Physiological Demands of Simulated Off-Road Cycling Competition

Table 4. Data of three clusters (Good, Medium and Low Performance) consisting of subjects with significantly different racing time (clusters calculated by k-means analysis). Data are shown for variables measured during COMP. For description of variables see Table 2. Values are (means ± SD).

Data determined from Mountain Bike Competition (COMP)
Variables	Cluster 1 (n = 5) Good Performance	Cluster 2 (n = 12) Medium Performance	Cluster 3 (n = 7) Low Performance
Racing time (s)	3444(201) ^ab	3867(118) ^ac	4362(174) ^bc
Power output (W)	231(2) ^ab	184(17) ^ac	155(19) ^bc
Power output (W·kg^-1)	3.18 (.29) ^ab	2.69 (.27) ^ac	2.26 (.31) ^bc
Cadence (rev·min^-1)	72(9)	70(7)	69(5)
VO_2COMP (ml·kg^-1·min^-1)	64.8 (5.0) ^ab	57.5 (4.2) ^ac	50.7 (4.3) ^bc
Heart rate (bpm)	165(17)	168(7)	172(19)
V_E (l·min^-1)	129(29) ^b	118(13) ^ac	101(14) ^b
RER	.90 (.09)	.89 (.03)	.91 (.03)
BLa (mmol·l^-1)	5.9 (.9)	5.9 (1.5)	6.2 (1.6)

^c Medium Performance vs. Low Performance significantly different.^b Good Performance vs. Low Performance significantly different.^a Good Performance vs. Medium Performance significantly different.