How not to prepare for a crit...

The greatest benefit of having a Power Meter is being able to workout at a prescribed intensity for a specific amount of time. There is no subjective, wishy-washy, this feels about right. You can look down and see exactly how hard you are working at any given moment. It's great. And if there's a recurring theme from coaches it's that most people go too easy on hard days and too hard on easy days. So why when I looked down at my Power Tap on Thursday and saw I was going way too hard didn't I ease off? It was a beautiful day, I was riding outdoors, and I hooked up with another local rider, and you know the rest. What should have been a Zone 2 ride became a “don't mind me, I always wheeze like this when I ride” kind of ride. Then Friday I did my intervals as planned. So by the time the crit started on Saturday any snap that I once had was throughly driven from my legs.

The race was fun none the less. The wind was out of the south at 21mph gusting to 25mph. I started in the back and worked on moving forward for three laps till I was about half way up the pack. I was really pushing myself to move forward so I figured I'd sit in for a couple of laps and recover. I checked to see how big the pack was behind me and found out I was the tail end. Apparently, those people I had worked so hard to pass had either passed me back or fallen off the back. Two laps later it was my turn to get dropped, as we came around a 90 degree turn straight into the wind I lost the wheel in front of me and that was it. A few of us worked together to get to the end but I never saw the lead group again.

The good news is, I learned a lot about how hard I can actually push if I need to to stay with the pack. I also got a lot of great data which will help me with pacing in the future.

This week I'll be doing some testing on the Time Trial bike this to figure out where my Functional Threshold is and where I need to get to over the next 74 days.

Train Hard and Smart

Pat