After every Life Time Grand Prix race, we get a power debrief from Jim van den Berg from JOIN.cc. He analyses the outcome of the 4iiii power meter (get yours here), explains physiological differences between riders and discusses the technicalities of the parcours.

THE POWER DEBRIEF

The Sea Otter Classic was the first event of the Life Time Grand Prix; a series of 6 MTB and gravel events in the US, with a combined classification and a grand prize of 250.000 dollars. Laurens was the only European invited by the committee, after his great performance in last year’s Unbound. Dollar signs in the eyes or not, this is a series of races that doesn’t always have Laurens’ name written on them. Yes, it includes races on gravel for 300 kilometers, but also short and fast MTB events of 100 k.

 The series started with his least favorite subject: mountainbiking. With his skinny body, big but slow engine and his far from perfect handling skills, the Sea Otter Classic was about 220 kilometers too short and lacking 3000 meters of altitude to be a real nice race for Laurens’ body type. Furthermore, this type of parcours demands a full suspension mountainbike, which tells a lot about the surface, drops and the corners.

So for a straight road loving kinda guy, this race seemed like a tough job. But how did he perform? The parcours included two loops of 41,5 kilometer, which makes it interesting to compare the output. The first loop he finished with an average of 25,5 km/h and an average power of 283 Watt. The second loop, he needed 2,5 minutes extra to finish with an average power of 273 watt, so a little bit slower. In total, our gravel specialist rode 281 Watt on average and 328 Watt normalized.

Just to compare: the winner (and pro mountainbiker) Keegan Swenson rode 323 Watt on average for just under three hours. The big difference can be seen in the power output above 550 Watt. Laurens managed to ride almost 4 minutes in that red zone, whereas Keegan rode more than 12 minutes in it, which is 3 times as much. To be able to do this, you need the technique to manage your power, but also you will need strength and vigor. Laurens his quality is to keep a steady pace between 300 and 350 Watt for a long time. When it is about explosiveness and acceleration, he has to give room.

A similar difference can be seen in the power curve of this race. Laurens could not manage to do more than 389 Watt for 5 minutes and 352 Watt for 10 minutes. Two days before, fresh off the airplane, he could still squeeze out 421 Watt for 10 minutes. The big difference in the two efforts lies in the resistance on the legs. In Sea Otter it was more of a stop-and-go effort, while Laurens his 421 power output was measured under steady and equal resistance conditions. 

Even on the somewhat steady two kilometer climb towards the finish ( at a 5,5 % average), his power output fluctuates. In the first loop he took this climb with 355 Watt in 7.40 minutes. In the second loop, power fell down to 335 Watt, but he went faster by 38 seconds. It is fair to say that we didn’t loose a great mountainbike talent here, especially when we compare his effort to Keegan’s performance on this climb: 369 Watt and almost two minutes faster (5.55 minutes). Laurens finished Sea Otter Classic at a 42nd place. 

Long story short: let’s focus on Unbound. Let’s take the agenda and draw a nice red circle around June 9. Let’s see how the mountainbikers will digest 320 kilometers. 

All photo credits of this article go to Randy Higashi