I just came back from Mt. Diablo TT. So here is my cautionary tale of what
not to do. On Tuesday I did a crit in Davis, after that I stayed off the bike because of a business trip. On Thursday evening I had this brilliant idea of trying out hotels gym, I ran for a while (I don't run!), tried the stepping machine, even one of those pedaling machines (I hated it with a passion). Came back late Friday, calf muscles still sore from Thursdays "work out'. Hmm you think I might have over did it with unfamiliar exercises? I think so. Went to bed around 1am. As I was falling a sleep a strange thought crossed my mind, did I remember to swap 11/23 for something that won't destroy my knees on a climb? If you guessed no, then you are correct. Swapped out the cassette and passed out on a bed.
Woke up at 5:30am, feeling somewhat sick. No biggie I always feel that way when I wake up so early. It goes away after few minutes. I get to the parking lot with registration table around 7:10 still feeling sick (might have been a new cereal I had in the morning). Get to the registration table around 7:15, there is a line exiting the parking lot and going around the fence. My start time is around 8am. oops. Around 7:40 and 5-6 people in front of me, they finally realized that there might be people with early start times that still don't have the numbers. So I and few other poor bastards got bumped to the front for processing. I set some kind of record for pinning the number to my jersey, and pumping up tires, hop on my bike and I'm off to a start line that is 1.6 miles away. Get there with few minutes to spare. Ride around in a futile attempt to wake up my legs.
At a start line my HR is 164 just standing waiting for my turn. Not good, but I thought screw it. Nothing I can do about it now. Few seconds later I was off. About 1.5 miles before the finish line my legs decided to wake up. Yey, better late then never I guess. Overall my training hill climbs are faster then what my performance was at this TT. My body wasn't in it, my mind wasn't in it. Very disappointed, but I got my self in to this citation. So to summarize I'm an idiot, for not finding a way to do some rides on a business trip, doing a typical exercises before the race (my legs are hurting even today), going to bed late, eating new food in the morning, and showing up with only 50 minutes before my start.
I don't do all these mistakes, but I guess my mind was somewhere else this week.
The right things to do:
Don't try new pre-race foods on a day of a race.
Get plenty of sleep.
Show up early so you have time to warm up. Take in to account that there might be a long line at the registration table.
Stick to your training schedule and don't try something new right before the race.
On a side note, I think I'm horrible at judging grades. I don't remember ridding up any 15% grades, that were mentioned in a flyer.
So how was everyone else race weekend? I'm really looking forward Watsonville and Albany crits. If Davis crit is any indications, I improved drastically from last year.