Donald takes Second and Tolleson Earns Best Young Rider Jersey
2/18/2007 - Allen Lim
It was a pretty incredible day for all of us on Team Slipstream Sports-Chipotle. We came into this prologue with huge expectations and a real belief that we would make an impact on this race. With Jason Donald's second place finish today (only 1 second off of Levi Leipheimer and almost 5 seconds ahead of 3rd) and Taylor Tolleson taking home the best young rider jersey, we definitely gave it our best and made an impression in the process.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest keys to today's performance was the decision to go with 100 mm deep rear Blackwell wheels built with the new wireless PowerTap instead of a standard disc. After a number of discussions with John Cobb and his staff at Blackwell Research it was apparent that a disc would not be any more aerodynamic than a 100 mm deep. More importantly, based on the course profile of today's prologue, we knew that pacing strategy was going to be a bigger determinant of speed than any other factor.
On a course with varied terrain, going to hard on the down hill sections or flats and not going hard enough on the uphill sections can greatly decrease time for a given average power output. I addition, if a rider goes too hard initially and blows up, they often finish with an average power output that is much lower that it would be if they had started out a little easier. The problem is that just listening to feel isn't always enough, especially for a young team in the middle of all of the excitement and adrenaline of the first and biggest race of the season. The general tendency is that because
of all the excitement and adrenaline, the riders just go out way too hard. In fact, Jonathan, our team director's major concern before this race was that our riders would blow themselves up before the climb up to Coit Tower and
that the only way we could really showcase our talent was to have our riders meter their efforts using the PowerTap.
So before the start of today's race, the plan for all of the guys was to go for a power output 30 to 40 watts lower than their 5 minute best power in the first half of the race along the flats. Then as they approached the hill, they would open up the turbo and go flat out on the climb at 100 to 150 watts higher than their 5 minute best power. The basic premise was that
since their speed is already very high along the flat section (making aerodynamics a much bigger determinant of speed than power), losing 30 to 40 watts along that section would have a negligible impact on speed. It would, however, keep them a little bit fresher for the hill. And since the speed on the hill is a lot slower, any increase in power output would make their total speed much faster relative to others.
In the end, Jason Donald nailed his pacing strategy and used the PowerTap to keep his ride in check along the flat Embarcadero road. During the race, holding back made that section feel far too easy. But in the end it allowed
him to throw in a huge kick on the steep climb to the finish.
All that said, Jason's power was still amazing. For the entire 4 minutes and 50 seconds of his prologue, he averaged 539 Watts. On the flat section he averaged 489 Watts for 1:40 (min:sec), and on the climb he averaged 677 watts for 2:10 (min:sec). Not bad for a first year pro who two months ago was driving a garbage truck, so he could follow his dream of being a professional cyclist.