Olympic Hopeful Daniel Lloyd Races in the Vuelta Ciclista a Extremadura
5 June 2008
British Olympic Hopeful Daniel Lloyd secured the yellow jersey on the second-to-last day and held onto his lead through the final stage to take the overall win in the Vuelta Ciclista a Extremadura Spanish stage race, held April 23rd to the 27th. Lloyd races for the Sean Kelly Team, an extension of the Sean Kelly Academy set up by Cycling Ireland to give young Irish cyclists a base from which to compete in Belgium. He trains using software designed by Peaksware, and is coached by Hunter Allen, founder of TrainingPeaks WKO+ (formerly CyclingPeaks Software) and author of Training and Racing with a Power Meter. Daniel shared his WKO+ file from the race with us, noting that it was a challenging day featuring many short attacks. “It was the penultimate stage, hilly but not mountainous. Lacking long extended climbs the file shows how it was a day of many repeated short efforts from the start to the finish. In particular, the last 20 minutes I was attacked constantly, with 11 or 12 sprints over 1000w, and many more just under. Luckily, I was on a great day and was able to respond well to everything and kept myself with the other GC contenders across the line.”
An analysis of Daniel’s WKO+ file from the race shows that his Normalized Power over the entire course was 318 watts, while his Average Power was 254 watts. In other words, the additional stress caused by so many short bursts of power meant that the race “felt like” a steady power output of 318 watts. His Maximum Power Output was 1269 watts, which shows just how extreme many of those short bursts of power really were. Take a look at the screen shot below of his WKO+ file to get an idea of the real variation in power output:
At the time that Daniel rode in this stage of the Vuelta Ciclista a Extremadura, his Functional Threshold Power (FTP) was 370 watts, with a heart rate at FTP of approximately 175 bpm, maybe slightly lower by the fourth day of the stage race, and a body weight of 70kg. Functional Threshold Power is the maximum level of power output that an athlete can maintain for an hour. For more information on Functional Threshold Power, click here.
After the Vuelta a Extremadura race in Spain, Daniel rode an eight-day race in Ireland and the Tour of Belgium, giving him 13 days racing out of 15 days. He is planning to take some time to recover, before building towards the national championships at the end of June.
No comments yet
