Marmotte and Power Revisited

A while back, when Marmotte was still in the planning stage I put out this post:

http://mr-miff-on-tour.blogspot.com/2008/02/marmotte-and-power.html

Having now done the event its time to revisit it.

As a result of a combination of events (cockup-did not reset powertap and planned-did not want pressure of time to make me take risks on descents) I did the Marmotte without actually having any track of time I was taking. Instead I just focussed on aiming to do all the climbs at around 260W and see what happened.

The result was a mixture of no surprise and big surprise.

No surprise was that I overcooked the first climb and did 268NW, doing over 280NW for the first part of this. So later climbs came in at 254NW, 229NW, 229NW.

Big surprise was that I finished in 7:34 so pretty much dead on target of 7:30.

Overall very pleased with result, both in terms of time taken and use of power to train/pace. If I do the event again (and probably will) I think I have enough of an insight to do better.

Table below shows my stats for the ride compared to those I got from the year before.

		Rider 1 2007				Me 2008
Section	Distance	Time	Work	Power	Npwr	Time	Work	Power	Npwr
Start to Glandon base	13	0:21	260	199	235	0:23	230	152	198
Glandon Climb	23	1:21	1193	245	258	1:23	1262	254	268
Glandon Descent	42	1:05	469	120	184	1:09	572	137	201
Telegraphe	12	0:48	732	251	252	0:50	763	250	254
Tel descent to Gal base	5	0:07	43	100	141	0:07	29	74	119
Galibier	18	1:14	1077	241	243	1:24	1112	224	229
Gal descent to ADH base	48	1:06	352	88	152	1:08	396	101	170
Alpe D'Huez	13	0:58	928	263	267	1:10	934	222	229
	175	7:04	5054	199	235	7:34	5298	195	230

There was a difference of 30 minutes in the finish times and most of this is accounted for by the last 2 climbs where my power dropped off while those from the 2007 ride show great pacing to allow a final sub hour climb of the Alpe.

One interesting thing is how even when I put more power into a climb (as on Glandon) this did not translate into me climbing it quicker. Think this is for a couple of reasons.

• Experience: the 2007 stats show the benefit of 4 years experience riding the Marmotte. The better you know a climb the better you can pace it in order to turn power into climbing speed. The Glandon for example includes a couple of short descents and if you execute these well you can gain quite a bit of time for not much effort.


• Weight: I weighed a bit more than the 70kg I had hoped, due to a surfeit of great food. Also I carried more food than I ended up eating + 2kg of sports drink, due to worries about feed stops. Actually found (if you start in early group/ride fast) plenty of food/drink and if doing again would carry less

Final interesting thing is how much extra power I needed on the descents/rides to base of Telegraph/ADH, yet still lost time. This is just a matter of luck. In both cases I was in small groups out of which only a handful of us seemed interested in doing any work. I think this was in part because I started well back within the first 2000 group to go off. Up the Glandon I moved quickly through the field but all the fastest people were already over the top by the time I hit it. If (most likely when) I do the event again I will get up earlier to ensure a place at the front of the group and may also risk going even harder up the Glandon, so as to ensure on the next section I have some fast company to work with.