Race 2 down, lungs out of action

Well, an interesting first real time out on the new bike, in a crit. First conclusion is nice, handles very well and is smooth.. but... the wheels are a little more flexible than I hoped they would be. I bought a pair of Zipp 404's and like them a lot and as long as your not putting out over around 700W they will be fine. The problem starts when you start going up hill at a pace, which is where I was starting to experience brake rub on alternating sides. Maybe it was in part due to the way I stand and swing the bike, however I never get anything with the old SSCL's. Will have to try some different bike handling out to counter some of the lateral flex pressure at the next race.

During the race I started off with hayfeaver and a sore throat, which I put down mainly to the sneezing as I usually get a sore throat early on when I get hayfeaver, although I suspected I may have had a very light cold. Anyhow, during the race I was not going all out and my nose was starting to really hurt on the right hand nostril, which was a bit of a distraction. Manouvering to the side to blow snot rather than blunderbus the pack behind seemed a little more sivilised and safer after hearing about a crash being caused by riders swerving out of the way of a snot blast ! The pain only dissapeared a couple of times when I was chasing breaks down. After the race, the following day, the worst I thought would happend and the throat infection had been sucked into my lungs, so back to the vitamins, sleep and R&R. Bit dissapointing but another lesson learnt.

The race itself was a little dull as it was on the inner circuit and you did not really require your brakes (appart from stopping yourself ramming the rider in front) so it was a repetition of a break attempt on every 2-3 laps going off the front and then either they drifted back or were pulled back in. A couple of times some riders broke off and loked as if they would hold as nobody was really wanting to chase that much and I pulled a couple of breaks in, which left me at the front or very near a fair bit of the time. As time went on a couple of riders broke away and then another two and at that point I realised I did not have a clue what time it was, cue the quick drift around the bunch to look at cycle computers and watches. Did to have time to fix my garmin on, which is what I wanted to use as it would do lap times, but did not have time on the day. For quite a few laps I could tell they were not doing a pace much faster than the bunch as they were only pulling away relatively slowly.

Anyhow, the time was near an hour after the start and the 5 lap countdown started, which left me with the option of breaking to chase or waiting to see if the pace picked up before going later (lap 2 or 3). By the time a couple of laps went past I was near the front and ended up going into the last lap at the front, not where I wanted to be as I could not do anything without dragging everyone along, so I slowed down a bit. Nobody passed and I trundled along hoping the pace would get picked up by someone else, which never happened until we were near the base of the hill. By this time a few riders accelerated past from a few poisitions behind and I had to accelerate to catch up. Halfway up the hill I was around 4th, which meant 8th overall, in the bunch and going well as I could see some of the riders pace level off or decrease, however I thought chasing for 8th is not what I want to do and eased off. Bad thing to do I suppose but I was happy with what happened as I almost free wheeled over the line as riders were still sprinting past.

Lesson for the next race is to turn up 100% fit, not stressed, better clothed (was a little too cold for what I was wearing and my shirt was riding up my back), water bottle and my garmin attached. Then I'll ride a better race to aim for 5th upwards and put some more effort in.

Recovery completed with a new max heart rate ?

Well, must have been over doing it quite a bit on lack of quality recovery time (60%) and over training (40%) from what I can fathom out of the whole experience. Rode in to work last week and on the return leg home I managed to get my heart rate up to 187bpm on the one small hill I have to climb en route and felt reasonable (as reasonable as you can be after 45 miles on the bike and a day at work). So, it was a nice day on Sunday and ventured back out with the club run to initially intend to have a very gentle ride out and back to wherever was the scheduled destination (never bother to find out as it does not really matter).

The ride out was nice and gentle, quite moderate, with no sprint or interval sessions mixed in with the ride not turning into a race on the outward leg. Spent some time on the front, which allowed the pace to be controlled a little to just below my threashold for a period of time and all felt ok, even into the headwind !

The ride home started off reasonable and moderate, for a period, before the pace started to pick up and turned into a 25-30mph run for a while, which was good as I was sat in line and had no intention to have a go on the front at that pace. Further on the pace eased a little as we approached one of the longer slow hills and then the power stepped up during the climb, again all going well. Then one of the riders passed by (2 were in front of me at the time) as he put the hammer down for one of the usual race periods and I set off to follow, it was during this sprint catch up effort that I put my heart rate at 190bpm for 18 seconds. It was not during that effort either that I managed to get my 3rd best 20 second output, so all being well I'm racing on Thursday, recovered :-)