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For me, 150w is something I’d be able to push all day, as it’s Z1 (recovery). However, avg power tells very little of the story. He won’t have been riding at 150w up any climbs, so it’s his NP that would tell more about how hard a days work really is in this race.
Anyway, by this stage he’ll just be pushing whatever he can with such huge fatigue in his system. What would have felt like no effort on days one and two will now feel like agony if have thought.
TTM
I think part of what makes the riders so good is knowing how much effort they can put in without waking up the next day unable to walk, which surely comes only from vast amounts of training and data. Effort goes with the square of velocity (approx) so if you double your speed you're doing 4× the work and you're only going to last ¼ of the time - even though you're twice as fast you're only going to get half way. So if you set that effort level slightly too high you aren't going to make it to the end. Happens every year that someone sprints off and then slows down massively or quits after a couple of days when their body packs in.
It's like Froomey in the TdF riding everywhere at constant power, you need to figure out exactly what that max effort level is that you can do for a series of 16h days.
For a casual day ride it's hard to get into that mentality of conserving your energy, I'm sure everyone here is the same but I sprint nearly everywhere on my short commute (and arrive sweaty) and I also waste effort doing stupid things on day rides like climbing up hills in the big ring. I do the same on the first day every time I go touring and then I pay for it the rest of the week. If I rode like that in a race like this I would blow up in 2 days. If I could slow down on the first day I would be faster overall.
I might try a solo ride from Edinburgh to Birmingham in Oct and see how far I get
Edit: I think skinny was doing like 150W avg. the other day? I never ridden with a power meter but those of you who have maybe you can offer a comparison for how easy/hard that is and how long you can ride at that power