bike jocks road and track 2014/15 thread

I would encourage getting a couple races in before Baker City; while it might not promote exactly the same physiological adaptations as controlled interval training would, making sure that your pack skills are fresh and you know where to position and how to respond to moves is way more important at this point than another day of intervals. Good threshold power may be a necessary condition for success at road racing, but very rarely does the strongest person win a bike race (if that were the case I’d have zero wins to my name). Heck, I used to drop my old coach on climbs when I was still in the 4s yet he was still winning P12 races. Getting/staying race smart is key - I know too many cyclists with dumb power who never win because they miss the move or just go way too hard the entire time.

If you want to get to the point where you’re winning bike races, you have to race bicycles. Maintain training throughout the week and come into the races with a little fatigue in your legs. That’ll force you to be smart in order to survive (unless it’s purely a climber’s race, then that’s less beneficial).

Thanks, guys.

Given my particular proclivities, I think working speed and intensity in races is probably my best bet. I think my FTP is in okay-ish shape, since I have been training well throughout the rest of the year. What I really need is intensity, and racing Tabor and PIR and the dumb crit will give me that.

85 mile stage with 6500 feet of steady climbing is going to be ftp fest. I did it when that stage was over 100 miles, hardest day ever on a bike.

Yeah, I’ve done both versions of that stage too. I did well on the Dooley Mountain version and then in 2014, I was super sick leading up to the race and still hacking and coughing and not very well during the race. That last 10 miles up to Anthony Lakes was pure hell. I’m looking forward to doing it when I’m at least at 80%.

Hey! I got on the podium today!
Third in the single speed cat at a big state series race.
27 miles in 1:48:55
Super stoked
I felt a little intimidated by big jockey looking dudes with expensive stuff but apparently I can ride faster.
Went of the front with two other dudes within one mile of the first lap was able to hang for almost the rest of that lap but then drifted off to ride my own pace and not blow up. Felt OK went real hard. Hiking out of the grand canyon on monday did not do anything good for me tho.
Was fun. May race again.

i did a crit and then i remembered why crits are the best races and road races can SMBz.

we had a good team presence. i got the first prime, teammate got the second. other teammates were attacking. another person’s early attack in the final lap kind of blew up our positions into the finishing stretch, but i had a good idea from last year where our sprinter needed to jump (it’s much earlier than you think) and she took the opportunity and went for it and won by a decisive margin.
i, however, fell apart in the sprint since its a long one and slipped form 5th to 7th in the last 100 meters. oh well.

crit today for me too. smaller group than last year, only 18 riders, 6 of them on our team since it was a target event for the year. Sat in and didn’t do too much work, which was tricky given our team presence and several break away attempts. Everyone expected us to pull them back but I was specifically instructed by coach to sit in and save it, and the rest of my team save one junior was just chilling at the back too. Luckily the patience payed off as the breaks didn’t stick. On the 2nd to last lap, some chase was organizing to pull back a solo rider OTF, but then the guys in front sat up after corner 3 and I used their hesitation as a chance to launch. Went hard for just over a lap, when I see my teammate roll by me just before the last corner… so I thought the field was right on us, but I looked back and there was still a bit of a gap, so I kept going and we came in 1-2.

A little miffed that my teammate chased me down tbh, but we still took it so I guess it’s ok? Just glad he didn’t drag the field up to me.

[quote=aerobear]i did a crit and then i remembered why crits are the worst.
[/quote]

FTFM

dude, attacking a teammate is wack.

i spent over 90km in the winning break today. race started miserably raining as hard as it can rain. didn’t mean to go for a long distance breakaway but i guess it just ended up that way. i was obviously outmatched but tried to do my part. rain stopped after about an hour and we got the gap over 3min. about 100km in, i let a small gap open in a crosswind and that was that. got picked up by the pack then dropped on the next hill, so i finished my lap and dnf’d.

i guess that’s what i get for skipping base. now that road racing’s done for the year, i’m gonna base in june, build in july-aug to peak for cross in october.

i am getting happier that it’s not too crazy to start thinking about cross again

that said last weekend i did a 6h mtb race in the first week of killer mid atlantic humid heat. course was on trails not normally open for use by civilians on the quantico marine base. laps were an 8 mile string of short, punchy climbs. heath thumel shot off the front immediately (lapped me halfway thru the race, lol) and i rode on in second place without seeing another rider in my category for hours. suffered near heat exhaustion the whole time - between that and the threat of cramping, it really throttled my pace. started my last lap knowing there was pizza waiting for me at the finish and wanting pretty seriously to be done with it all.

lo and behold, a rider with a number plate from my category starts chasing my wheel about 1/3 of the way into the lap. i didn’t know for sure it was 3rd place at this point, but i decided to pretend like it was either way. really really thought dude was gonna catch me to the point that i’d mentally accepted the inevitability of this happening. somehow held the gap at like 15 seconds, then over the course of the next 4 miles and a few descents put him out of sight. the lap finishes with a series of steep, exposed powerline climbs on which i had to ride through severe cramps that would have knocked me off the bike and had me writhing on the ground had that asshole not been on my tail. held on for dear life through the worst pain i’ve ever felt on a bike. in the end i beat him by :30

then i spent 20 minutes stumbling around looking for the misting tent fighting waves of heat-induced nausea until somebody started dumping bottles on me and i felt better and ate some pizza

damn. that’s extreme, scott. nice work.

