40 miles max? Yeah, should be no problem… You’ll be maxed in out 2 hours.
had a pretty good race today. i’m super tired and ready for rest week to start on monday. i had two younger teammates in the race with me, one thats somewhat new and one that has been racing for years, but is only 19. so i decided one of em needed to sprint and said i’d do the lead out. the younger teammate is probably the best of the two at positioning so we chatted before the race and had a somewhat detailed plan (i.e. come out of this corner first wheel if you wanna win). i pulled her up through the field and across the front of the group into the lead going into the last straight and kept my speed and she dove around me through the last turn and held it for the win. pretty excited to have formulated a plan and stuck to it.
2nd and 3rd were both colavita pro team gals, so pretty fucking awesome.
Sounds like a solid HY!
totally relate.
also, congrats on the team win!
hy amy, its awesome when a plan comes together!
So it’s just crits here now, wish we had more RR’s in the summer.
Couple weeks ago, same course as I won on previously, raced the P123, 3/4, and 3 fields. In the e3/4, a pro triathlete was up the road and no one really knew who he was. Coming into 5 to go I attacked to try to bridge or at least get 2nd, but the legs just weren’t there and I faded hard and got caught coming into the final lap.
Cat 3 race went a little better. Maintained really good position at the front end of the field for 95% of the race. There were a couple of really strong looking guys at the front throwing gut punches at each other, but not really doing much to get away from the field, mostly just stringing it out a lot. So coming into three to go, they’re up to their shenanigans, so I wait for one of them to sit up after a super hard dig, then I launch past them as they’re recovering and go all out. I pass one other guy that was up the road, but he’s fading hard and doesn’t latch on to my wheel. Coming into two to go, I felt like my power was way low and that I was going too slow and going to get caught again, but I figured I’d come this far so I might as well keep going. I get as aero as I can and try to hug the inside of the course, holding about 350w on the straights. I look back after each corner, and it seems like they’re getting closer, but as I come into 1 to go our team director tells me I still have about 15 seconds on them. It’s 95 degrees out, my mouth is super dry, but I figure it’s just one more lap so I truck on. Coming into the last corner, I have a glance back and see that they’re just rounding the previous one. I drop the power down a little bit, and coast in with a comfortable gap for the win! To top it off, one teammate won the field sprint, the other got 3rd in it, so we went 1, 2, 4
P123 race started off hard, I missed the split, practiced cornering with the fast dudes. Then my toenail started hurting and I felt like going home so I pulled out about 45 mins in. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Raced Ladera Ranch/SCNCA Crit State Champs yesterday. Fun course, but I’d been sick for a week prior, and then just barely back on the bike after that. Legs were super flat and I was just barely holding on to the pack for most of it. The pro triathlete upgraded to cat 3 and solo’ed away at 4-5 laps in. One of my teammates went with and sat on his wheel for about 5 laps before getting dropped, said he was doing 325w just in the draft. I got to practice moving up and cornering more aggressively in what I consider a semi-technical crit (which I usually suck at), and did a lot better than previously, just didn’t have the horsepower to do much. Took a half lap pull to try to bring tri-guy back, mainly because I didn’t want a triathlete to take the bear jersey home, but of course no one would follow my pull up with anything useful. Other teammate won the bunch sprint for 3rd. One other guy joined the pro up the road but couldn’t outsprint. He avg’ed 27.2 mph solo for about 40 minutes at 325w avg, and 450w avg for the last 1.5 mins (not a big guy either, probably lighter than me), so I guess he deserved it.
nice work, matt. seems like you’re having a good year.
as i already told matt, i nearly bailed going into the last sprint in the crit on sunday. scraped a pedal and was skidding sideways, recovered it, but couldnt make up any ground and came in 4th.
1st and 2nd are current pros and 3rd place was pro, before switching back to triathlons for this year. but i still feel like i had a chance at the real podium - we just didnt move quite aggressively enough at the end, then i went too wide in that corner. 1st and 2nd we had beaten last week, so it was achievable.
oh well - couple weeks off from crits for now, nothing i’m interested in for the next two weekends, then doing that mtb race and state championship crit the following week.
