Another round of beating your head into a wall is over. I am happy to say I have made no gains over the last couple of months. That said I have found that have made no losses either. Meh…here’s the pics. That’s all any of you care about anyway…
Showed up early enough to see JAnd do his run.
Cheering section – L to R – JF, Little P, Mrs. P
GO JAND GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Time for us to go. Clipping in for torture….
“Hi…I’m f’n nuts!”
Reset the computer….and…….3…..2……1…..GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I burried my head for the first 5 minutes. I didn’t look at the screen because I knew I would go too hard if I saw I was behind in order to catch up….or if I was ahead in order to maintain position. So I didn’t look.
I was rocking out to a mix of punk and metal. Total “kill everyone” kind of stuff.
I hit my normal wall about 4-5 mintes in, but pushed through. I looked up to see I was behind…by a lot. JF was in front of me. Honestly he’s got the chops even though he’s new so I really didn’t let that bother me too much, but I was at least gpong to try to pull him back.
Up until now I had been running about 270W. I shifted and started bringing around 300W in the second 5 minutes.
“OOooooo”
With a During the last set of 5 minutes I started to crack. I made myself take it easy for 1.5 minutes. Rode easier than I could just in hopes of recovering to finish strong. It kind of worked, but not really. I tried with about 2.5-3 minutes left to stand and go at it. I was within “50 or 60 feet” of JF when I did. When I stood…so did he. That just told me he wasn’t going to just hand anything over.
At first I felt bad because I figured he thought I was standing to sprint to the end, but it was way too early for that. I was just hoping to get a quick jump to turn over the distance between us. Turns out when I stood I didn’t upshift so my power dropped. Ooops. I sat back down to compensate, but by then JF had taken the opportunity to lay down some power.
I tried to stand and sprint at the end, but I didn’t have much. Not the usual punch I have. When done…I felt like puking. So…I did it right. I definitely left some out there though. Just couldn’t tap into the deep well if that makes sense.
Shoot me.
Seriously…shoot me.
JF took the win in style. The guy is a naturl athlete that will accel at this cycling thing with no problem. I keep telling him the only thing that will limit how far he goes is how much time he wants to spend on it. He won’t be a 5 long and will be a 4 even shorter.
This time he won the CM 19-29. He also got to pick up his medal from the previous TT
To top it off I still owe him a beer to make up for the last $5 from registration I owe him. Will it never end?
So…I ended up 13th out of 28 who took the start out of Cat 4. Furthest up in the field so far, but 2 seconds slower than my last one on the “Flat” course. I did beat Rob Jungels…by like 7 seconds…which just means there is a story there. I’m guessing he had something go wrong or he was doing it as a recovery in street shoes and blue jeans.
Tuesday night at the shop we’re doing the mother of all indoor trainer sessions. We’re down to 1×45′ at threshold. Those sessions have made it easier to race already. They have convinced me that I can ride at an intense effort for much longer than I thought I could.
Congrats to JAnd, JF and everyone else who went out there (MRIDan). Nothing like paying $25 so you can sit in one place and turn yourself inside out for 16 minutes.
Almost time to shave the legs. Mrs. P is thrilled.