carleton

krispenhartung, I simply think you are over-thinking this.

Some (not all) of the best riders I've seen race aren't meticulous about their warmups, routines, or equipment...or even gearing for for that matter. They just ride whatever as best they can...and win.

Here's the thing, most of this is simply mental. And in reality, doing the perfect warmup won't make us any faster than doing a not-so-perfect or even hasty and sloppy warmup.

Anecdotal case in point: One day I was doing timed flying 200s. I was late to the track, rushing to get ready, abbreviated my warmup, and riding training wheels (because I was late, no time to swap) when my IO/Comete were in their bags. I rode it with a "what the hell, I'll just do this anyway since I'm here." attitude, fully expecting the worst performance of the year. I set a PB. I was like, "WTF?! Everything was wrong about that scenario and I set a PB?!"

And get this...even if I didn't set a PB and just rode a time close to it given the circumstances, I would have been shocked.

There are several stories like this. Like when Anna Meares' mechanic put on the wrong chainring (1 tooth larger than she'd been training for) and she set a world record in the 500M.

It's all in our head. Our bodies adapt.

A "perfect warmup" is simply something to go wrong and throw us off our mental game. If you don't have a "perfect warmup", then that's 1 less thing that can go wrong. Maybe strive for a "good-enough warmup". I've learned that 10-15 minutes of pedaling with 1 jump is good enough for me to be ready to race...and set a PB

YUS.