With a full field of riders reamaining in the second stage of the Nature Valley Grand Priz and nice weather with low winds and relatively flat terrain, the Cannon Falls road race was a giant motor pacing session for the boys sitting in the field. They drafted along at an average speed of 27 mpg - not bad for a 60+ mile road race. As no riders where able to get away from the field, the race didn't get difficult until the final finishing circuits in the city of Cannon Falls.
The data files from Stage 2 bring up two interesting things to note. First, the importance of recovering quickly during a race. Second, the difference in power requirements for two riders with different riding styles riding relatively close to each other in the peloton.
First we'll zoom in on the finishing circuit portion of Steve Scholzen's and Jordan Roessingh's races. To note are the heart rates for the last 25 minutes of the stage. Notice how Scholzen's goes up and down, even dropping below 150 for a little bit, and Roessingh's, just continues to rise and rise until the point in the race where he cracked and lost contact with the peloton at one lap to go. In this example, Scholzen was recovering much better after short jumps than his teammate could, and he was able to stay in the main group to the end of the race. Even though the average power was pretty low for the end of the race, all of the 800+W jumps took its toll on Roessingh, while Scholzen could recover from them.
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Now let's compare the end of teammate Matthew Busche's race againts Scholzen's race. If you look at the end of Busche's race, he didn't have any 800+W efforts, while both Steve and Roessingh went into 'full sprints' multiple times (10+). This is an indication that Busche was surfing the field, always in good position, not braking too much into corners, and avoiding all of the hard accelerations that the other two riders were making. Busche and Scholzen were sitting in almost the same spot in the field, so there wasn't a position difference this time.
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