globecanvas

Wow, is that self-criticism familiar. Don't beat yourself up, Sara. Racing with intent and focus is not easy, and in my experience confidence and feeling "in the zone" comes and goes in cycles with a wavelength of weeks, not days. If you're feeling like you're in a down cycle, don't expect to turn it around with one good race. But also don't think this is the new reality, because the cycle will turn around, just slowly.

And here's some easy-to-give but hard-to-follow advice: don't respond to the frustration you're experiencing by pressing. Confidence is a very zen thing and you don't get it by trying to get it. Maybe try some very low-stakes races, like a pickup weeknighter or even a competitive group ride. Having fun and being loose is the path to confidence.

sarals 

GC, thank you! That was great to hear, I sure appreciate it.

shovelhd

Great advice by GC. Everyone goes through this. It comes and goes. The cure is to race more, or at least do some fast paceline group rides. Have Ex work some in.

Bandera

Being relegated to easy routes while I recover from shoulder BS I plootered on over to a favorite fixed gear road and some of my favorite "training partners".
A ranch with working dogs, nearly a kilometer of flat-ish well fenced property and zero traffic makes for great "sprinting" for all of us.

Ears came up on the porch when they saw me, but they failed to recognize their Natural Enemy on a noisy road bike and just watched.
"C'mon Boys!"
Here they came Zero to Woof-Warp Speed in a blink calculating an intercept course at the fence line as usual.
Normally a FG 70GI yields a nice friendly 25-27 Mph when spun up a bit: Border Collie Full Tilt Boogie speed which they love to run at.
None of that today, what great dogs ( if you have the acres, a couple of 10 year old kids and a flock of sheep).

-Bandera

Racer Ex 

A bunch of years ago I did a century in rural central California. One of the ranches had a bunch of loose border collies that took great pleasure in chasing and nipping at people riding by.

At the next rest stop I made a comment about culling the weak out of the herd...

Bandera

Here in TX tight fences made for good neighbors, those dogs are bred to see/hear/defend their flock with smarts/heart and a good turn of speed and endurance.
They do nip to turn the stock.......

These guys know that I'll be back, it's a dead end road, so they'll lie in the tree line shade until I come around again slowed by a low water crossing and go full out with me for the length of the property. We know each other.

PS: These guys battle coyotes and herd stock for a living: Good Boys!

-Bandera

valygrl

I'm taking the certification. I don't really know when I'll have time to ride the track, but learning new stuff is so fun, i can't help myself.

Heathpack 

Love it.

Hermes

Good luck.

Is the track surface concrete or something else? I looked at the website and they did not say.

happybday29475

Wood. Outdoor. 250m.
*edit* of course it's not the fine pine of indoor tracks, it's some sort of treated/painted plywood laid on top of a wood structure.

Great! Glad to hear it.

I have found that weekly BVV sessions actually complimented my road training really well. The Thursday Night Races are really good interval workouts, really good learning about how to finish a crit/RR, and a good time as well!

Hermes

It is probably similar to the Superdrome in Frisco, TX - plywood over a metal superstructure. They surfaced the Superdrome with a rough surface paint that made it sticky but hard on tires. I remember a concern about which tires to use and I brought two sets - one for practice sessions and the other for racing. The other thing that was interesting at the Superdrome (I raced there in 2011) was that some racers, who used converted road bikes with lower bottom brackets, had a problem with pedal strikes on the banking in the turns because they could ride more slowly around the track versus Siberian pine, where one has to ride faster to keep from slipping that causes the bike to be more perpendicular to the track surface such that pedal strikes are not a problem.

Looks like a fun track.

Hermes

200 laps at VSC track yesterday after the time trial on Saturday = 10 hours of sleep last night. Although, I must admit, as an ahem "older" masters racer, I did need a couple of bio breaks during the night.

Racer Ex 

After the race Saturday I figured I was still walking so I hit the local "A" ride start line. Got there early, didn't feel like waiting, took off down the return leg of the BTC TT course. Made a right down the road a piece and kept going to the top of Kings Mountain. Froze coming back down tip toeing on the wet pavement, rode around Larry Ellison's place (this takes 20 minutes) and headed back to the car.

Part of the road is closed on Sunday so for grins I did some minute long Oucherval repeats up the longest climb.

They look like this:



Three of those leave a mark.

Could still walk this morning. Went out and did a set of the infamous "ey tu" intervals and some V02 work. 750 or so TSS for the fiscal week.

Heathpack 

Nice workouts, @Hermes and @Racer Ex.

Yesterday I did an easy-paced ride with a friend up to Camp 9, which is a fire fighters station up in the Angeles National Forest just outside of town. It's an 8 mile 5% climb, I was tired so just rode it sociably. Weird how easy it seemed, even with the tired legs. It was supposed to warm up but never did, so I was under-dressed and shivering by the time we finished the descent. I warmed up by opening things up a little in the last canyon back into town. Then of course coffee afterward. It was nice.



