So why this post?
You may want to grab a tea or coffee, this is going to be long… 🙂
There’s always a lot of speculation and gossip following any race in Taiwan, or maybe I should just say any race anywhere. People are curious, so I guess that is to be expected. If you know Shao Long, she absolutely despises this type of talk. Who did what, who trained hard, who cheated, who caused the crash, how much power does so and so have, but most of all she hates the self-depreciation and excuses. Ride your race, be as safe as possible, do your best, and tip your hat to the winner. Don’t make excuses and most of all win and lose gracefully. Some of this kind of talk was flying around a bit after Sunday’s race so I’ve decided (with her blessing) to write this post to uncover all of the “secrets” of Shao Long’s prep and race strategy. If you hear anything else that deviates from this post, it’s just bullshit.
Going back to last year
To begin I’d like to go back to last year to set the context of how she trained this year. As most riders do, she took a pretty big break at the end of 2017 and started ramping up her training in early 2018. She was due to participate in the Tour of Bintan which is a rolling 140k race with tremendous heat in March (pretty early). Looking at the past results, she knew this would absolutely be her hardest event to date. Given the caliber of rider, just keeping up would require an huge effort, and probably beyond her means given her level to that point. She stayed with the lead group to about 125k to go but then popped, it remains her hardest effort on the bike so far.
So after that, she turned her attention to the 2018 197 race which was actually her first priority for the year, but something never quite came together. She wasn’t finishing training sessions, or not finishing enough of them, and going into the race she just didn’t feel right. Race day came and she struggled at some points to stay with the group, but managed to make the final climb and actually put in a good effort for her circumstances. She finished second to a rider that consistently beats her, so no shame in that, but like I said something wasn’t quite right.
After that she looked and acted tired. She slowed down her riding but it didn’t stop her from developing bad bronchitis. She was looking forward to KOM in October, trained ineffectively (she’s stubborn) but the bronchitis stayed with her through that race and she had a miserable time. One of biggest failings as a husband is not being insistent that she shut it down for an extended period after 197 and just bagging KOM. She was really down on racing and cycling in general and it was a bit of a sad time.
That takes us to this year
Ok, so that’s the context heading into this year which saw her actually start a little later and keep her travel/event schedule light at the beginning of the year. Training sessions were long and steady efforts rather than the high intensity efforts that dominated her training up to Bintan and then again before 197 in 2018. There really are no shortcuts here, if you stress your body too much it will shut down and it’s a multi-year effort to get your body to take increasing loads and intensity. This would be her fourth year training, and year 3 was all kinds of “too much and wrong time” while this year saw a marked effort to scale back and ramp slowly. Her total TSS for this year so far is about 13,000 and for 2018 it was 12500 to this point. Wait, didn’t I just say she scaled back? Well yes, the important thing here is all TSS is not created equal. In 2018 she had wild fluctuations from week to week partly because she wasn’t feeling right and taking some weeks light after a hard week. The other factor is the intensity of the workouts with high intensity work making up a larger percentage of her overall TSS accumulation, particularly in the early part of the year. This is beyond stupid and I take full responsibility. That said, this year she was extremely confident and feeling great.
Loving 197- Taiwan’s best amateur race
With all of that context I’ll shift focus to focus to this year’s 197 now. For those who don’t know, 197 is largely a rolling race of about 125km along Taiwan’s east coast. It is by far the country’s best run and most attended amateur race. In my mind there are two key features of the course. The first is a little before halfway when the course turns off the main road into very narrow village streets before returning back onto the main road and doing a complete 180. This 180 turn deposits the riders on long uphill straight to a tunnel. Here’s a photo from Google of it…it’s seriously long and the turn is generally chaos as riders slow to a crawl then try to blast up the little hill (it’s actually not that little).
Many people get dropped here. If you aren’t out front and in good position around the turn, you will waste a lot of energy trying to make it back on. Shao Long’s first goal was to be at the front at the turn off and then up the climb to the tunnel. She did this perfectly.
The second feature is of course the final climb which can be viewed on Strava here:
https://www.strava.com/segments/4911150
This climb at the end of 120k of racing is perfect. The numbers are a little deceiving as there are actually a couple of downhill sections that make the grade seem slight. The beginning section is actually about 6% with ramps up to 9ish. The last 200m is similar. When moving along the coast, winds can be high, so you need to be really strong to attempt a break and you really need at least 3-5 compatriots. The open women & men’s 50+ are paired and they ride hard but generally there isn’t any of the cooperation necessary to make a break work, so the race always goes into the final climb with all the contenders together (barring any crash or mechanical difficulties).
