Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.El Diablo Rojo
03-11-08, 12:26 PM
First let me so that no matter how bad your race weekend turns out, there is always something to learn from it. So there is some good from this race.
Sat was horrible. For the past month or more I've had a really hard time sleeping. Basically I wake up between 3:30 and 4am and can't go back to sleep. This happens no matter how early or late I go to bed (I think I've narrowed it down to Optygen). So the week leading up to Murietta my wife was out of town so not only was I trying to get my workouts in I had daddy duty as well. My wife travels at least one week a month and what I do is workout at night after the kids go to bed. This normally works ok but with my inability to sleep I was exhausted by 8pm and couldn't workout at night. I called my Doc on Friday and suggested that I try meletonen. This is where I really screwed up because I know better than to try something out of the ordinary the night before a race but.....Anyway slept well but woke up in fog, a fog that never went away.
On to Saturday's crit. I was riding well and stayed near the front for the first 30min even threw in few attacks, then at 31min exactly, lights out. Power went to absolute zero. Pulled off and went home and decided that Sunday would be a game day decision.
Woke up Sunday and felt much better. Went out and rode for about 20 min just to see how the legs felt and they felt ok so I decided to race. Warm up was OK not great but not nearly as bad as Sat. The race was fast right from the start and really never slowed down. I covered two breaks easily and tried to get the Amgen guy who started them to work with me but he was gassed and just sat on so I sat up. The third break I saw coming so jumped on. It was two Cyclefax riders me and one other guy. We got about 10-15sec up the road but only me and one Cyclefax guy would do any work so that one got shut down as well. After that it settled down some and with 4 laps to go the pro's caught us we got neutralized. At this point, about an hour and half in, I felt great and the pace really slowed till the pro's cleared us. After start/finish the pace really took off. All of us in straight line just drillin' it. I was somewhere around 10th wheel as we came into the first right hander. Everyone was out of the saddle sprinting and once again, lights out. I just didn't have anything left and got shelled off the back. I rode back to the car and went home.
After talking to my coach we decided that I hadn't refueled enough to keep up the pace, that and the really rough week leading up to the race killed my endurance. Honestly though if I'd had some help from some teammates the out come might have been better, I used up a lot of energy covering the breaks. I think a top ten would have been in the cards if I'd been able to hold my powder till the end.
FWIW this is a great race and very well organized I really recommend it.
Time 1h 26m
ave spd 27.3 mph
NP 293w
Sat was horrible. For the past month or more I've had a really hard time sleeping. Basically I wake up between 3:30 and 4am and can't go back to sleep. This happens no matter how early or late I go to bed (I think I've narrowed it down to Optygen). So the week leading up to Murietta my wife was out of town so not only was I trying to get my workouts in I had daddy duty as well. My wife travels at least one week a month and what I do is workout at night after the kids go to bed. This normally works ok but with my inability to sleep I was exhausted by 8pm and couldn't workout at night. I called my Doc on Friday and suggested that I try meletonen. This is where I really screwed up because I know better than to try something out of the ordinary the night before a race but.....Anyway slept well but woke up in fog, a fog that never went away.
On to Saturday's crit. I was riding well and stayed near the front for the first 30min even threw in few attacks, then at 31min exactly, lights out. Power went to absolute zero. Pulled off and went home and decided that Sunday would be a game day decision.
Woke up Sunday and felt much better. Went out and rode for about 20 min just to see how the legs felt and they felt ok so I decided to race. Warm up was OK not great but not nearly as bad as Sat. The race was fast right from the start and really never slowed down. I covered two breaks easily and tried to get the Amgen guy who started them to work with me but he was gassed and just sat on so I sat up. The third break I saw coming so jumped on. It was two Cyclefax riders me and one other guy. We got about 10-15sec up the road but only me and one Cyclefax guy would do any work so that one got shut down as well. After that it settled down some and with 4 laps to go the pro's caught us we got neutralized. At this point, about an hour and half in, I felt great and the pace really slowed till the pro's cleared us. After start/finish the pace really took off. All of us in straight line just drillin' it. I was somewhere around 10th wheel as we came into the first right hander. Everyone was out of the saddle sprinting and once again, lights out. I just didn't have anything left and got shelled off the back. I rode back to the car and went home.
After talking to my coach we decided that I hadn't refueled enough to keep up the pace, that and the really rough week leading up to the race killed my endurance. Honestly though if I'd had some help from some teammates the out come might have been better, I used up a lot of energy covering the breaks. I think a top ten would have been in the cards if I'd been able to hold my powder till the end.
FWIW this is a great race and very well organized I really recommend it.
Time 1h 26m
ave spd 27.3 mph
NP 293w