For those of you that train and race with a power-meter, you may have thought about holding a specific average power for your given event. There is a lot of talk about trying to eliminate power spikes and hold a steady wattage throughout your race. It makes sense to use your power meter to keep yourself in check if you tend to blow yourself up early on, or are insensitive to how the legs feel when you are pushing too hard. It seems, though, that some folks are taking this to the extreme and really looking to hold the same wattage on a downhill as they are on an uphill, no matter the course. This may work for a flat or slightly rolling type of course (i.e. Kona), but if you’ve got some actual climbing and fast descents to contend with, it’s not the most efficient way of getting the job done.
An example: if your goal is to hold 200 watts you would be far better off riding upwards of 220-240 watts on the uphills and keeping the power output down around 150 watts for the downhills. A 5% increase in output will net you far closer to a 5% increase in speed on a climb than it will on a decent. Say you’re going 60 km/hr on a decent, it would be much harder to go 63 km/hr (5%), than it would be to go from 15 km/hr to 15.75 km/hr (5%) on a climb. At higher speeds you’ve got more forces working against you – friction and wind resistance especially, so the speed gains from higher power output are less.
