Monday, May 28, 2012

Mt Hamilton Road Race

This race was going to be a highlite of my season. I'd gone relatively well there the previous year with little formal training and was looking forward to racing with a good solid base.

We woke up early the morning of the race making sure that I had a good breakfast and arrived in time to get a good warmup on the trainer before the Elite 2 race started at 8:10.

I was so excited to race that we actually arrived before registration was even set up and had to wait 30 minutes before we could get the race numbers. I hopped on the trainer around 7:15 and started my normal warmup routine of spinning with a few 1 minute hard efforts to get the heart rate up. For some reason I found it really easy to push my HR up above the 140, 150, 160 and 175 steps that I normally set. Things spun up really easily but this wasn't normal. I didn't know if this was a good sign or not.

At about 7:45 I jumped off the trainer and started getting things ready for the start, pulling on a clean and number pinned jersey and getting the bottles and stuff ready.

As I went to get my bike off the trainer the handle that loosens the clamping mechanism broke off in my hand leaving my bike trapped on the trainer in what had now become a heavy metal boot. Ok, don't panic, I still had about 15 minutes to figure out how to get the bike out and roll to the start. I found some tools in the truck and started to dismantle the trainer and within a few minutes I'd freed the bike. With all this going on I'd forgotten to pack my race food into my pockets and had another mad dash back from the start line to get the race food out of the truck.

Now I was finally ready to go. I was looking around and noticed that a lot of guys only had one bottle. With the neutral feed at 30 miles you really only needed one bottle to get over the mountain this early in the AM.

The race rolled off the start line and super supporter Hailey jumped into the truck to meet me at the official feed zone on the east side of the mountain near the intersection of 130 and Mines Road.

The race started fast with 3 Metromint guys on the front setting a hard tempo up the first climb. It was obvious that these guys were only racing for the top of the Mountain, not the finish in Livermore.

My heart rate was high and I was breathing heavy right from the start. I hung with the group and maintained my place about 10 guys backfor the whole of the first climb and down into the first valley. About a mile into the second climb things started to go bad, my heart rate was high but my legs were empty, in fact my whole body was feeling empty and and as the group started to slip away I realized that this wasn't going to be a good day.

I pushed on and maintained a high HR all the way to the top of Mt Hamilton. I was pushing hard but there was no power in the legs. Looking at the Strava data I managed to hold an average HR of 179 for the first 1:10 of the race. Just before the top I was caught by the lead riders of the 35+ 1/2/3 who had started 10 minutes behind us. I stayed with them on the descent and even passed a few trying to chase backto the 2's but as soon as the road went up hill my legs gave out and I was dropped. This would happen time and again as groups came by me and I couldn't hang on.

I pushed on regardless just trying to get to the finish. I picked up a feed from Hailey but it made no difference to the speed I was going, there was no energy to push the pedals. By the time I got to the finish the 2's field had been done for about 30 minutes and I was rolling in with the 3's. One thing that was interesting was that I crossed the line with the Metromint guy who had been drilling it on the first 2 climbs. Apparently he had blown up on the first part of the main climb but he had done the damage by that point. He was trying to launch his teammates to the KOM. I have no idea if he was successful or not but as I thought they weren't racing for the finish.

The good news was that Spencer had placed 2nd in a sprint of about 15 guys. I'd picked him to win but 2nd at Mt Hamilton was a great result.

Again it's time to recover and look at ways of generating more power on the bike. I'm obviously fit enough, being able to hold a HR of 180 for over an hour but it's raw power that I need to develop and I also need to come into these races rested and less stressed if possible. This is going to take some work and careful planning.

I don't have the results yet but the Strava times show that even though I had dead legs and couldn't pedal up hill, I still beat my previous years time by 30 seconds, and the previous year I'd felt great and turned myself inside out to get to the finish line. This year there was no pain and no soreness as I'd had no energy to even push that hard. All I can think is that I'm actually stronger than last year but need to be better rested to be more successful.

Let's see how that goes.

Race Day Food:
Breakfast - 4 bags of instant oatmeal. 1 banana, 1 bottle of Cytomax.
Race - 1 gel, 1 banana, 2 bottles of Cytomax






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Location:San Jose, CA

Europe, Mt Hamilton Reece and Poison Oak

I basically took 2 weeks off in the middle of may after feeling flat at Wente without the energy to climb with the pack. I had a week at home resting and then took a trip to Europe for a Trade Show and visited family. This wasn't relaxing, I walked for about 10 miles each day at the trade show and took 4 flights that week, but it did give me a break from the bike. The real fun part was catching up with some old friends at the pub. One friend showed up that I hadn't seen in about 10 years. It was a really good night out and the old Kings Head beer selection has got much better over the years.

Watching the Giro TTT in a German hotel room. Probably the smallest hotel room in the world.


I arrived back on a Tuesday but didn't manage to get back on the bike until Wednesday and did some spin sprints, as you can imagine with Airplane legs I was slow but happy to be out.

I did some hard hill efforts on the Thursday and started to feel better and by Saturday I'd decided to take a ride to Mt Hamilton to check out the climb for the road race. I couldn't find anyone who was interested in going with me so I rode over there by myself. I wasn't setting any records on the climb but enjoyed the view and being out on the bike. It turned into a 5 hour round trip as the ride across town has so many stop lights. I'm glad I rode it as it's always a longer climb than I remember. The next day I screwed up and did a much harder ride than I'd planned racing a couple of friends up OLH instead of just spinning around.

On the Monday I'd signed up to do the Santa Cruz dirt ride. This was a group MTB ride to Santa Cruz taking in as many of the best trails that the coast had to offer. This was a really fun ride and I felt really strong all day, climbing easily with the lead group and putting in some good efforts on Alpine and the other epic climbs. There was one section where we had to go off trail as a few large trees had fallen and completely blocked the route. This was later to prove the biggest mistake of the week. Somewhere in this section I manage to tangle with a Poison Oak bush. As always I wouldn't know until a few days later but this is where the damage was done.

I was really please with the dirt ride and looking forward to Mt Hamilton, all I needed to do now was recover during the week and get ready to race.

The unfortunate thing about this week was that there was a lot going on and the work stress levels were very high. I was the only one in the office and one of my managers got her finder caught in a machine resulting in a 5 hour trip to the ER at SF General. Now that's a place I don't want to go to again. It was also our wedding anniversary week and the Kona qualifying celebration for Super Supporter Hailey. Add all this up and the recovery wasn't going so well.

By the time Friday came along the Poison Oak was in full bloom on my arms, neck, leg and crouch and none of my normal cures were helping. I tried scrubbing, witch hazel, creams and anything else I could throw at it but it just kept spreading, ruining any sleep and generally messing me up.

I hadn't had Poison Oak in a while so I'd forgotten how much it takes out of you. It used to be a regular part of AR but not something I'd hit in road bike racing.

I spent the Saturday before Mt Hamilton RR cleaning and fixing bikes and took a short spin on the trainer while watching the Queen stage of the Giro. This was a very relaxing day but too little too late.

Picture at the top of Empire Grade from the SC Dirt Ride. A great day out on the bike with 45 other great riders.




Location:E El Camino Real,Mountain View,United States