Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

Off to the Races

Race season starts in 5 days up on the Silver Comet Trail. While not a real important race in terms of my goals, it will be a very important fitness marker for me. Since it's a 10 mile race against the clock I'll get a sense of what I can do going full out for around 23 minutes. That will let me know if all the base miles have paid off or if I overdid it or if I didn't get into more intensity soon enough. I put in 3300 miles of base work between December and now so I'm pretty sure that I have done well more than the minimum. Following the Tundra Time Trial I'll start the first race in the Greenville Race series up in South Carolina and then the GAP season starts. I'm really happy with my fitness for the MTB races but I'm concerned about the lack of skills training I've been able to get in. With all the rain over the last several weeks, all the trails have been closed or way too sloppy to ride real aggressively on. The forecast has things clearing up over the second half of the week so maybe I can get out to Dauset and do some strong riding.

I've moved out of Base training now into my first build cycle. This is where the training gets real intense. Yesterday I went and did an hour of Hog Mountain intervals. Hog Mountain isn't really much of a mountain but it is the biggest hill in these parts and has three good climbs. I did the shortest/easiest route yesterday which consisted of the four mile loop. This loop has a good long 1.25 mile 6% climb and a short quarter mile climb on the back side of the loop that is about 8-9%. I like the loop because I get to work on short, steep attack climbing and then after some recovery time I get to do a good long climb followed by a fast, somewhat technical descent. Five loops of that and my legs felt a little crispy. I was able to get the ol' ticker to zip along at around 188 bpm which is about 95% of max for an old guy like me. After that, I cruised back home and spun out on the rollers for another hour to see if I could clean out the lactic acid. It was a good 2.5 hour ride and it was nice to finally go really hard again. On the other hand, about an hour after I got off the bike my legs felt like lead and this morning things were still a bit sore. I guess I still need to train the recovery systems some.

On a related note, Tour de France winner Marco Pantani was found dead in a hotel room a couple of days ago. Initial evidence points to suicide though it will a while before we know for sure. He was 34, three years younger than me. He had been to the pinnicle of the sport but had fallen far for a variety of reasons and had fallen into depression. For me it is a reminder that there is a lot more to life than pedaling a bike around the countryside in search of glory. While I spend a lot of time riding, there are a lot more important things than winning and while I love the road, I love coming home even more.

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