Originally Posted by
Heathpack
Generally speaking, in a TT my goal (as taught to me by my coach, @
Racer Ex) is to never deviate from my goal ave power by more than 10%. No floating, you stay on the pedals with force 100% of the time. Every moment you allow yourself to back off is a little bit of time lost. But even more importantly, lost momentum that must be regained with a little surge. Since you usually get no rest in TTs and therefore no recovery, surges kill.
Disclaimer: I'm a newby too so take me with a grain of salt. I just happen to be a very well-coached newby.
I'm an oldie (?) at this and have ridden a lot of TT's and looked at a lot of files of the people I've coached, and I concur on the statement above.
Even on courses with a fair amount of gradient change, the winning efforts usually produce a VI of 1 or very close to that and the power looks like a pretty flat line for the most part. Rare exceptions are courses where you spin out your top gear, and I can only think of two courses where this happened (with a 56/11 no less...which was a bit of excitement).
The flip side of not keeping the power on is going over the 10% of target. For most folks this is a burned match that shows up in fatigue at the end of the TT or a big drop after that particular effort.
What I've seen is you can have a minute difference with the same average wattage on a 20k with most things being equal. It's when the power is, not necessarily when it is.
Of course I would concur with what I said