The Road

"Being able to make it hurt for the others.

I miss that a lot."

-Bjarne Riis, on being retired as a rider, from the documentary Overcoming.

It's always best to start at the beginning. This new year I find myself lacking direction with respect to sports, goals, and plans. Not that there's any huge need or rush to come up with them, but there are a few good reasons for me to at least give the matter some thought, chief among them being that since I can't spend the same money more than once, whatever I decide to do needs to fit roughly into some kind of budget. It's hard to make a budget without plans.

Here comes the inevitable and painful look back into the rear-view mirror. 2008. Doug beat me to the punch with not only a review of his training hours and activities, but also his comments about bike trips and epic rides being more memorable than his races. When I think back about 2008, I feel much the same. The racing season was interesting and there were some bright spots and nice people along the way, but my trip to Virginia, the Six-Gaps ride, and D2R2 stand out as way more fun than any of the races. I'm also learning to live with the fact that at places like Wompatuck, dominated by riders half my age, I'm no longer able to "make it hurt for the others" so much. There are reasons why the old guys give up going. Throughout my years as a bike racer, I've always had Wompatuck to fall back on, a place I could go and have fun while getting fit to race "real" races on the weekends. Going forward, life will change without that, and this is something I'm considering as I weigh my options for the upcoming year.

That doesn't mean the racing season was a total bust. Riding with the team at WMSR was a blast as usual, and this year the points race didn't get rained out, and once again I ended up 3rd, my best finish of the year (in a mass start race). It's funny because as someone who can't sprint to save his life, I've still put up my most consistently high finishes on this stage, with a second and two thirds over five (?) attempts since it moved to Star Speedway. Two of these came from making the split that lapped the field, and this year we damn near made it as well. Having it all happen in the foggy darkness of summer nights at a backwater New Hampshire bullring speedway makes it all the more fun and special.

I also did a bunch of running races this year and set PR times for distances of 5K, 5 miles, and 10 miles. Then there were my attempts at multi-sport, specifically duathlon, as I do not swim well (at all). With my years of bike racing experience and newfound running prowess, this looked like a natural fit and maybe a lot of fun. However, while I found the experiences challenging, and maybe they also raised my overall fitness level, in a sense they were a letdown. At Carrboro the competition was very strong, and at the Pinnacle Challenge my rustiness and general lack of MTB skills got me spanked badly, but overall the depth of the fields at duathlons isn't close to what I find at bike and running races. In fact, I even managed my only overall win at the Rye event, mostly because all the faster people were not there. That's ok though, as unless you win every race then you shouldn't be complaining about a lack of competition, but it was the pacing at these events that kind of left me uninspired. At the longer races in particular, you simply cannot go all out; they're more like a zone three 85% effort time trial. Physically challenging, yes. As exciting as a hilltop finish or as intense as a 5k, not even close.

Then there was the track. I had a lot of fun up there this summer. I want to go back some this year and maybe even branch out to T-Town or some other "real" velodrome. Therein lies part of my problem. Cycling trips, "epics," more of the same striving for results against the New England 45+ plus road animals, a new track bike, or even... cyclocross? Like I said at the top of the post, I can't spend the same money three times, or even twice. And my desires are clearly pulling me in multiple directions. Prepping myself for a strong, aggressive second half of D2R2 would require
a vastly different training protocol from working toward respectable kilo and pursuit times, now wouldn't it?

All this has me thinking, but really it won't be much different than this year. I hate the logistics of traveling (specifically the two days before leaving and the two days after coming home...), so I know I won't do too much of that. I'd rather ride my bikes. And I'm process-driven, not results driven, so it's ok for me to wing it and do events without some insanely scientific preparation methodology. I keep what I call a "training log" but "activity log" would be a more accurate description. I took the liberty of looking up training and found this on Wikipedia:

Sports training refers to specialized strategies and methods of exercise used in various sports to develop athletes and prepare them for performing in sporting events.

I can hardly call what I do "strategic preparation." My goals and plans are specifically un-specific. I want to be healthy. I want to be a better overall athlete. I want to have fun. I don't want to get hurt. Now you know. This post ended up pretty un-specific too. Here's the obligatory (everyone else used the word, so so will I) rundown on 2008 stats. I don't track miles or power or elevation, just counts and hours. This doesn't include the 100 or so hours I spent in the gym. These are as accurate as can be expected from a clown like me.

Cycling time, 385 hours. (up ~20% from the past few years, 15 hours short of goal)
Running time, 81 hours. (by far my highest ever annual total)
Biggest month total volume, 60 hours (August)
Smallest month total volume, 11 hours (December)
Total heartbeats during all this ~3.4 million (116 bpm average)

62 competitive events:

• 16 running races


• 4 duathlons


• 7 cyclocross races


• 10 road races


• 3 criteriums


• 2 time trials


• 1 (3) stage race (WMSR)


• 7 track events (NE Velodrome)


• 5 Wells Ave training crits


• 5 Wompatuck training crits

Other notables:

• 2 epics (D2R2 (10 hours) and 6 gaps (9 hours))


• 7 other 5+ hour training days

Thanks for reading. Publish post...