if I want to behave aggressively I know what the time savings for going hard on the descents are and I also am fully aware of the energy penalty I\u2019ll pay for doing this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Fuelling planning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    We need to plan to consume 2 hours worth of fuel for this race, which for me is around 240g of carbohydrates, 1000mg of sodium and around 1.5-2L of water. Now, we don\u2019t want to be eating when going full gas and we can use dips in the power profile to think about when we\u2019ll likely be able to get some food in. Around 15 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes etc. I\u2019ll have the chance to take a gel or a sip. Also, looking at this tells us the first 15 minutes is likely to be pretty full on so maybe a gel in transition would be wise.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    This blog gave us just a brief insight into some of the tools available in myWindsock for planning performance but it was by no means exhaustive. To prepare for your next race and leave no stone unturned, sign up to myWindsock<\/a> here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    European race season is upon us, the National B road races, CTT time trials, IRONMAN Triathlons and World Tour stage races have hit Europe and according to our data – you\u2019re all using myWindsock to prepare. As you\u2019re doing it anyway, we thought we\u2019d go through how we, here ay myWindsock, use the app to … Continue reading “Race Planning with myWindsock”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3344,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mywindsock.com\/page\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}