Call Me

Monday must have been pretty tough to get through without your daily dose of solobreak. My apologies. The weekend took its toll on your hero, thus sacrificing the blog. Saturday started easily enough. The weather here in the lovely Commonwealth of Massassachusetts couldn't have been much better. The thousands of gumbies and Phreds (and I say that in the most sincerely endearing voice) who rode the Pan-Mass Challenge finally were rewarded after what seems like years of rain on their big day. There was also a huge three-day, sixty mile breast cancer walk in the area, so they made out too, although the walkers I saw looked like they might have been better off with a few clouds in the sky. They were soaking up some serious sunshine and I suspect many of them were burned to a crisp by Sunday.

I was on call for my job Saturday night. This meant that from 6:30 pm until 7:30 am on Sunday morning, I had to be at home, ready to spring into action to solve the software crisis of the day at any one of the 1800 hospitals who are our customers. I skipped out on racing at Concord on Saturday, as I figured my weekend would be stressful enough without it. Also knowing that as the likelihood of a good night's sleep was extremely low, I was pretty doubtful about making the 11 am start of the 45+ road race at Bow on Sunday. Therefore, I decided to go out and do a fairly hard three hour ride from home Saturday afternoon, and headed over to Big Blue Hill for some repeats. Hedging against the possibility that I might have a quiet night and still race at Bow the next day, I decided to try to ride my repeats as close to LT as possible, avoiding digging too deep. This would also allow me to use the calculation tools at analyticcyling.com to estimate my average power at LT.

I felt good on my ride over, going via Moose Hill Road in Sharon. The massage on Wednesday night had left my legs in good shape. The first time up I mostly used a 38x24, but it was still difficult to hold my HR at LT on the steep parts. I really had to ride slow. 6:23. I rolled back down and tried again, experimenting with gears, rode a 6:40 or so, but still went 3-5 bpm over LT in a few spots. The third time I said screw it, and I went really hard on the steep parts, letting my HR go as high as it wanted. On the flatter sections I would immediately go to the 38x27 and ride slow to see how fast I could recover. I was hitting 171 bpm on the steeps, but was pleased to see it drop right back to 160 when I eased. That ended up being a 5:38 and was probably too hard, as I never quite felt the same after that. The fourth and final time up I left it in the 38x27 the entire way, traversing and riding as slow as I needed to in order to keep my HR under 160. It took 8 minutes.

When I got home I looked over the graphs and crunched some numbers and came up with an estimate of about 275-295 watts at LT, which is in the 3.6-3.7 w/kg range. Not too impressive, but lately I've been wondering if maybe I have succeeded in bumping my LT up a bit, and maybe it is now more like 163 than 160. The past two months have been hot, which is also a big factor, but I've been putting up consistently higher HR numbers for the same RPE.

Late Saturday afternoon I tried to take a nap, but never even got close to falling asleep. I sat at home resting in the evening, and at first no calls came in. Maybe this would be a quiet night... Wrong! Starting at 11:05, I got a call about every 45 minutes, right up until a nice two in a row at 5:30 am, when the sun was coming up and I threw in the towel. There is no way that I can get to sleep when the sun is rising, especially when its a gorgeous day. I just went ahead and made a pot of coffee.

Feeling like shit, I had to decide on whether or not to go to Bow. I swapped out the cassette (putting my 27 onto my race wheels) and cleaned up my bike a bit, and packed up my kit. It was now 8:30 and my responsibilities to the man were over.

Bow is at least an hour and a half drive from here. Exhausted, I sat and thought the situation over. I could leave now and make the four lap (of the 10.5 mile, very hilly course) 45+ race, I could relax a bit and go later on and still make the afternoon wave, choosing between the Cat 3 race or the 35+, or I could just stay home. Decisions, decisions. After talking to KL, I decided to go for the 45+. Problem was, it was now 9:00 am and I probably wasn't going to make it. Like an idiot, I tried anyway, and pulled into the parking lot as they were calling the race to the line. I'm not that stupid, so I gave up and entered the 35+, which was five laps, and didn't start for another two hours. And I hadn't slept one minute last night, and hadn't eaten much this morning...

To be continued...