that’s nuts! had no idea it was possible to ride a bike for 6 consecutive hours.

i successfully defended the leader’s jersey at the middle-of-week crit tuesday. it was super windy out and the pace was fast enough to shake off nearly half the field including my main contender for the jersey. ended up in breakaway of 8. got 4th in the sprint, just ahead of another guy who’s only a few points back. teammates were awesome and probably made the difference here.

going to buffalo tonight where the same 4 teams will chase everything down for an inevitable bunch sprint.

track got rained out last night. was just starting my keirin heat with the 2/3 men, ready to school some junior and a kid who looked like a junior with al ittle pube stache, and some other guy. i mean, they were probably all going to beat me, but you never know.

i bet you had 'em

nice work jacques! i wish i had a local mid-week crit series to play in, sounds fun

well, crit didnt go as planned. i attacked just over 15 minutes in, following quite a few attacks by teammates. got several bike lengths, saw two people coming up on my tail and one passed me real quickly, so i hopped on her wheel

this woman was seriously on a mission. i could barely hang on. woman behind me also seemed to be just chilling on my wheel. we traded pulls a bit, but it was clear the one woman wanted to go at a blistering pace and i was worried since we had 28 more minutes of racing to go. eventually she came around me on the short uphill section and i was breathing so hard i couldnt catch back on. we had like 15+ seconds on the field at this point, long out of side on the 6-corner course.

got back in the field, but was super short of breath and out of motivation, hella bummed i couldnt hang. i know i’m not super fit right now, but this woman was taking some beast pulls. i was having a lot of trouble breathing and ended up just quitting and watching from the sidelines. teammates didnt act fast enough to pull the break back and the break held on. the super strong lady got 2nd, got outsprinted by the other girl. teammates did well in the field sprint, getting the finally podium spot and 5th, 6th, and 7th i think.

Raced the High Desert Omnium in Bend over the weekend, and holy shit, it was rough. I expected to be last in my cat in the TT, because I don’t have a TT bike or any aero gear. I rode pretty well, and put out a power number a couple watts above my last power test, which I’m pretty pleased with. I really felt the elevation.

The crit, I tried to get myself pumped up, and went into it feeling pretty positive, but I didn’t have the raw power to hold onto a group with a couple pros, the former national crit champ, and a bunch of other really strong cat 2s. I rode hard by myself, though, and got some quality cornering practice in, so I felt pretty okay about it.

I was hoping to do better in the RR, but the field was stacked with a pro MTBer who wins every RR she enters and a lot of very strong cat 2s. I was really worried about the start of the race, since it began with a 4-mile descent, but I made the one smart move I made all day and got to the front right away so that I’d have a better chance of hanging on if people wanted to pick up the pace, and I found myself drifting back. I ended up hanging on just fine through 18 miles of the 60, but didn’t position myself well and made the mistake of trying to ride a longer climb in my big ring. I hung okay through the climb, but someone attacked over the top, and I didn’t have the power to stay. I rode by myself for 20 minutes and then was caught by a couple of ladies who had gotten popped before me. Unfortunately, they caught me at the top of a descent and then attacked me. :frowning: I actually descended quite well to try and stay with them, but I was almost at threshold trying to keep up, and they lost me. It was a long, lonely TT after that, AND I got run off the road by a camper and was really, really lucky it was a spot with small gravel and bushes that I ended up in.

This was a rough weekend, but I think I learned some stuff about myself: I’m not as bad at cornering and descending (in a race anyway) as I think. My biggest limiter right now is probably explosive power, which is at least something I can work on for next year.

I did a 20k TT on Saturday, local club thing. I did it on my road bike and the extent of my aero kit was skin suit and shoe covers. I was 33:00 so I guess that’s okay… Everyone else was full aero and most did the 40k so I had little to compare myself to. I kinda liked it tho, never done one before.

I’m with Y on this one. Unless you’re 110% committed to intervals on the trainer there is simply no better training for racing then racing (at least for crits anyway). I’m 3 races into the tuesday night series and form that has been absent for over a year of dadlyfe is already coming back. Doing absolutely nothing else different in my riding and when I hit the training crit every week starting in May things start to happen fast.

I’m sure it’s possible to replicate these efforts in “training” but I don’t have time to think about that… ymmv and all that though.

Well, got my upgrade to the 4s tonight. Don’t know how well I’ll be able to hang at the end of the evening’s points race but I’m excited to be able to race two race nights now. I did ok except for getting boxed in a couple of times. Letting the guy in front of me keep pulling was great but I timed coming out all wrong both occasions. Also did an unknown and I got gapped pretty hard. I was in the back and couldn’t see the move of three until we went into turn 1. Gunned it and made another guy work with me for a few laps but he was gassed so I took off when the bell rung. I’m starting to place better just in time to be in the back of the 4s. Oh well.