From a practical standpoint, successful racers learn pretty quickly that low-load, high-cadence near-maximal efforts are much easier to recover from than high-load, low-cadence efforts (or, in sprints, high-load, high-cadence efforts).
The latter is what is meant when racers refer to "burning matches"---you can only do a few of those high-load efforts per ride before you're done for the day (see the Grand Tour videos where riders like Jens Voight pull at the head of a strung-out peloton on Alpine climbs as long as they can and then pull to the side and limp to the finish line, hoping to make it there before the time cutoff).