6th @ NC Championships

Ended up in 6th today.   I took 4th in the field sprint.  Today, the best I could have done was 3rd.  Two guys took flyers and were able to stay away.  With 5 to go, I was tired, so I decided to wait and make my move up with 3 to go. It was attack after attack and all about closing gaps and keeping a good wheel.  I simply chose the wrong wheel, a gap opened up and I had to make a big effort to move up.  At that point, I was happy sitting in where I was and had NO idea that the two had gone away.  When I crossed the line, I thought I’d gotten 4th!!  It was a bit of a surprise that I’d gotten 6th, but I’m happy with that position.  That’s the spot I deserved today and cheers to everyone else.  It was a good battle for sure.

The only thing I could have done better was to draft a little better and spend less time peddling.   Luck is the biggest variable and there is nothing I can do about that.

Cheers to the world champion for giving me tips on the course.

-B

Little tired

A little tired today. That's a good thing. Post race update next.

-B

Sent from my PDA

Training in the rain

Glad to see that I wasn't the only one to go out training in the rain today.  It wasn't that bad really.  

I'm looking forward to the NC Championships tomorrow and hope it rains there as well.

Race Schedule -Blance

May 24th    TOA Sunday Windward Circuits AM & PM

May 25th    NC Criterium Championships
June 6th    Port Royal Criterium (flat & fast)
June 7th    Beaufort Road Race (low priority)
June 14th   NC Road Race Championships
June 28th   NC State Games - Crit

July 10th   Piedmont Triad Omnium Crit
July 17th   French Broad TT
July 18th   French Broad Crit Brevard (short uphill to s/f, technical corse)
July 19th   French Broad Crit Asheville (tight course like Dillworth)
Aug 1st     Ashville Grand Prix (long 400m hill, right turn, 300m hill, 30m grunt then downhill-repeat)
Aug 4th     Crossroads Mocksville Crit (low priority)
Aug 8th     Crossroads Harrisburg Crit
Sep 12th    Walnut Cove (low priority, pretty far away)
*Sep 19th   Dylan Mitchell Memorial Race*
*Sept 20th  Vista Gran Prix*
Sept 26th   Beaufort Crit
*Oct 10th   Greenville Cycling Classic*
*Oct 11th   Greenville Cycling Classic*

The *’s denote race will be in form for and will have a focus on.  

peak

It's a funny what it feels like to go through a peak.  HR is really low compared to power effort.  You can dig a little deeper for the harder efforts blah. blah.  The weird thing is the way I feel.  What I think is that I'm a little tired, but it's not really that.  My body is "primed" more than anything. I'm a bit more relaxed on the bike and making LT power is almost effortless while my awareness is much greater.  I can really tell now by how I "feel" when I'm making LT power.  That may be more of training than peaking, but it's quite coincidental. 

Breath

There is nothing more important than learning how to control your breathing when performing a threshold interval.  You can (like I did today) kill you power screw up your form by not relaxing and breathing.  Practice focusing on your breath while you are making hard efforts in training so you don't wear yourself out in a race--or hard group ride. 

While focusing on breath, also make sure you are smooth on the bike and not wasting energy.  Form is so critical to maximizing your energy/breath/power.

The results are in...

Bike fit.  That's it.  With the bike properly fit, I was able to wack out 1714w after being in the saddle for close to 2.5 hours on a hard group ride.  More importantly, no saddle sores.  AHHHH...

I'll do some tempo stuff later this week and see if I'm able to make more power for that type of effort as well.  Regardless: NO SADDLE SORES!!

  

If you haven't gotten a fit, you are doing yourself a dis-service.   Get fit and get fit!

bike fit

To those who haven't, go out there today and get a bike fit.  Make sure it's someone you trust and then always go back to that person.  Case in point, I got the new Scott, but didn't get a fit.  The bike was supposed to be set to the same numbers as my old bike (which I was "fitted" to).  Not so much.  I knew something was off, but I had enough after the 5th saddle sore.  I got a today and it was a great bit off in one area (2cm) and a little off in another 4mm.  Argh...

Now that the position is right.  I feels right and I should be able to the same top end power that I made on the Giant.  That's been the most baffling thing to me.  I made more top end (1690w 1595w-5 seconds) on the Giant than on the Scott.  I could bend the Giant like a noodle, but not the Scott.  The most I've made on the Scott was 1472w -CP5.  Let's see what I can do now that I'm in a good position. 

A bit of history.  When I got my 1st fit on the Giant, the reason for the fit was to get ride of saddle sore problem and to optimize my position for racing.  As soon as the fit was done, the sore problem went a way and I was in a powerful racing position.