Sunday, March 16, 2014

First trainingrace

On the whole this was a good training week. 470 TSS, 7 hours of training. 7 hours? Yes, that's quite a lot for me at the moment. On Monday  did 1 hour 2x20 min @ 310 watt on the Kurt. It went quite well. On Wednesday the 30s on, 30s off (VO2max exercise of which you can also read in some of my previous posts). On Friday I did the 3 min on / 3 min off VO2max (6 times on) which I could not complete at the wattage I wanted a week before, but now I did manage to do 6 @360 watt on average.
 
Today was a trainingrace day. I went on my bike to the race which was in Breda (about 30kms from my place). There I got my number and rode some laps to warm up. I have to say I was kind of nervous since I last week I saw the average kms they rode there (around 43) and that did scare me a little. The lap was however a lap in which you could go really fast in the corners. And the roadconditions were good. On the road to the finish the wind blew full in the face.....O yes, the race was 50km.
 
My goal of today was: get used to riding in the group again, get used to speed, and (secondary) to do some interval work by trying to be in a breakaway.
 
Anyway, I positioned myself at the start at the back (yes, everyone was already standing there....) of the pack (which consisted of 91 riders). When we were allowed to start I went to the front quite rapidly. My steering is still quite OK in large packs even after almost 16 years. End of the day if you are experienced with that you don't loose it. If you still have to learn it, it can be quite a thing however.
 
(ride 2 is the race)
 
 In the beginning there were several small breakaways but more than say 50 meters you never got. I decided to stay calm continuously at around position 30. It felt OK, I had no problems and looked a few times on my powermeter which said 245 watt (lap). Although I knew it was going to be decided at approximately the last 10-15 laps (of 42) at that time I was not at the front where I should have been. 2 guys went away and I put in a lot of effort to get in the front because I did see the 'danger'of it. I went full gas, made a move (57 km/h) to ride to those guys in one effort. I had 2 or 3 guys in my wheel but the last 10/15! meters (wind full in the face) I couldn't manage to make the connection with the two. And the guys in my wheel couldn't put just 1 small effort in it to make the connection....that just sucked.
 
So, we got caught by the peleton and later I tried again with 3 guys. We did ride together but it went just very very fast and we got caught again. I did however stay in the front and finished 12 overall. Not bad, and given the goals I set myself I can be happy about it. Nothing more.
 
What is nice to see is the time spend in certain 'zones':
 
Normally I do not spend any time in the Neuromuscular zone, but with crits like this it typically hits that zone. Also the anaerobic zone is not really a zone which I train. To be even more competitive I should maybe try to do some stuff in these zones.
 
The overall stats of the race: AW 253, NP 287, Average speed 41.5 km/h, 49,5km. The totale ride was 112km and 207 TSS. A good week which did give me some moral to train better again.

No comments:

Post a Comment