Good & Profitable Weekend

This weekend I stayed local for what was to be some of the hardest riding I’ve done to date. Saturday I headed out with the local Habersham Bicycles group ride in the morning to prime the legs and get ready for the rest of my day of suffering. I had a good ride, and came out of that first hour with my legs ready to go. A friend had agreed to ride the next three hours with me, and we headed out about an hour after I finished the first ride for the most painful ride I’ve had all year. The store stop that we had agreed on was on a hill about a mile-mile and a half up a 3-4 mile climb. We hit this store stop at only about two hours into our ride, but I was already starting to get tired and cramp. The stop was very welcome, and afterwards we headed up the rest of the climb only to have Stephen get a flat about 5 minutes after the stop. After we fought the yellow jackets off and got his flat fixed, we headed off for the rest of our ride, which was pretty much a game of lets see how many times Dustin will cramp (no thanks sports legs). This all culminated of course in the middle of town where my legs fully locked up for about 5 minutes and we had to stop until I could get back on my bike to finish the 3-4 miles it would take to get back home. After it was all said and done, my normalized power for the day was about 250 watts with my ride time being 4 hours and 2 minutes.
Yesterday was no different in that I went out to get a good, solid effort in and push myself once more. I went solo this time, but waited until about 6pm to head out due to the heat that’s been around lately. I ended up with about 2 hours 15 minutes and had a normalized wattage of 260 something I think, lol. Regardless of wattage, my training stress for the weekend was enough for three days of riding, so I’ll be taking it easy today and tomorrow with a few short intervals Wednesday to prepare for the Gwinnett Bike Fest coming up Thursday-Sunday. I’ll try and keep you updated!

Good Weekend!

The weekend started off good with a trip to Union City yesterday. I competed in the Georgia Games Pro 1/2/3 Road Race on Saturday. The race was a 64ish mile one with a bunch of larger rollers on a four lane "highway" near Atlanta. I felt pretty good, even though the temperatures were hovering around 100 degrees. I attacked 10 minutes into the race just to kind of feel out the pack, and they let me and three other guys go. Little by little, we added a guy here and there until we were up to a total of 8 in a break that would stay away for the majority of the race. The heat got to me after about 30 miles off the front with the break and I cramped like a champ. I cramped so bad I almost got immediately dropped by the peloton when they caught me. I lasted for maybe a total of 10 minutes after the pack caught me until the cramps got really bad and I dropped altogether. Even though I got dropped, I felt good about putting my neck out and definitely got a very good workout for the day.

The race today was a wet one. This was the Georgia Games Pro 1/2/3 Crit. There really isn't much to say about this one except it was pretty fast. I ended up getting 13th overall and 5th for the 3's. Overall I had a good weekend, and the other guys on the team did well too! Reilly got 3rd in the crit and Star got 3rd in the RR! Good job guys!

TTT

For the sake of stupid acronyms, TTT here stands for "Trainer Time Trial". As I was scheduled to do a time trial yesterday, but obviously couldn't with the wonderful downpours we've had this week in northeast Georgia, I hit the trainer for my first ever time trial-like effort on my trainer. I paced myself badly, averaging 345-350 for the first few minutes, and kind of cooked myself for a minute. I think I had the mindset that I'm back in full form, which I'm definitely not quite yet. When the clock hit 20 minutes, I ended up with a bit left in the tank, but was still pretty trashed. I averaged 315 with a normalized of 316. Nothing impressive, but still loads better than last Thursday's 280ish watt average on the TT. My average heart rate during this was around 174-175 for those of you who don't train with power. This weekend is the Georgia Games, which are a couple of races (road and crit) for no payout, but some nice medals for the top 3. Unfortunately my road race 3 field is being combined with the pro/1/2 field due to lack of participants, but it should still be a good race. The crit is still a 3 only field and should be a good one as well. I'll update with results after the weekend is over!

Back in the Saddle...

