From race to race and beyond

Everyone always talks about the post-race comedown. I wonder if the better the race, the harder the comedown. I experienced a pretty epic comedown this week. From sky high this time last week, to wanting to quit by Thursday. I'll admit that I can be a little melodramatic at times(!), but that doesn't really change how I was feeling on Thursday. A few things contributed to the crash, which are irrelevant for the purposes of this blog post, but I can honestly say that I spent some good quality time on Thursday thinking about what on earth I wanted out of cycling, and if this was the best I could ever be, maybe I should refocus my priorities and get back to the reality of my non-cycling life.

But I let Brad talk me into coming along for the Norman (the Friday morning Vikings ride for those not in the known) and I had a lot of fun. Nothing much to write about, other than the fact that it was a really fun ride with some really top people, which just put me in a much better mood / frame of mind re cycling. And as I'd already entered the Eurobodalla interclub (which comprised a 50km handicap race on the Saturday and a criterium on the Sunday) I headed down the coast on Saturday morning for a weekend of coast fun, with a bit of bike racing interspersed.

Even though I knew I was going to race at the interclub, I somehow thought it was going to be a nice gentle race down the coast (mixed up with sun, fun and beach-time relaxation with the crew and my family). I know "race" and "gentle" are pretty much mutually exclusive, but in my head I think I had taken a break from racing last Sunday somewhere towards the top of Mt Hotham. So no one was more surprised than me to find that I'd been put in a pretty harsh handicap (known as Block or Chopping Block). I thought all the girls would have been put in the same group, but somehow I found myself the only girl in a group of super fit boys in the second last group away, 20 minutes behind the first group to leave (and 5 minutes behind Brad, Dees and Rob, who I usually train with and are much the same speed as me).

I didn't whinge to the race organisers about my handicap, but I certainly whinged to everyone else I knew (sorry team!). But I was strangely complimented by the fact that the organisers had bothered to look up the results of Bright and think it was worthy of a hard handicapping, which somehow appeased part of my post-Bright comedown issues. That said, I was worried that I was way out of my depth, so I decided that my goal was basically to stay with the group as long as possible, and if I felt OK, to try and do some work with the group. As with all handicaps a further goal was not to get caught by the bunch starting after mine (which was Scratch (the last bunch starting for those not familiar with the terms) and was made up of the Suzuki and Ollo Industries boys and even a Jayco rider or two!).

As we were waiting at the start line, we started to witness the generous handicaps to the earlier groups - there were groups over halfway through their first lap (the course comprised 3 laps of a relatively hilly 17km course) before we'd even started. But then we were off. And gee we were off! The boys hit it very hard from the start, averaging 42kph for the first 5km. My heartrate spiked pretty early because of this and I really started to feel the pace during the second and third 5km sections. I pulled some turns with the boys for the first 10km, but had to sit back for the third 5kms as I was in a world of pain and doing everything I could to hold the wheel in front and get enough oxygen in to keep upright. An added complication of the course was the various hot-dog turns. As noted in previous posts, I'm a bit challenged when it comes to u-turns, and I ended up taking each turn very wide, which meant I lost a lot of places and had to accelerate hard out of each turn around to catch back on again, which really saps your energy. Lesson learnt for me re the importance of practising hot-dog turns now as I don't really want to have to go through that everytime I need to turn a bike around in a race again in the future.

As the race progressed, it became obvious that we'd gone out too hard too early, and there were limited riders in our group that had the fitness to keep working at the pace that had been set. There was one rider in the bunch that took on the "bunch captain" role, and did his best to keep it under control, but I think the bunch generally didn't have the skill / fitness to ride the way he intended so we weren't working together as well as we should have. I did a fair bit of work for the group on the front (probably more than was expected from me being the only girl in the group), but I found it hard to control the pace on the front as I'd end up surging a bit (and was tapped on the bum by the bunch captain and unequivocally told this mid-race!). I think this was lack of experience from me (it was only my third handicap), but also lack of confidence in my speed: I was so convinced that I was the slowest rider in the group that I honestly thought I'd have to keep pushing the pace even when rolling the lead just to keep the pace steady. I'll try to chill a bit in that regard in future. :-)

We started to pick up some riders that had dropped off earlier bunches, and while we were closing on the bunch that started 5 minutes before us, we never really got close to them. At about the 47km mark, we saw the bunch in front coming back the other way and knew it was game over. A few of us in our group sat up for a bit at that point and recovered to the last turn around, before getting back to business of getting the race over and done with as quickly as possible. I was pretty pleased to get to the finish line and hear that Brad had claimed 2nd overall, and Dees 2nd female, just less than a minute before my bunch. Top work VCC!!

As for me, I was pretty stoked that I'd managed to hold onto my bunch for the whole race. Average speed was 36.5kph for 52km with 605m elevation and I sure worked for it. Strangely my legs didn't hurt after the race, but my pectorals sure did for gripping onto my drops for dear life for nearly an hour and a half and not wanting to let go of the wheel in front of me. Who would have thought you could get such a good upper body workout from cycling. :-)

The next part of the interclub was the crit this morning. The organisers ran separate women's and men's grades, which was great, but the turnout from the ladies was a little disappointing, with approx 7 riders in WB and only 5 in WA. I quite enjoyed watching the WB crit, which kicked the morning off. Tegan, Ches and Ange put on an excellent demonstration of Valkyrie / Siren domination (Tegs took out the win) and it was awesome to see how far they've all come since the start of the Valkyries not so long ago. Nice work ladies!