Rest day today. Tomorrow is my set of long TT intervals before the State Championship TT.

Good racing weekend for my friends too. Fifteen year old took 4th place in the State Crit against the cat 3 men. Tri friend qualified for the Half-Ironman worlds. And a friend who decided to race Tour of the Gila only 3 days before it started took 4th GC in men's cat 3. My favorite part is that he placed 17th in the TT on his road bike.

Dang, I'm gonna have to show them all a little more respect.

IBOHUNT

Rain again today for what seems like the last 794 days. Forecast is rain for the next week so I'm going to work on disapearing the cables on this TT bike and building that Ark.
Problem with rain all the time is you get to bench race at the LBS that is the team sponsor and you get a challenge thrown at you to do the local club 10 mile TT in under 40 minutes. Anybody got some deep 26" wheel and a disc I can borrow? I thought he'd at least give me a 650B

LAJ

I'm sure they already earned it. Just getting on a bike in the wind at Gila is worthy. 4th in GC is just bad ass.

Heathpack 

Three 20 min intervals at 105%. I don't know why I like (trying to do) stuff like this.

I was thinking recently how weird it's been that this round of weight loss seemed kind of honestly-not-that-hard and one thing led to another & suddenly I was reading about Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption aka EPOC. It seems that when you ride at high intensity, >70% V02max, your body continues to consume oxygen at a higher than normal rate for an un-definitively-determined period of time, probably 10ish hrs but maybe as much as 36 hrs. Increases your calories burned with intense exercise by a good margin, some say 15-30%, some say by 100%. Pretty cool. Lol, maybe Weight Watchers will add Time Trialing to their program.

Heathpack 

It was my friend Sean, the one who hooked me up with my wheels & taught us how to mount the tubeless tires & was the first one who ever explained to me what a group ride was all about. Also my climbing route guru, the person I text to find out where the water is on any route in SoCal. Lol, he is also the person to whom the Magic Bike is left in my will.

He finished third in both road races, 17th in the TT (he described doing that on his road bike as akin to bringing a knife to a gun fight, lol). I can't remember where he was in the crit, it was pretty decent. Top ten and he is not a crit guy (thinks they are nutso dangerous), he only races crits as part of stage races.

He decided to do Gila because he had been disappointed in his performance in the San Dimas stage race, which he now thinks was a waste of his time. Because Gila is harder and the competition (in his words) is more 'real'.

LAJ

That's pretty amazing, @Heathpack. Funny. John says the very same thing. He was unable to go this year due to obligations at home, and it was tough on him.

Racer Ex 

I've done Gila twice, 2nd to the same TT WC guy in the 50's both times (they raced us with the 40+ group then split out the 50's for the payout, 6th and 7th in the 40's). Won the TT once (2nd in the 40's). It is THE hardest stage race for amateurs in the US. 5 days for the "big boy" race(s), really tough fields (one year we had this guy and this guy in our field, I ended up in a break with them and three other guys who were either WC's or NC's...fastest most painful couple of hours on the bike I can remember), variable weather (snow, heat, 70 MPH winds), and long difficult climbing stages.

Bringing a road bike to that TT is pretty much as described, it's all up and down; I ran a 56 big ring the second year and spun it out (57 MPH) on the return leg.

And all the races start at 6000' and go up from there.

Huge "hats off" to your friend. You can tell him from me that that's an impressive finish. Now it's time to upgrade

IBOHUNT

1:45 in the sticks studying fluid dynamics. Amazing how water comes off the front wheel then is flung right in your face when it gets in the windstream.

Bandera

The storm that rolled through here (thank you El Nino) at 3:00AM left the roads nicely soaked for a winter/wet bike ride w/ full mudguards this AM.
Didn't see another cyclist out and about and the low water crossings were running with ranch effluent, this could be cause & effect at work.
A nice Spring day for Uphill/On/Downhill/Off.

-Bandera

Heathpack 

First interval workout in a while that felt completely do-able, lol 5 min intervals are way easier than 20 or 60 min ones. Since the intervals were only 15 min total, I managed to work this into a Nightcrawler ride.

So started my day right, with two of my favorite things: hypoxia and coffee.

Things went downhill from there: work chaos.

But now I'm heading home & Thursday is my Friday, so I'm almost there.

Racer Ex 

Still down the hill, after the day off yesterday wanted a longish tempo ride. Headed out from SF over the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog, wind and cold. Dropped down to Sausalito and found the sun. Paced around Mill Valley, Tiburon, and partway up Mt Tam. Back into the dreary over the bridge and did some sightseeing in the Presedio with a stop at Baker and China beaches. Some reasonably priced real estate around those parts. Nice 2.5 hour jaunt.

Heathpack 

Kind of like this?



(Did a similar ride last year.)