Not sure where else to put this, but be careful out there. Casey was a good friend and one of the most experienced racers I knew. Apparently it happened in a flash.
saw that on our mutual friend’s feed. extremely sad 
just so surprising when shit like that happens, not something we’re even considering when we’re lining up for a race…
state champ crit was today… showing was pretty bad last year due to the heat. this year we had literally twice as many people, so that was good. field included a lady from the national team (WC team pursuit squad, olympic silver medalist, etc), so that was pretty intimidating. Luckily with about 20 minutes to go, my teammate got into a break with her and two other riders.
best part of crits = when your teammates in the break and you don’t have to keep throwing out the attacks. with 4 up the road, myself and my teammates didnt do much. once it was clear, a couple teammates tried to break away from our group in the last laps, but were chased back by the few others still holding out for hope.
teammate got 2nd in a fairly close sprint, won the state champ jersey (since olympian isnt a CO resident). i was gonna try to lead a teammate out for the field sprint, but we just couldnt get set up, no one was on my wheel, then my teammate came around and someone was on her wheel and i couldnt get them off, so i just went long and did a 45 second 500w effort to make sure no one else was gonna get that $40 prize for 5th.
it worked, had about a bike length of a gap across the line.
nice amy! are you back into racing road/crits? seemed like you were kinda over it
i’m a few points away from cat 2. I want to just get it over with so I can start getting hammered by the fast guys/gals, but it’s fun being a factor in every race. The season is winding down now though, so who knows if i’ll get any more results.
Hey Roadies,
My aunt drinks Hammer Perpetuem on century rides and I am thinking I need a similar thing. Here’s my problem on any ride over 80 miles:
-Don’t eat enough calories mid-ride and bonk
OR
-Eat something that hurts my very sensitive stomach and feel sick the whole ride
I need something calorie-dense that will keep me moving, but I need something that is extremely easy to digest. Any solid food or liquid food suggestions?
Thanks folks
make your own bars.
dates
cashews/almonds
honey/agave nectar
- whatever else you want. when it’s not super hot here, i like chocolate chips and dried cherries.
Def give liquid food a try. I only dabble in it on ≥24h rides, but my friend uses Tailwind all the time. I also know riders who mix their own; easy to source all the ingredients. Mostly glucose + electrolytes.
My personal favs for long rides are gummy candies, fruit leather, diluted + salted fruit juice, and store-brand Adult Nutrition.
On ≥90m rides I consume a few calories every 20m. Frequent, little bites.
Never tried anything in the bottles, usually just water or an electrolyte tab for me. Bananas seem pretty easy on my stomach. I like dried apricots, dates, and figs too. Other than that, its shot blocks and gels for me usually. Once, I brought a sandwich bag full of goldfish. Maybe not as high a glycemic index, but the salt was nice. I’ve also had some good luck with Allen Lim’s rice cakes. I know some folks make their own gel and put it in a squeezy plastic container of some sort, too.
The official jury seems to be out on carbo loading still, but I feel like the biggest difference is made by how much I eat the day or two before the ride. I’ve done ~90 mile rides, part of which being a race-pace group ride (Swami’s) with only a gel or two and been OK at the end, but only because I’d eaten a crap ton of rice & potatoes the days before.
When I was road racing I had good luck with a big bowl of overnight oats w/ chia seeds, fruit, and almond butter 3+ hours before the ride. In terms of electrolytes/calories during, your body really can’t absorb more than 300cal/hr, which comes down to a bottle with a current gen electrolyte mix (try them to find which agree with your system, I like skratch and osmo best, newer formula clif is okay too) and a bar/most of a bar (I find larabars easiest to down, then bonk breaker) or a gel (my body hates these so I don’t ever use gels). Shot bloks are also nice as you can train/time yourself to eat one every 10 minutes, so then you finish a pack every hour and have a small but constant flow of carbs in your system throughout the hour. I’ve also raced with a ziploc of gluten-free peanut butter cookies before and had good results, so just try a few things on med-length rides and see what agrees with your body.
If I know I’m going to be out for a long ride and refilling bottles or taking on new bottles with water, I’ll fill one of my bottles with 2-3x the electrolyte mix. I then take small swigs from it and wash down with the water bottles, allowing the concentrated mix bottle to last the full 2-3 hours as I replenish with fresh water. Other option is to just carry some of the single use Skratch tubes or a nuun tab in a small ziplock.
Thanks folks, appreciate all the options. I’m gonna buy a whole buncha different stuff and start testing. Date-based chia seed bars are something I’ve had before and really liked, might be a great option for me.
Gonna try Tailwind out too. Thanks!
I know there’s randos out there that train themselves to be able to stomach mickey D’s shakes because fuck it, it’s a lot of calories at once.