Originally Posted by
Hermes
carpediemracing Glad to see you back at the track. One aspect that has changed is the use of larger gears and shorter cranks. When I was doing sprint training a couple of years ago, After warmup and jumps, I used 98, 100, 100, 102 for a sequence of flying 100 meter efforts diving off the banking at Carson behind the motor that then dropped off at the flying 200 start line to do the 100 meters solo. The guys who could really sprint, were using 12 tooth rear cogs. The theory is firing the muscles too fast in a max effort is too fatiguing and slower.
The same is true for pursuit and the 500 meters. I am using a 96 in the 500 and I am moving up to 98 in pursuit and I use 165 cranks. My wife, who weighs 108, is using a 96 in pursuit - all at Carson. For slower outdoor 333 concrete tracks, we gear down appropriately.
Gearing is a big YMMV, but the trends are undeniable.
So I was using a 51x15 because that's what I had before, and it seemed to be okay back then. However the others were running bigger gears, so instead of my 91-92" gear (I'll call it 91), they were running 94, 96".
For me the 91 was a bit big for rolling around, like not great for warm up, but once up to speed it was too low. I don't have a lot of gear options but I'm going to bring a 52 for next time, and I will try a "huge" gear when doing solo sprint efforts, maybe a 52x14 (100).
The contraction fatigue is real. I did a "started too late" flying 200, and I was spun out and not accelerating at all by about 100m to go. I should have been going faster and maintaining that higher speed longer. That was in the 91" gear. In real life sprints I'm pedaling much slower and going much faster.
Next time.