The power you’re able to sustain isn’t necessarily going to be the same as someone else as it depends on your training and endurance. You’ll also need to make your own adjustments from 5000’ to Leadville Altitude.
Here’s my personal plan right now. Sea Level FTP 310, Maybe higher by this point. 10,000’ adjusted FTP somewhere around 250 (80%). At the top of Columbine that adjusted FTP works out to 75% or around 232 for me . I am targeting an NP of 190-200, and trying to put a climbing “cap” below adjusted FTP where possible. So my NP would work out to the same 60-65% of my Sea Level FTP for the day. I’m going to monitor how I’m feeling, and how close I am to 9 hour splits at different checkpoints, and depending on how I’m doing, may ramp it up a little, or may find myself just holding on.
But, I’m also at a CTL of around 70 right now, doing ~15 hours a week on the bike, and just did a 3 hour sweet spot / endurance workout (4x25/5 @ 90%) followed by endurance and that was pretty middle of the road manageable for me, and that’d be rated as a very difficult SS workout. I’ve also gone out and done 100+ mile training rides using the MTB on the road, and been fine and ready to go 2 days later. So, my endurance tolerance for holding a higher pace has been going up.
I also get to test this out in a race scenario soon as I’ll be at Lutsen in two weeks, and then at the LV Camp the week after.
No, it was tailing off at that point in the day, but still able to hold ~65% (which still had me moving up positions). My target was sub 9 (I’m 1 and 1 in my 2 attempts) and that’s my target again this year. To go sub 9, my rule of thumb is to start the powerline climb by 6:30 into the race with some legs left. So, that’s my litmus test in training (go ~race pace for ~6:30 and see where my legs are at). For sub 8, I’m guessing you need to be hitting powerline by 5:45ish with decent legs.
I saw a ride report this week and they said the entire course is rideable except a very short section of snow on sugarloaf that had to be walked and you can’t quite make it to the turn around on columbine (but sounds like you can get pretty close). I’m surprised it’s that rideable so early with the heavy snow this year. I’ve always seen snow visible while riding near the top of columbine in August, I expect there will be quite a bit this year.
The earliest I usually ride up in the Leadville area is July for Silver Rush most years and there always would be a good patch of snow you’d have to hike through before they changed the course slightly a year or two back to avoid it.
That’s pretty much sums up my thought on that section, snow or no snow.
I’ve been able to make it up powerline without getting off the bike during a pre-ride, but I’ve never been close to cleaning those nasty steep/loose spots on columbine (I think there are 2-3 spots that I always walk). Not really a technical problem, it just takes me too far into the red at that altitude and walking those sections works better for me.
Lifetime sent out corral emails today, so check your inbox (or spam folder) if you are expecting a corral assignment and make sure they got it right. Mine was correct. As far as I know, you have to send in a request for the corral assignment with your result from a qualifier (it wasn’t an automated process in year’s past, expect maybe the Stage Race).
Anyone know the process for requesting a corral assignment? I have a qualifier I can send in now, but am also racing Lutsen tomorrow so am hoping for a better one.
If they’ve sent our corral assignments now, but the Tahoe 100 event isn’t until 15-July, how does that play into corrals? Are you allowed to use 2022 results for 2023 Leadville, or do they have to be from this season?
(I’m not racing either this year, just trying to better understand the process for 2024/2025).
It’s generally the current year or prior year qualifier (if the qualifier happens prior to leadville during the year). See list of qualifier events and corral times below from the lifetime website (all of these can be used for corral placement for 2023 race). Since you can get a leadville spot and defer to a future year to do that race, this allows you to still use that race for corral placement even if it happened over a year prior. There have been some exceptions made the last few years due to the registration screw ups and covid, but I think those are mostly flushed out at this point.
Well, got myself upgraded to the purple corral at Lutsen assuming corral times stay where they are. I’m less than 4 minutes out of the green, so might be nice with a 5-10 minute adjustment in my favor because of the mud-fest, but I’m not holding my breath
Definitely had the fitness to go green, or maybe even red if conditions had been ideal and I’d known the course better / paced better so I’m real happy how it went.
Checked into an AirBnB in Leadville last night for the camp next weekend, so now I’m sitting here out of breath drinking my coffee, and probably have half a day of cleaning my bike ahead of me before it’s in good shape again.
Yeah, stage race hasn’t happened yet either, but I assume they can’t wait until every race is done to start the process. It seems very manual with emails back and forth, fixing mistakes, etc. And people are impatient/anxious and don’t want to wait until a week before the race to know they are properly assigned.
I just raced Lutsen as well and my time puts me just a few minutes off from silver, so I am holding out for a slight adjustment, too. I did a quick comparison of placings at Lutsen per corral time between this year and last year. This has me thinking that an adjustment is probably needed for green and lower but gold through red look pretty similar.
I just completed Lutsen99er and narrowly missed the cutoff for the green corral at least based off of the, not yet finalized, 2023 lutsen99er corral times. The course was a little different this year and they anticipated faster times so the estimated times for 2023 cutoffs were faster than the 2022 event by 10 minutes for the green corral. (6:25 versus 6:15)
I compared times from 2022 to 2023 and it turns out they’re almost exactly the same (I’d guess on average only 2 minutes faster for 2023 versus 2022). So I’m now eagerly awaiting the finalized corral times for 2023 and hoping that they’ll be more similar to the 2022 cutoff times which would then give me a green corral time.
Anyone know how long it usually takes after a race for the corral times to be finalized?
They change the corral qualification times for qualifiers if the course itself is substantially modified from previous years, but not usually just due to environmental conditions on an unmodified course. The more common example is what if it’s just really hot on a particular course one year. That’s going to impact times but they’re not always going to change the qualification times.
They certainly might do it, it’s just not a default thing they do in my experience over the past 5 years or so.
Based on what I’ve seen in the past for other qualifiers, they don’t typically adjust (in either direction) unless it’s way out of whack (much more than 10 minutes). That doesn’t mean they won’t do it this year (especially if they were feeling out a course change), but I personally wouldn’t get my hopes up. What makes you think the published 2023 times aren’t final? Is someone at Lifetime saying they are reviewing it based on results?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think there is a significant disadvantage starting in purple vs. green as long as you are near the front of that group going into the St. Kevin’s climb. Assuming you are borderline green/purple fitness, you’ll be riding with the same folks either way once the race spreads out a bit (and your clock starts 3 minutes later). Shouldn’t have any congestion issues being one of the stronger riders in purple based on what I’ve heard. Only downside is a slightly lower probability of finding fast riders to work with on the way to twin lakes.