So Thursday night I did the local “Race of Truth” time trial to pit myself up against, well, myself with a comparison of last tt’s time to this one. Going out I definitely could feel the fatigue from the previous weekend along with the soreness from not being in the saddle a couple of days. Whereas my average power was 335 watts the last time we did the tt, my average this time was around 280, which is obviously much worse. My time went from a personal best of 22:48 last time to 23:48 this time. It seems bad, but the later is still better than my best last year, which feels good. The rest of the weekend consisted of some endurance rides with a few intervals mixed in to get the legs cooking again. This week I’m still on semi-recovery with no really hard efforts minus a little Tuesday and a little Thursday. This upcoming weekend is the Georgia Games races, which is are two “road” races. These consist of a crit and a road race, and are usually pretty fun to do. I definitely don’t expect to be in any kind of form for these, but hopefully won’t get dropped from either, as I should be semi-back-to-normal leg wise. The posts have gotten less and less lately I guess due to the normal “burn-out” part of the season. I love riding and racing, and have in no way gotten tired of them, but I am tired and honestly am a little burnt out on doing the blog, which is why I am down to 1-2 posts a week. It may pick back up towards the end of July, as I have a race every weekend from the last weekend in July for 3-4 weekends straight.

Tanked it...

So this weekend was a bust for me. I crashed last weekend in Lagrange, and it really told on me this weekend. I did decent in the team time trial, finding out this morning that my time was originally messed up, and instead of sixth place(last) and a 34 minute ttt we got fourth place and had a 32 minute ttt. That sounded much more in line with what my power file showed, and made the rest of the weekend of getting dropped much better. I got dropped after 3 laps in the crit, and got dropped early in the 2 mile climb on the first lap of the road race.

On another note, the rest of my team did pretty well, with my newest teammate Gary Papka doing extremely well once again getting 2nd overall in the 4/5 category, and getting some nice top 10 finishes with a definite win in the ttt. Star did well in the crit, and Andy did well in the crit and road race (go figure the climbing guy does well in climbing races, lol). It was a good weekend for the team, and I'm glad we all did well, had a good time, and got away with minor injuries (get better Eddie!)!

The Damage...

So yesterday I took a trip to the bike shop to pull my bike apart a bit and figure out what all was damaged in my solo adventure to the pavement. So far the only things needing to be replaced were my rear derailleur cable, rear shifter hood, and bar tape. I haven't had my wheel trued yet, but Joe at the shop is going to try today I think, so we'll see there. Physically speaking, I'm still pretty sore, but have healed up remarkably well so far. I'm taking two more days off to fully recover and get ready for Rome.

At It Again!

So this weekend six of us went down to Lagrange, Georgia for the Georgia cup of the weekend. My cat 4 boys threw down and came out with I believe 3-4 top 10 race finishes (not counting TT’s), and two top 10 overalls! Our new guy Gary Papka threw down in style even though it was his first weekend racing with us. We all also got to know him a lot better and learned how cool of a guy he was; “Guys if I don’t eat something soon I’m gonna start flippin tables and throwin stuff up in here!”. On a personal stance, I got third in the TT, which was a tough little 3k course with some technical turns and such. The crit went fairly well, with me covering breaks and such trying to watch out for the MAR (Most Aggressive Rider) laps to pick up some time bonus’s. I ended up picking up a whopping 0 of these, but got a decent 15th pack finish. I was a little angry with myself (for chasing breaks for nothing) and had a little energy left, so I entered the Pro/1/2/3/4 category Win and Out race. This was a crit of 15 laps where the first 5 laps were warm-up, and afterwards there were 10 laps each worth 100 bucks each. The pace was high and I won no money, but I did get a taste of how fast some Pro/1/2 crits are. I was dropped on the last lap due to trying to chase a break and get a jump on the two guys in said break. The only problem was these two guys were of the higher category persuasion, so my chase was in vain. The Road Race went fairly well on the first lap, but I chased WAY too much when I should have been sitting in. I got a little sore on the second lap, but the miles rolled on and with 5k to go I was feeling pretty good. We rounded the turn for 3k to go and something happened. A friend who was behind me said my rear derailleur jumped or something, but when I finally got up and looked at my bike my rear cable was broken, so I’m not sure if this happened before or after my solo exploration of the pavement. All I know is I dropped my chain while climbing a hill at 955 watts (or so my SRM says). When the chain dropped it surged me forward, which caused me to unclip my right cleat, smack my mid-gentlemen very hard on the top tube, and spill knee/elbow first into the asphalt. I got the pack finish, though, and ended up 7th overall for the weekend (sound familiar?). Enough to make me happy! This weekend is the Rome GA Cup! Let’s Climb!!!