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

Friday, May 30, 2008

Just a few final thoughts and impression from the Tour of Atlanta.

First, I'm surprised at how tired I feel during this week after the race has ended. I didn't ride on Tuesday and expected to feel OK on Wednesday. Not so much. I tried to do a TT interval workout and was good for about 75 minutes before my body and legs said no more. Tuesday night I couldn't sleep which was a sure sign of overtraining. I've never had that happen before. Every other time I've taken a day completely off, I've been able to come back and train pretty hard without becoming overtrained. Just goes to show you how deep we all went just to finish up the Tour. Last night I just did about 50 minutes of easy spinning and tonight will be about the same. Hopefully that'll get me back to a better equilibrium.

Second, I found out how important it is to sleep and take my vitamins while racing. I didn't do either very well before Saturday's two stage extravaganza and while I pulled my weight in the team time trial, I was cooked halfway through the road race. I spent the last 20 miles clinging to the back end of the race hoping none of my close rivals would launch a big attack or have their teams make the race hard. That night I went home, took a set of vitamins later in the evening and again in the morning and got about 9 hours of sleep in between. It made a world of difference.

Third, TTs and road races on the same day are really, really hard if you decide to drill the TT. I definitely prefer doing the TT and the crit on the same day. The crit's much shorter, and while it's more intense, I can do just about anything for 30 minutes if I need to.

Fourth, given my riding style and lack of explosive power, I need to roll the outside line in a crit. I can't afford to scrub a lot of speed taking a tighter inside line that I then have to power out of. Even though I have to cover a lot more ground going wide, I can hold speed and pick up pedaling again earlier. I also need to focus on being in a smaller gear as I come out of the corner and then shifting up quickly. Too many times I was in a big gear and lost a lot of ground getting up to speed. Given this, I now have to figure out how to move up on the outside after the turn.

Finally, I see why it's so important for pro teams to have helpers around for the riders. As I got more and more tired, it became more common to lose things and forget things. It would have been really nice to have had a team mechanic to give my bike the once over before each stage and a couple of folks to help with the set up and take down of tents and keeping thing straight. We race for a small amateur team so that'll never happen but it would have been cool.

So tomorrow and Sunday I race in the Union City Georgia Cup event. A much more manageable three stages in two days. I'm going to try to do well in the opening TT and then help teammates achieve their goals in the crit and road race. It's the State Championship so it'd be nice to pay back one of the guys who helped me out so much by giving him a nice new jersey to wear for the next year. This race will mean that I've done nine races in eleven days. It's a good thing I'll get about a three week break until the next races to recover and refocus my training. My big goals are coming up in late July and August and I want to be ready.

Thanks for Reading.

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