Tell me something good

Exhibit A, my Polar graph from last night's session at Wompatuck clearly illustrates the difference between sitting in the pack and going in a breakaway. Not too hard to tell when we went up the road, eh? The race started normally enough. The scorching temps around the city weren't quite as bad in Hingham, with the proximity to the water and the thick growth of trees around the course, the Polar recorded a mere 86F. We had about thirty starters, with the plethora of Bike Link guys, several Coast juniors/espoirs, and three guys from Landry's mixed in with a bunch of singles like me. The pace got pretty high now and then, but nothing stuck. It was hard to keep it going in the oppressive humidity, and the Coast kids killed every move with their silly antics of sprinting up to every attempted break, and then doing nothing. They would attack like a house of fire, and then go nowhere. I made a few moves, as evidenced by the speed/hr peaks on the left of the graph, but I felt very weak in the heat and wondered whether two bottles were even going to last me the 25 laps of the 2.1k course.

When we got to fifteen to go, I couldn't believe we'd only been racing for ten laps. There were a few attempts at pacemaking going on, but even though nobody ever mounted a real chase, every move died of natural causes. Everyone was feeling the heat. I saw several guys actually take the suspenders from their bibs down, letting them drape out from under their unzipped jerseys. This was a first for me. I was waiting to see a big takedown when one got caught in a rear wheel.

I conceded to just sitting in and letting the laps tick down. Things got pretty slow at some points, but I figured even a two lap effort at the end was going to force a meltdown, so I should just take the spinning time and be patient, waiting for another, cooler night to do some hard efforts. So much for plans, as with around nine laps to go, two guys, Rob Kramer from Bike Link, and a Boston Bike Club guy, were about ten seconds clear, and I found myself in a good position to bridge. I sprinted away, closing the gap in less then a kilometer, and immediately started pulling. Shortly after, Skip Foley powered across the gap to join us, and now we had a real break. Skip was taking monster pulls, probably about 300 meters. The other two guys were not as useful, but they didn't skip any turns, and didn't slow down when they came through. Not really expecting this to go the distance, I tried to match Skip's efforts as best as I could. The gap grew.

At first, the pace wasn't killing me, because with Skip's twenty second pulls, I was getting around thirty seconds or more of recovery in between each of my efforts. I couldn't see my HR (eyesight is not so good, and with sweaty glasses, the digits are too small), but I was only watching my speed anyway, making sure we never went below 40 kph. Of course, there wasn't much time to drink, and I didn't have much left anyway. The laps ticked down, and we held a nice gap. Six to go, five to go, four to go. Now I was feeling it. The familiar and scary sensation of heat building up under the helmet, pulse pounding in the back of the neck, severe headache coming on. This wasn't going to feel good later on. I took a small amount of my remaining water and squirted it on the back of my head and neck, down through the helmet vents. This brought me about a nanosecond of relief, and I also knew that water was needed inside me too.

Coming up on two to go, we were still a few hundred meters ahead of the field, but a glance back verified that they were now single file, trying hard to close it up. Going by the finish, I knew we had two to go, but the race organizer was fumbling with the lap cards and inadvertently made the bell ring a little bit, fooling Skip. He didn't care if he got fourth out of four, he wanted the break to stay away. I was weakening badly, and when Skip turned on the gas for a monster full-lap pull, he almost broke me. I was clinging to the back of the line, and the other two guys showed no sign of going around him either. When we completed the lap, and now the lap cards read one and Tom was ringing the bell for real, Skip was like, WTF? and he just yelled at us to go and make something of it as he sat up.

We tried, and the BBC guy took a good pull, then I came through, but I was just hanging on, forearms draped over the handlebar tops, faux-aero, on the slight downhill section, not much power left in the legs. We rotated through again, but at around 400 meters one of the Coast punks came bridging solo across the rapidly shrinking gap. I thought he'd go right through us, and I prepared to try to get on his wheel, but he just sat there, waiting for the sprint. Unbelievable. At 200 meters to go, we were winding it up, and the front of the bunch was right on us, and two guys lept out of the field, joining in on the sprint. I was totally gassed, but I didn't want to get run down in the stampede either, so I kept sprinting for all I was worth. At the line, the Coast guy, the BBC guy, and two others from the field crossed ahead of me, but I hung on for fifth.



We call this a training race because there are only small prizes, and it is not a "real" weekend event, doesn't count for upgrading, etc. In the past, I've done some of my best rides, my best efforts, in training races, leaving me flat for the "real" stuff on the weekend. I hope that is not what I did last night. For the break's 25 minute duration, we averaged 41.7 kph, and my average heart rate was 171 bpm. This is extraordinary, all red zone, just a few bpm less than my normal max of around 175. I hit 179 in the sprint. Obviously the heat was a factor, but I've only hit 180 twice in the past two years, also under extremely hot conditions both times. This was a huge effort, one that might have been better saved for Concord on Saturday, if I go.

Oh well, I only do this for fun anyway, right? I rolled back to my car at about 5 kph, stopping at the spring with my old mate Big Mig to fill the bottles. I hadn't packed any recovery fuels, so I just took one power gel to try and replenish some glycogen. I was in a haze as I drove home, stopped at the market, where the only bananas they had were so green that King Kong wouln't eat them. I got some Madhouse Mike's chips and ate half the bag, then had a container of potato salad, Amy's cheese enchiladas, and a half container of Stonyfield French Vanilla full-fat organic yogurt when I got home. This was on top of the steak tips over fettucine and asparagus I had for lunch in my employer's stylin' cafeteria. You have to fuel the engine... Thanks for reading.