Happy Valley Criterium Analysis
Saturday, April 2nd marked the first race weekend of the East Coast Collegiate Cycling season, with a pair of crits and a team time trial put on by the UMass Amherst Bicycle Racing Club.
Bell Lap Coaching’s Steve Weller will be analyzing power files from one race during each of the coming ECCC race weekends, following Dartmouth College rider Wells Willet and others. Stay tuned for more updates as the Dartmouth team works their way through some exciting and challenging races as they build up to peak performances at both the ECCC and Collegiate National Cycling Championships.
Racer info:
Wells Willet, Dartmouth College sophomore, class of 2024.
Racing age: 21
Wells’s background and goals:
“I started riding my senior year of high school, when I picked up triathlon. Over Covid, with no racing available, I took on some longer endurance challenges, including Everesting*. My first bike race was last spring at the Tour of St. Louis. I raced 9 more races last season.
The ECCC season is my focus for the year, with Nationals being the ultimate goal. I also plan to do a couple stage races (Green Mtn. Stage Race, Killington Stage Race), and to get experience in strong P/1/2 fields. Everesting on Tuck Drive (short hill on the Dartmouth campus) may also be in the cards!
For the ECCC season, getting experience and enjoying racing are the main goals for myself and the team. Most of the team has never raced on the road, let alone in a collegiate field, until this past weekend. The secondary goal is the ECCC omnium (overall champion), both personally and for the team. Finally, the team will defend the Ivy cup this season.
At school, I study engineering. Outside of classes, I am the president of the Dartmouth Cycling Team, which has taken a lot of time recently because of our (stellar) spring break training camp, the race season, and our upcoming home race weekend. I also work in the campus bike shop and do engineering research.
Training typically means 11-13 hours/week on the bike, roughly half of which are with teammates.”
* Everesting is the goal of ascending 8848 meters (the elevation of Mt. Everest) as quickly as possible in one single ride.
Race Analysis:
Wells Willett is a category 3 & collegiate men’s A rider with just over a year of racing experience, weighing in at 150 pounds with an estimated threshold power (FTP) of 365 watts.
Chart #1 shows a distribution of Wells’s power output classified against outputs of a substantial set of power data from other competitive cyclists of all levels.
Chart #1: Wells Willet PD Profile generated in WKO5, c/o Bell Lap Coaching
From this chart, we can see that Wells’s fitness puts him in the “time-trialer” category, and we’ll see shortly how he used those associated strengths to turn out with a fantastic result at the first race of the season. Note that Wells’s power from ~1 min. to ~30 minutes places him in the “exceptional” ranking, above the “excellent” grouping of most other durations.
In addition to the time-trialist category or phenotype, cyclists may fall into the grouping of, “sprinter,” or “all-rounder, and “pursuiter.” These designations are established by the relationship between an athlete’s maximal power and their threshold power, and are helpful in understanding a given athlete’s strengths.
Saturday's criterium course featured a slight elevation gain on the backside of the course, a couple of sweeping turns, and a quick left hand turn ahead of the flat finishing stretch. As we get further into this analysis, Wells gives us a brief description of his race.
“The first 5-6 laps were very relaxed in the bunch. After lap 6, the rider behind me sat up and I rolled off the front without accelerating. I decided to slowly ramp it up to see if anyone would close the gap and no-one did. So I decided to commit to the breakaway and hoped a UVM rider would bridge. They did, so I had a UVM rider with me for the next 5-8 laps. It was clear he was fatiguing though, so I decided to go solo to see if I could lap the field. There were some team tactics at play in the pack, with Adam disrupting the chase by UVM, but from there on out it was a steady effort for me as I passed dropped riders until I lapped what remained of the bunch (about 4 riders) with about 5 laps to go. At the end, I sprinted with the field and took second (in the sprint) by a few inches.”
Race and GPS data for Wells’s Saturday performance.
Referencing back to Chart #1, we can see that Wells did a great job racing his strengths, and ended up soloing away from the field with his big TT-type engine. Notice how steady and consistent Wells’s power (purple line) and HR (redline) are after he makes his separation from the field.
Both the power and heart rate (HR) data from the crit show that Wells was able to ride quite steadily, even on a course with a handful of turns and elevation. Wells’s normalized power output of 314 watts is only ~5% higher than his 298 watts average power for the race, giving us a variability (or variability index) of 1.05. (Normalized power is an average value of power output as affected by changing ride / course conditions and features.) It’s interesting to note that a low variability index value like 1.05 is typically associated with a steady segment of a road race or time trial course, rather than a criterium. Wells was able to meter out his effort steadily despite the technical features of the course, taking turns faster and riding the hill on the course within himself, ultimately lapping the field. Towards the end of the race (around 50 minutes), you can see where Wells makes contact with the main group again, and his power and HR become more variable as he sets up for the bunch sprint.
Big congrats to Wells as he lands himself on the top step of the podium to start his season!
Check back in the coming weeks for another breakdown of Wells’s racing from the collegiate race weekend at Army in NY state. We’ll continue to look at how Wells is able to use his fitness on different courses as the whole Dartmouth team builds towards their individual and team goals.