Adam Hodges Myerson, Bill Black, and Jack Hutchinson have all kindly agreed to share data collected by their SRM Powermeters during recent road races in New England. They all did the Jiminy Peak Road Race on 4 May 2002 (Adam did the P/1/2 race, Bill and Jack the Masters 45+), and Adam also includes data from the Sterling and Bear Mountain RR.
I have converted their files into comma-separated text files that can be directly read into MS-Excel (and many other spreadsheet and data analysis programs). They are available here as a 380Kb zipped file.
Here are some notes about the race data from Adam: "the races at Jiminy Peak, Sterling, and Bear Mt. from the past two weekends were P/1/2. At Jiminy (90 mi) I chased for the team until I was dropped in the final few miles. At Sterling (80 mi) I made the second group, bridged to the break, got dropped from the break, made it back to the break, missed the winning 4 that left the break, and got 9th in an uphill finish. At Bear Mt. the next day (100 mi) I made the early break on the first lap, got dropped on the climb around mile 45, and quit after the field caught me at 55 mi." Adam weighs about 68kg (around 150 lbs). In March he did a Conconi test and his power and HR at deflection point were 360/175.
Adam provides other details about the Sterling race: "Looks like I made the break just after the first hour. The effort is very spiky, with a big spike for the climb each lap, and after that point, the effort range is much narrower. I was doing 500-700 watts or so for the minute it took to get get over the steepest part of the hill when I was in the field, maxing out just over 1000 watts, which I did almost every lap on the hill. Making the break, I was mostly around 400-800 watts, and maxed out at 950, but then we settled down. In the break, I did 300-600 watts when I was pulling, 200-400 watts in the train, and often had stretches of 0-100 watts after I'd pull off, or we had downhills. There were probably 10 people in the second group, and 5 in the lead group we were chasing. When we catch the lead group at about hour 2, you can see the watts drop by an average of about 100. The next time up the hill after catching the break was, of course the hardest lap, when Mark McCormack attacked on the climb. I had got with some moves on the flats before the hill. So when I get dropped from the break, it's actually one of my lowest max watts over the top. I made a 1000 watt attack on the flat, which gets caught, and then I only max out at 800 over the climb. But from there until I recatch the break, it's 300-500 watts, with some 700 watt spikes. Once I regain the break, I sit on, the winning move goes from the group of 12 or so that are left, and we creep up the hill, not going over 600 watts (still anaerobic for me, but not maximally). Coming in to the finish at 2:50, there's about 8 attacks an counter-attacks. 800-0-1000-0-600-0-1000-0, etc. Look like 7 efforts of 800-1100 watts on the flats going into the last hill. In the uphill sprint I max out at 950 watts, but at 20 MPH... and get 5th in the sprint."
Bill Black's notes on the Jiminy Peak 45+ race were: "I attacked going up the valley on Rt. 7 with about 3 miles to go (after about 52 miles), got a good gap, Doug O'Neill bridged up and sat on, just after the turn up to the finish he jumped and got about 30 yards which he held to the line -- I finished second and we both were about 45 seconds clear of the field. In summary, I held a little over 450 watt average for a little over a minute when I first attacked, I then held a steady 360 watts until the turn up to the finish where Doug got a gap and going up that last portion (about another 1 mile) I held the 360 with a few higher surges due to steeper pitches, wind, and trying to close the gap." Bill weighs 169 lbs, has a max HR of about 185, and is 50.
Jack Hutchinson is 54, weighs 149, reports his MHR at about 182, and says his 40k TT heartrate is 170HR at ~290 Watts. He finished in 10th place in the same race in which Bill placed 2nd. His notes on Jiminy Peak are: "Bill rode a great race--as did many others. There were a number of unsuccessful attacks prior to his. I rode conservatively. For most of the race I stayed near the front. On the second lap on the back side [note: a map is available at the Jiminy Peak website, listed above] a group of 12 or so got a gap. I was toward the rear of the peleton when I saw this and that they were pulling away. I bridged, pulling the group back together. The second time up the main climb, I was too conservative and had to work with several others to bridge back after the descent. When Bill jumped, I did not respond. I know how strong he is! With two off the front, I led the main group at the base of the final climb. I snowballed that--about 15 riders went by me in the first 2/3 of the climb, then I passed eight of those as I accelerated to the line."
One of the interesting things about the comparison of Adam's P/1/2 race vs. Bill's 45+ race is that Adam's power was very much spikier (Bill's mean and median wattages were actually a bit higher, but then he weighs about 20 pounds more. Also, see note below about Bill's SRM). The comparison clearly shows that average wattage doesn't tell you enough about the aggressive nature of P/1/2 races. "Cruising" wattages for P/1/2 aren't vastly different from 45+, but the attacks are relentless and brutal. Adam's and Bill's 90th percentile wattages were the same (just under 400 watts), so the difference is mostly in that last 10%, where Adam was popping up to 1100 watts and then coming back down to more reasonable levels (and doing it again and again).
Note that Bill's data is recorded every second, while Jack had the recording interval set for every 2 seconds. Also, there is some "warm-up" and "cool-down" in Bill's file -- you'll want to exclude these periods when comparing the two. In addition, although the overall pattern of power in Bill's file may be okay, he has said that he changed the calibration slope on his SRM to lower the recorded wattages so that they would match his Computrainer. This means that you should be careful to take his exact wattages with a grain of salt.
Here are two graphs of data extracted from the Jiminy Peak races. The first is a plot of gear usage and wattage for Adam Hodges Myerson; the heavy red line in the second panel shows a moving average of the wattage. The upper panel shows the recorded gear usage, by gear ratio (dividing the chainring teeth by the cog teeth gives the gear ratio-- for example a combination of the 52 ring with a 17 cog gives a gear ratio slightly above 3).
The second is a plot of power by gear for each of Adam, Bill, and Jack.
Each (tiny) dot represents the power recorded at either 1-second
or 2-second intervals. Since Bill recorded at 1-second intervals,
you will see approximately twice as many dots as for Jack. Evidently,
Bill's general approach was to use higher gears than Jack.
