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

Monday, June 30, 2008

So this weekend was the Georgia Cup series' Rome Weekend. The format of the weekend was a bit different with it being a Omnium (based on points earned with each stage placing a rider earns rather than being based on time as a stage race is) and having a team time trial instead of an individual time trial. Followed by a crit with a BIG climb (at least for a crit) and then a road race with the biggest climb we've done all year. While the event was generally well organized you could tell that both the peloton and the promoters are beginning to suffer fatigue. The field sizes were smaller in all the classes except cat 2/3 and things were a bit more shoestring than they have been.

For me it was a very disappointing weekend in several different ways. Probably the most frustrating thing was that I flatted about 2 miles into the team time trial after hitting a small but deep pothole while riding third in line. I kept from crashing and from crashing any teammates by not swerving to miss the obstacle but....argh... I was just getting the diesel that is my body up to speed after a good first pull and was about to be on the front to push us down the road at the high speed. We had our two minute team just in sight and I was looking forward to using them as a carrot to chase down. Then...bam! and pssssttt... and my race was over.

The thing that was worse though I didn't know it at the time was that after the race and when I cooled down, I felt terrible. I was exhausted and just a bit nauseated. I figured it was a product of a bad night's sleep so after eating, which didn't make me feel much better, I took a nap and headed out to the crit. I was a warm day and the course was as hard a crit course as I had done. I went out for a few warm-up laps and when I got done my legs were shaking and I wanted to be ill. I knew what was going on. The tank was empty. I was overtrained and in a bad way. The crit, as you might expect, went poorly.

For the road race, I decided to play a team role. I knew I wasn't going to make it over the climb with the lead group like my two teammates Robert and Bill so I decided to work hard to keep things together. Surprisingly, I didn't feel totally crappy once we got rolling (the warm-up was another matter) and so I went to the front of the group, blocked wind for my team mates and chased down the two or three breaks that tried to get off the front that looked dangerous. Once I got to the climb, my bad form and terrible gearing choice (don't take a 42/23 up a steep climb-what a rookie mistake) had me go off the back first. My ability to set a pace and hold it and high FTP (functional threshold power) had me pass about a third of the field on the way up. I'm pretty sure that if I'd had a 39/25 on the bike (I was riding the equivalent of a 39/21) and if I'd had the form I had had at the beginning of my two-a-days weeks I would have made it over the climb with the front group and finished top 15 on the second round, even as a fat guy.

So, a disappointing weekend for both me and the team but that happens in bike racing. It's like the song, "That's Life". One month you're on top of the peloton and cruising and the next you're suffering on the back. My mistake was not taking a full week completely off the bike after Union City. I should have known I was done. Instead, I took a recovery week and then did those two-a-days and dug myself a deep hole. So this week is off the bike week. I won't touch the thing except maybe to do a group ride in Macon either Tuesday or Thursday (I'm leaning towards the later). Then it'll be on to the last part of the season. The interesting thing is that most of my goals are finished and met. There's the state team time trial championship which I may or may not race depending on team decisions (we have more riders in our group than the competition allows so I'm the team's associate member so I can understand getting left home) and there may or may not be a individual time trial championship (there's not one on the schedule yet). Those are my last two goals for the season and I'll work hard to do well on those.

Long term I have a series of goals I have to work towards to get set up for next year. I really need to add to my ability to attack and respond to attacks explosively. I'll never cat up if I can't get some top five placings in mass start races and that'll never happen if I don't develop about 200 more watts of power for short efforts. Second is to lose weight. If I can get down to 155 lbs I think I'll be a real force to reckon with on climbs and rolling TTs. I feel like I'm in the place I was the year before I went to Nationals. If I was racing Cat V I would be winning but I need to move into the fours. My power numbers tell me I'm a five when it comes to explosive power and a three when it comes to time trialing. I need to step up a notch and get better. I have the support system finally with a good team that I can race for and who will race for me so now I need to work out my six month goals. One thing I'm pretty sure will happen is that I'll get a coach for next season. I'm gathering names and soon I'll start some kind of interview/evaluation process to determine what's going to work best.

For this week it's gardening, working on my on-line course, resting and a few other projects I have in mind. One big thing I plan on doing it reading a bunch. Right now I'm going through a book titled, "Faust in Copenhagen" about the 1932 conference at the Bohr Institute that'll decide the future of physics and it's relationship with the mostly finished work on Quantum Mechanics. I'm only 70 pages in but it's a wonderfully written story. What gives the narrative much of it's power is the understanding that the conference is taking place only months before Hitler will become Chancellor in Germany. I'll try to blog a couple more times and maybe even some of what I write will be about topics other than cycling.

Have a great week and thanks for reading.

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