I got sidetracked this morning with a mini-project: I was curious what a good pacing strategy was to achieve the best 1-minute power. I’ve tried various strategies over the years, but never quite figured out what was the most effective. I know one that doesn’t work for me and that is when I start out as hard as I can, then let my power fade all the way to the 60-second mark. Not only does it fail to give me good wattage, but it also hurts the most!

Another technique I’ve used is trying to peg my wattage near my most recent 1-minute mean maximal power (MMP), with a 10-second out-of-the-saddle effort at the end. But the strategy that seems to give me the best results is starting with an out-of-the-saddle, sub-maximal sprint for ~10 seconds (padding the ave power w/some high-wattage), then sitting down and cranking it at 90% for seconds 10 through 45, then finally standing and giving it all I’ve got for the last 15 seconds. But I wanted to know if there would be a trend if I looked at the actual power graphs for my top 1-minute peak powers.

So in order to find my top 1-minute efforts, I used the Performance Management Chart (PMC) in CyclingPeaks. I removed the PMC-related series (ATL, CTL, TSB) then added a data series for 1-minute MMP. The reason I had to use the PMC is that it’s the only chart that has the option to “Show Bests”. So I set it to show my six best 1-minute MMPs, then set the chart date to include all dates since I got my PowerTap. For me, that’s five years of data! So the initial chart is blank because it can’t draw the entire chart in the given space!

So I had to double-click the chart to maximize it, then size the window wide enough to display the chart. Fortunately, I use multiple-monitors because I had to make it so wide that it spanned two monitors before the chart displayed. Then I hovered the mouse pointer over each 1-minute data point to get the dates of the efforts.

I then opened each workout and highlighted the 1-minute peak for the ride and took a screenshot. Finally, I compiled all the charts into the above figure. After all that work, I’m not sure I can call one pacing strategy better than the others, but I definitely confirmed something I already knew: a steep hill with a constant grade is the best place to test 1-minute power! The Hillsdale circuit race course hill and the Bogus Prologue hill both fit this description well! I also seem to always have a record 1-minute effort the day before a race during my prep workout. This makes sense as I’m usually tapered and “fresh” at that point.