| Road Criterium in Rhede - Comparison of Two Race Categories |
|
Hendrik Werner has been working for STAPS in Cologne since 2009. At the moment he is writing his thesis in sport science.
He takes care for several athletes on various levels from recreational to professional - especially from the Netherlands. Hendrik is an active racer who has won more than 35 cat. 1 races and participated in some pro-races.
For SRM.de he analyzed two datafiles from the road crit in Rhede 2011. One is a cat. 1, the other a cat. 3 race file.  The criterium in Rhede is held on a flat 1.5 k lap with three corners connected by two longer and one shorter straight section.
Category A/B was won by David Kopp (Team Eddy Merkcx-Indelang) in a bunch sprint, and Category C was won by Daniel Scherring (Team Cologne) outsprinting a group of eight riders. We will have a look at the SRM data of two riders: Jonas Werner, a 18-year-old talent who is racing his first year in men's category C and Hendrik Werner who has already won some category A/B races. Both athletes are riding for "Team HED powered by STAPS" and we will follow up some races of this team in the future. There are several similarities between the two race files. Both races were held on the same course under the same conditions - sunny, 16 C.
Let's have a look at the differences:
The cat A/B race was significantly faster (45.1 vs. 42.4 km/h), but Hendrik's average power was lower than Jonas's in the cat C race (260 vs. 277 watts). Also the average cadence of Hendrik was below that of Jonas (64 vs. 79 rpm). A closer look at the graph shows that Hendrik's blue line for the cadence is very often at zero and already on the first view you can see the higher amount of power peaks. It is an advantage to have a look at the NEW STATISTICS starting with 0 watts to visualize the time with no power, just drafting in the bunch.
Hendrik's time between 0-50 watts with no or very low power is nearly 15 minutes while Jonas remains only 3.5 min in this section. This is a first hint of the more efficient riding and the reason for the lower average power of Hendrik in a cat. A/B race. The power in cat C is much closer to the average - most of the time Jonas spent between 200 and 350 watts while Hendrik's power distribution is much wider. Another interesting finding is the time above 8 w/kg - the power for the typical efforts after cornering.
Comparing riders and race categories can help to differentiate and improve tactical and technical skills but also show the different workload in different race categories.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