My own crit was rather uneventful: I spent a fair bit of time on the front for the first part of the race, testing my legs and the girls in my grade. I could tell which girls would be my biggest threats from the first lap and knew my best tactic was to go for a breakaway as I didn't think I'd be able to outsprint them. I put in a few little sprints out of the only corner on the course to see how they'd react, and decided that my tactic would be to try and go clear when I saw 2 laps to go. Stupidly, I jumped when I saw the sign saying 3 laps to go, not 2. But I got a good gap on the girls, and while I wasn't increasing my lead over the first 1.5 laps of the 3 laps to go, I was keeping them at the same distance so thought I might just get away with it. The only problem was that I had to slow down significantly with 1.5 laps to go as a truck was reversing into a driveway (the crit was held in the industrial estate in Moruya). I slammed the brakes on, and weaved around the front of the truck, but my advantage over the other girls was significantly whittled away because of that. And I still had a lap and a half to go! I dug deep (so deep in fact that I hit a new max heartrate!) and managed to hold on for the remaining lap and a half to claim 1st place. Phew! I was quite pleased given that I don't usually like a crit.

So somehow I've gone from sky high last weekend to bottoming out on Thursday to re-inspired for more racing this weekend. I'm really glad I got back on the racing horse (even if it was somewhat harder than I really wanted) this weekend as I've tapped back into my enthusiasm / love for the bike / love for racing in general. I'm still not quite sure what I'll target next race-wise, but I know that whatever I end up targeting, I'll have a great group of friends to train and race with. And that's (more than) half the fun. Thanks team!

Cornering and crit attack practice at Stromlo

Sundays training session was a difficult one for me, the weeks total kms were at a reasonable 250km target and after the race on Saturday I was pretty shattered.

I made the mistake of thinking the ride from Dickson to SFP would be a good warmup but i reality by the time I arrived with honorary Valkyrie Paddy for company - I felt shattered.

Sunday was actually the first day in a long time where I've actually really truly had sore legs - as opposed to just feeling a bit soft), and that's a good thing, because I hope it means that the sprinting on Red Hill really translated into something...I guess we will see this weekend.

Verity, Ches, Anna and I were the Valkyries present for this coached session, and helping us out were Coach Simon, World Champion Sue Powell (fyi - having World Champions at your training is pretty friggin ace), Alex, Paddy and maybe others but my memory fails me right at the minute...

We practiced holding form and 'Chase the Rabbit' with Paddy as the rabbit. I bonked on the first lap but Ches and Anna were in fine form.

The session was mercifully short, and finished with some lead out sprints - on each lap it was one of the Valkyries turn to sprint and i drew the card for the last lap. This suited me well as I barely hung on for all the laps prior - but:

A funny thing happens when the end is in sight. Rounding the top corner I suddenly remembered that based on average results in the last 8 weeks of training and racing - I had th potential to put up a pace the other girls couldnt sustain (give or take their ability to follow their lead out riders wheel).

So as we rounded the corner I started yelling to Alex, Up, Go GO GO GO, each time he increased the pace, I called again (which led to a few surprised looking head checks from him - he seemed to be saying "More Speed? For Real??"

I'm pretty sure I even yelled to him "Go, the other girls can't hold on". (sorry ladies).

We  managed to break away with a decent lead, but Paddy (leading out Verity and Ches) was quick to respond and my undoing was Collarbone Corner.

At this much faster pace, I didnt start wide enough and s left a giant gap for Paddy to pull Ches through in front of us.

I wasnt giving up though - I was absolutely determined that the last 8 weeks of training and being ahead of Ches (friendly rivalry in a squad is SO BENEFICIAL), and indeed the months of training since February when Ches was concentragin on Rowing weren't going to be defeated in a crit sprint.

So I hun on and as we rounded the last corner in to the sprint straight, she was a few metres ahead - but this is where I remembered my first (and only other) crit race ever, where someone pipped me in the last two metres and I'd had no idea, so I screamed past Alex (poor use of a lead out guy at this point) and HAMMERED it up the straight.

Paddy, doing a casual headcheck spotted my attack and yelled to Ches to push it which she did - I caught her at the line but she made it across the line first with my wheel in line with about the middle of her bike.

It was an awesome sprint.

Things learned:

• Always sprint the whole thing, you never know when a surprise attack is coming
• Ride behind your lead out guy rather than next to him when it really counts (d'oh)
• When you think you've got nothing, throw down the hammer
• Having a squad makes training awesome, the encouragement, the friends and the rivalry.
• Having a really awesome and supportive Club like Vikings RULES because great riders turn up to help us at practice.
• World Champions go really really fast

Go Valkyrie Vikings

Saturday's Crit training session

Look out, we are doing Science

Following Saturday's ITT we headed back to SFP for some crit training. After the ITT and the ride back to SFP I really felt like I had nothing left in the tank, but knowing I would get a lot out of it just tried to keep going.

We started with some skills drills, and were split into pairs with the great guys who volunteered to help us out. We rode next to our partner with one hand on their shoulder, shoved them a bit, and practiced leaning into them. Unfortunately that's where Linda came off her bike, but thankfully she was okish, and is hopefully on the mend.

From there we moved onto some laps of the crit track, practicing cornering and taking good lines, stealing wheels, keeping on the wheel in front (which I struggled with as my legs were telling me to its too hard, just take a break) and just getting used to people riding around us and gradually taking corners faster and faster. I think that by the end we were all much more confident on the track...and had made some good attacks.

Thanks Simon for the great coaching and to all the guys that came and gave us tips, encouraged and motivated us.

I was well and truly done at the end of the session.