Crits and Cross: The simplest analysis

Following are four standard power outputs from two recent cross races and two crits from earlier this year.  Three are the same from the last post, but I swapped out White Park for Sucker Brook because its power profile involved a lot more sprinting out of corners followed by some power sections.  I'm including these in a separate analysis to show that you can't always rely on this view to properly assess the demands of a particular discipline.

Quad CX

Two things stand out about this.  First, the peaks.  Rarely are they under 500w, and oftentimes they're between 600 to 1000 or more.  If you want a sprint-out-of-corners race, this is the cat's pajamas.  Second is the blank space underneath the lines.  Those black spots that stand out among all the yellow are times of constant power output.  The biggest, most obvious and repeated one is the long uphill fire road.  There are a couple more that correspond to other long stretches of constant power output, but for the most part the graph is either fully on or fully off.

Sucker Brook CX

The graph for Sucker Brook tells the same story as Quad.  I count 22 peaks alone above 825w, and countless above 600.  Similarly there are black spaces at the bottom of the graph for constant power output sections.  Again, very few.

Wells Crit

Now would you look at all that black space under the trace!  Much more constant power output, but still a very spiky graph.  Even the biggest peaks have some black space under them (I go for long sprints).  Also in contrast to the cross races, there are a few times where there are no peaks to really tax the sprinting muscle fibers.

Keith Berger Crit

Now that looks more like a cross race.  The six corner office park crit does require a lot of power spikes to keep up with the group out of corners and move up when gaps appear.  As for differences with cross, refer to the last post for a rundown on how the physiological pedaling strain compares to cross.  And if you really want to see more gaps under the power trace, just blow it up to full size.  They're shorter and more frequent than in a cross race.  The largest black space under the trace is my last lap attempt to get away, which looks like a very rough version of a "race winning interval."

This type of looking at the graph analysis is the kind of thing that leads to the "crits are cross on pavement" adages.  But after these few posts you know some of the finer details on what makes the disciplines similar and different, and can plan your training to reflect the differences.