Flogging It

I went out on a 55 mile 3.5 hour hilly ride today. In sections I went as hard as I could. I wasn't on a great day, but my form is coming along so well that I still managed 9 PRs on the Strava. It doesn't appear that the crash on Sunday's cote de Tolosa had any real effect on me beyond a couple days of discomfort and a few lousy nights sleep. I'm pretty confident of doing the District RR Championships the weekend after this.
 The descending is getting scary fast for sure. The other day I clocked 60, and today I clocked a bit over 55mph. It's funny at this time of year it just doesn't feel all that fast - it gets normalized because of the volume of riding. I recently upgraded the Strava to give them some $$. It's such a cool program. I felt a little guilty using it for free. One of the best aspects of the upgrade is I can now sort by my ten year age group (55-65) and for all time records or for this year only. It looks like I'm in the top third to quarter of riders on most of the common routes. On a few of the more obscure off road segments I'm sitting on top of the leaderbaord for my age group, but that's more a function of not many folks getting out on those dirt roads. It looks like I'm about 2-3% slower than the really fast guys my age on climbs, which is where it counts. It will be interesting to see if I can notch it up further or if I'm at a plateau at this point. My only wish is that I could sort for 5 year age groups as I'm 8 years into my 10 year group at this point. Oh well, in another two years I'll be 65 and hopefully DOMINATING that age group. One thing that I learned from watching my father is that the older you get the fewer the competitors.

2013 Cote de Tolosa

From a personal point of view this post could also have been called "Crash Test Dummy". I should have thought about the concept of tempting the fates when I pulled on the bright orange crash test dummy socks in the morning, but they matched the new orange black and teal kit so well I couldn't resist. We got a lot of last week sign ups for this year's race, and over 70 riders took to the course at almost exactly 7:30. Normally a big pack of mixed skills riders like this gives me pause, but I was at or near the front for the cruise through town so I didn't give it much thought. Things strung out a little bit as we entered the 101 freeway shoulder and I was cruising comfortably in the first 20 or so riders not working very hard. About a mile or so before the first climb the rider immediately in front of me had a fluke accident and went down sprawling across the shoulder and leaving nowhere for me to go but over him. Luckily neither one of us was seriously hurt, but this is a far from ideal way to begin a long arduous race. I picked myself up quickly remounted the chain and got going. I was bleeding a lot from my right elbow and could tell that my right knee under the warmer was badly banged up. The adrenaline got me up the first climb without any problems, but the wounds started bothering me on the next 10-12 miles of flats. My knee was tender as the next section of climbing began, but calmed down on the steadier shallower upper parts. The long steep descent was no fun as the jarring had it's impact on my bruised and tweaked body. I managed to slam my already tender knee into the bar to add insult to injury on a creek crossing near the bottom. The final 10 miles or so of flats were particularly bad as my right hip to knee along the hamstring started really complaining. I felt pretty studly about finishing and at 4:45 came pretty close to my goal of 4:30 for the course. I think without the accident I could have hit the 4:30 or less which was my goal for the day. This would have moved me up from 40th to 30th place overall so only losing ten places due to bad luck was no big deal. Blake Anton won for the 3rd time of the four editions in a time of 3:24 for an average of over 18mph. Everyone liked the new course and it was all in all a good day. The weather cooperated being neither too hot nor too cold. The winds got a bit rowdy for the later finishers. Only one person got seriously off course and even he found his way back eventually after an extra 20 miles or so of descending down into Pozo and having to climb back out.

Acclimatizing

One of my goals this year is to race the district raid championships in Bakersfield. It's on June 1st and the start time is 10:00 am. It will be hot - no doubt about it, and the course has lots of climbing. I've never done well with climbing in the heat. There's something about 90+ and climbing that tends to leave me on the side of the road seeing spots and pouring water over my head to stave off heat exhaustion. So on Sunday I thought I'd better start getting myself at least mentally prepared for this. I left SLO at 10:00 on an already warm morning and headed to the north county where I knew it would be high 90s by the time the ride was over. It was and I suffered, but I managed to tough it out. I never completely cracked, but rather had to slow at times to keep it together. I stopped in Santa Margarita about 12 miles out from home for a coke to cool off, and went into the bathroom to fill my water bottles. I looked a horror - beet red and sheeted with sweat. It must have grossed out the other patrons in the cafe, but I just didn't care. I'm going to repeat on my long rides for the next three weeks leading to the championships and see if it helps. It certainly can't hurt.