These guys are good.
Well, that's another bike race in the books - did the socal/nevada district road race yesterday. Found out that despite my setting all time personal best power records for the 2-3 minute duration period (I've been using a power meter since 2003-ish), that's just not quite enough (rather, it's not even close!!) to stand on the top step of the podium in the M35+ class down here in SoCal. Here's the SRM screenshot of the finale:
A wee-bit frustrated with the way things went/turned out (finished 21st out of about 25 guys that made the final bunch - I think around 50 or so started the day...), but hey, that's bike racin', eh?
Things that I am happy with:
1) preparation - I had estimated that the major climb on the course was going to take anywhere in the 3-4 minute range and I'd need to make 5.0-5.5W/kg each of the 5 times up the sucker to make the main group. There were a couple other small hills on the course that, when combined I figured I'd need to be able to do 30 ish minutes at 5.0 + W/kg over a two hour period. So, I did some chunk rides during my lunch hour that focused on making over 5.0 W/kg in significant chunks of time. Guess what, it turns out I can do about 20 minutes of 5.0+ W/kg during an hour's workout - might have been able to do more total time, but you know, I've got "meetings at the office " I needed to get back to! :-)
Anyway, those chunk rides were really key for me - they gave me confidence and really raised the left a bit. The efforts in the actual race seemed way easier than those chunk ride efforts (that might be because I basically crammed the entire race's "goin' hard" efforts into half the time.
I also made sure that I had some "fill" needs taken care of - about 8 days out I did a 2500 KJ day just to make sure the right side of the ol' power duration curve was taken care of - ya know, just in case I was riding hard tempo in a break for two hours or so... Race day KJ's were only 1400KJ, for what it's worth - that's a lot of coasting and soft pedaling, eh?
2) I felt like I rode as smart a race as possible. Honestly, I don't know what I could have done differently to have changed the outcome significantly - I mean, there is just a lot of horsepower in these fields. There was a break of two that was off for most of the day, and they dangled at 30 seconds to a minute for 4 laps or so. Maybe I could have been more aggressive, but some guys were trying stuff, and basically just wound up impaling themselves on the sword of Cynergy/Mark Noble's squad (Central Coast Magazing, I think it is??). Basically, I kept waiting for the split to happen on the climb, and when it didn't happen after the fourth of five times up the hill, well, it was basically destined to coming down to "how hard can you go for 2-3 minutes". I went as hard as I could...
These guys are good!
A wee-bit frustrated with the way things went/turned out (finished 21st out of about 25 guys that made the final bunch - I think around 50 or so started the day...), but hey, that's bike racin', eh?
Things that I am happy with:
1) preparation - I had estimated that the major climb on the course was going to take anywhere in the 3-4 minute range and I'd need to make 5.0-5.5W/kg each of the 5 times up the sucker to make the main group. There were a couple other small hills on the course that, when combined I figured I'd need to be able to do 30 ish minutes at 5.0 + W/kg over a two hour period. So, I did some chunk rides during my lunch hour that focused on making over 5.0 W/kg in significant chunks of time. Guess what, it turns out I can do about 20 minutes of 5.0+ W/kg during an hour's workout - might have been able to do more total time, but you know, I've got "meetings at the office " I needed to get back to! :-)
Anyway, those chunk rides were really key for me - they gave me confidence and really raised the left a bit. The efforts in the actual race seemed way easier than those chunk ride efforts (that might be because I basically crammed the entire race's "goin' hard" efforts into half the time.
I also made sure that I had some "fill" needs taken care of - about 8 days out I did a 2500 KJ day just to make sure the right side of the ol' power duration curve was taken care of - ya know, just in case I was riding hard tempo in a break for two hours or so... Race day KJ's were only 1400KJ, for what it's worth - that's a lot of coasting and soft pedaling, eh?
2) I felt like I rode as smart a race as possible. Honestly, I don't know what I could have done differently to have changed the outcome significantly - I mean, there is just a lot of horsepower in these fields. There was a break of two that was off for most of the day, and they dangled at 30 seconds to a minute for 4 laps or so. Maybe I could have been more aggressive, but some guys were trying stuff, and basically just wound up impaling themselves on the sword of Cynergy/Mark Noble's squad (Central Coast Magazing, I think it is??). Basically, I kept waiting for the split to happen on the climb, and when it didn't happen after the fourth of five times up the hill, well, it was basically destined to coming down to "how hard can you go for 2-3 minutes". I went as hard as I could...
These guys are good!
Labels: racing
posted by kraig at
10:16 PM
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