Jeff

MN State Crit and Inflattable fun

Today was the MN State Crit championships in St. Cloud and we had beautiful weather for it.  The entire family made the trip as they had inflatable slides and all that stuff.  I think my oldest daughter (4yrs old) had the best day out of the whole family as not only did she get to jump in the inflatable thnigs she was able to do a ponny ride.

Oh ya bike racing.

The race was a combined field of Cat 3's and 4's.  My race ended at the start line.  I was in the 2nd row behind some teammates, which I thought would have been fine, but some guy from another team couldn't get clipped in a cut about 6 or so guys off.  Thus I was at the back of the 45 rider train faster than you could blink.  The train was rolling!! I kept fighting to get up in the pack but gaps started to form very quickly.  Before I knew it the gaps were too big and I was basically riding solo.  I kept going if nothing else to get a good workout in and ended up 21st overall and 11th out of the Cat 4's.

Lesson learned again get my but to the front of the pack.

Next weekend we are heading to Omaha, so I am going to try and get some hard miles in before we go and not take the bike with me.

Jeff

Back in the Saddle

I decided not to race this past weekend and continue a methodical ramp back into shape.  The last couple weeks I have felt great on the bike.

This past weekend I was able to get in 100 miles which was great.

Saturday:
I hooked up with two LSC teammates in the morning and was able to get in some solid miles.  Both guys have a ton of racing experience so I was able to pick there brains on tactics.  That is one area I need to focus on.

Max Power = 1109 Watts
Avg Power = 206
Time in saddle = 3:23
Distance = 70mi
Work = 2506 kJ

Sunday:
Solo ride around 1:00pm when there was a break in the rain.  Decided to do race winning intervals from the Hunter Allen book plus a few sprints thrown in.  I could still feel Saturday's ride in my legs, but decided to push through it.

Max Power = 887 Watts (11.3 W/kg) - Sprint at 110 min outside of below intervals
Avg Power = 172 Watts (2.19 W/kg)
Time in saddle = 2:15
Distance = 39.1mi
Work = 1380 kJ

I did 6 sets of 30 seconds 600 Watts, 3 min 300 Watts, 10 sec 600 Watts with at least 6 min rest if not more.

Set 1:  Max 773W, Avg 359
Set 2:  Max 717W, Avg 339
Set 3:  Max 800W, Avg 343
Set 4:  Max 851W, Avg 353
Set 5:  Max 829W, Avg 353 
Set 6:  Max 857W, Avg 352    

Overall it was a great weekend, which I have followed up with 2 days of rest.  Tomorrow I am going to catch the team hill ride and I plan to do a crit on Sunday.

Jeff

Time Off

Well I took a full week off the bike.  Why, mostly because I stopped looking forward to riding and the new job continues to kick my butt.  June is also a pretty light month of racing so I thought it was a good time to take a mid season break.  Last year I ended up skipping a full week of riding due to vacation and came back stronger.  I am planning on doing a 2 day stage race in a couple weekends to get back into the swing of things.

Tomorrow should be fun as I am meeting some of the guys from the team to do some hill training and catch the Nature Valley Grand Prix that is this weekend.  I will then ride home from work Thursday and then back into work on Friday.  Commuting is a good way for me to get some miles in without taking more family time.  I typically do interval sets of some kind so they are more than just cruising miles.  This weekend I am hoping to get some long rides in as well.

I am going to try and get into the routine of Tuesday race, Wednesday ride home from work, Thursday ride in to work, witht the weekends for long rides or races.

Jeff