Shao Long’s race strategy this year
The previous section is important in understanding Shao Long’s strategy. Everything rides on how well you can do the final climb. Bike racing is rarely about who can ride well when it’s not important or who is the strongest rider at any particular point of the race. Racing is about strategy, and employing one that best suits your strengths. There are no rewards for foolishly trying to animate the race if you can’t hurt your competitors in doing so (do they still do that silly most aggressive rider thing in the Pro Tour?). There’s no reward for trying to “make other people work”, or “doing work” that is fruitless in your own pursuits or the pursuits of your team, quite the opposite in fact. Generally, people who win bike races deploy their energy at the right time and every other moment is about conserving as much energy as possible. If someone wants to be proud of doing those silly things, fine, but just understand it doesn’t typically win races.
After the turn up to the tunnel I was able to view Shao Long a little better as the peloton had thinned considerably. She was executing her strategy perfectly, staying just off the front out of danger from crashes, protected from the wind/air, and able to see and react to any moves or accelerations with minimal effort.
In the photo above she looks bored and that is perfect. Here are her stats for the entire race which as you can see aren’t at all impressive in and of themselves, but that’s the point here.
A quick note, the power meter on this bike reads 10% low, I won’t get into the details of this, but you can generally add this amount to get a more accurate numbers if it matters to you. Check out that right/left imbalance peaking out, she’ll be working on that for sure.
Ok, so we arrive at the final climb
So, the race came down to the final climb like it always does. The week prior she came to scout the climb in detail. She rode it 4 times, three times slow and one hard effort as a practice. The three times slowly was more important. Knowing the critical junctures of the this climb is invaluable. You know you have about a 20 minute effort, but knowing the context of the course for that 20 minutes is something that can make or break a result. Shao Long knew exactly where she was at every part of that climb…with this knowledge and what was happening around her, she could control her effort appropriately, not to mention the basic comfort of knowing what comes next.
I’ve posted the video that we have (thank you friend you know who you are)…there are parts missing where the driver had to move away to stay out of the way on the downhill sections or other hazards so about half the climb is there.
It’s exciting and well worth the watch despite the quality, but I’m biased. Shao Long enters the climb in front. She feels the first, steeper part of the race will see her at her most disadvantaged against her competition. Remember though, she’s essentially been resting in the peloton this entire time, so she feels she can put in a very hard effort early and one of two things will happen; 1. She’ll surprise folks and walk away from everyone or 2. She’ll put herself in position to at least hold a wheel of a lighter climber. In actuality neither happened. The second rider sort of stays behind her, even moves in front for a bit, but at this point Shao Long is just riding to her number comfortably once settled in. In a sense, mission accomplished so far.
So on to plan B…after the bottom there are a couple of points in the climb that offer some false flats/short ramps leading into downhill sections and Shao Long had planned to use these as attack points. False flats suit her better and she’s pretty good at going downhill. The notion was if she could put herself out of sight, she might be able to stay away. She tried, it didn’t work, the other rider matched her effort and downhill skill. So, what now? Again, knowing the climb was critical. Shao Long decided to rest a bit and wait because she knew the climb would ramp up a bit at the end and if she had any chance she needed to conserve as much energy for that final push. The other rider is flat out strong and at times Shao Long needs to dig deep to stay up with her, but not too deep. Running up to the final 200m where it steepens, the other rider pops and Shao Long is able to maintain her effort which was of course still quite high for her. She maintains through the line for the win.
Here are the stats for roughly the final climb, the most interesting number here to me for her is the cadence as she’s worked on it quite a bit the past couple years. Reminder, adding 20 watts to this is more reflective of the real number. Her current FTP is 208, so this really isn’t some crazy effort.
Her final power output over the last km was approaching 250 watts (again adjusted) as shown below (some weirdness in the data here but the power output is in line with expectations). The very end saw peak power go over 400 but her peak interval training is currently around 650-700.
It’s not a huge number in and of itself but it’s pretty good final effort for her. In training she can do intervals of that length closer to 300. This is something I want to learn more about and try to help her improve. With the exception of Bintan, her greatest efforts are always during training which isn’t ideal. But in this case, race strategy/ understanding the moment and the context is what won the race for Shao Long, not raw power and I couldn’t be more proud of her for that. Thanks for reading this lengthy post, happy to answer questions in the comments below. Oh, and congrats Shao Long…keep on keeping on!
A limitless accumulation of the imperfect... 