I’m pretty new to trainer road, but it seems to be working. I was wondering how I would go about extrapolating my current FTP to a race scenario ?
I am taking part in my first cross duathlon this weekend. 4km trail run / 15km off road mtb ride / 4km trail run. In terms of pacing I am treating the runs as though it were a sprint triathlon. But for the bike I am a bit unsure as to where I should be aiming - based off of my FTP could anyone give me an idea / anyone have experience in this area ? Unfortunately I don’t have a power meter on my MTB, so will be going off of HR and perceived effort, and havent had the option to pre-ride the course, so dont have any data to compare against from that point of view. Just my recent TR rides.
Are there any Strava segments you can look at as research for this event? You could also use BestBikeSplit.com to figure out a reasonable power target, which you can then transfer to RPE. However, it’s going to be a rough approximation so I would recommend playing it by ear and seeing how race day goes. You won’t want to go too hard on the bike portion and destroy your legs, but it’s tough to know how to pace your first race. My best advice is to pick someone who you think you can keep up with and then just stay on their wheel. You’ll learn a lot.
In my limited duathlon experience, the second running leg can really, really hurt. I can imagine that the power peaks of a MTB course could exacerbate this. Without knowing anymore specifics, you might want to consider staying around sweet spot for the bike leg unless you have a lot of experience running off the bike.