Nashua really. You might have gathered from Saturday's post that sleeplessness has taken over several of my past nights. There could be many causes, and of course overtraining would take a place at the top of the list. However, as noted, my training hasn't been all that heavy lately, at least by volume. For that matter, I am behind in my goals for April, so wtf? The transition to evening workouts contributes to the difficulties, as drilling out some intervals at 7 pm hardly promotes peaceful rest just a few hours later. So operating on 3-4 hours of sleep per night was the norm for me this past week. That is probably not as bad as it sounds, because in my advancing age I have found that 5.5-6.5 hours is my standard requirement. More would be better, but it doesn't happen for me.
The second race of the year, Turtle Pond, arrived on Saturday. The 45+ race started in the first cluster of races sharing the 19k circuit. This meant a 9 am start and a 5:30 am departure from home. The weather was cool but dry up in Concord. There were 62 pre-regged in our group. KL rode with us because as a woman with a racing age of 30, she is now permitted to enter Master men's races where the minimum age is 50 or less. The women's races were in the afternoon, but since we needed to get to Rochester NY by later that evening, racing in the morning made more sense.
The first lap was pretty civilized. At first things bunched up and I felt penned in by the yellow line. The first time up the hill was, after BKR, very reassuring because I was able to easily move around the gasping riders who made up the back half of the field and eventually crest in a nice position. This was my general expectation for the 45+ group, and I don't know wtf happened last week. Going down the first leg of the triangular course for the second time, things strung out and I moved up the side to the front and rolled off to stretch the legs a bit. I ended up with about a 100 meters gap when two riders flew by. At first I was going to just let them go, but one was a former National champ with about a half dozen strong teammates in the dozing field, so I picked it up and joined them, and off we went.
We had at least 30 seconds by the time we hit the hill again. I was able to set the pace and rolled across the finish to take 3 laps to go. I thought we had a KOM competition, so now staying away for another lap or two seemed like a good idea. Later I learned that the KOM was for the 1/2 field only, so no wonder nobody else went for it... Despite the break's relaxed pace, nobody came across from the field. One guy in break had a wind jacket flapping in the breeze, and was unable to do significant work. Me and the other guy made up for it, but with 55k to go and only three guys we weren't burying ourselves. When we got to the second leg of the course again, we were back in sight and my companions were ready to concede. I wanted another first in the imaginary KOM points, as this would sew up the competition, so I drove it to the hill, telling the others of my intentions. It took a bit of effort but I held everyone off to the line and then sat up to be absorbed on the descent.
Of course, it was not long before the real break took off, and our team was unable to cover. At the time I thought this was fine, because so long as the new break stayed away to the line on the penultimate climb, I would win the imaginary KOM. So we were quite happy to let them roll away. With one lap to go the Cronoman went to the front and put in some hard tempo to try to control the gap. I got my butt up there and rolled through just as he pulled off. Putting in a hard effort for a few hundred meters, I suddenly found myself away again with four others. Three of them were willing to chase and one was covering for a team mate up the road. On my limit, I did as much as I could, but there was not much left in the tank. We had the break under 20 seconds at one point, but during the last half lap we slipped back despite some good efforts. On the climbo ultimo, three of the others powered away and my quads nearly cramped and seized as I tried to respond. The field was breathing down our necks, so I sat down and just kept the pressure on the pedals to stay ahead of the field and one of the breakaways to the line, credited with 10th place. KL got 25th. EM finished with the bunch. Later we went to pick up the KOM booty and were turned away empty-handed. Dohhh!
Perinton the next day could turn into a very long story. The digest version is after another night of minimal sleep, I got to race on a good rolling 10k circuit with about 7 short, steep power climbs, and a small field of about 30 riders, I had good legs but didn't know anybody else and I missed the winning break of four, but then escaped solo in the rain for 5th when most of the field thought we still had two laps to go. The rain was kind enough to soak us while we packed up, but then relent once the long drive home started. Sunday night, after six hours of passing Wal Mart truck after Wal Mart truck (apparently the only socially unconscious sleazebag outfit to make their truckers work weekends) we got back to Nashua. At long last, I slept seven hours...
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