What I tell my clients, I should heed the same advice… in America you can have anything you want… just not everything. That probably can be said of for one’s time even more so than their material wants.
Family, some racing, alotta good training, not too mention work & travel have been consuming my days. Would have loved to put out some good recaps on the races since the Chaindrive. Some great stories on how the races played out & catching up with so many good friends and fellow competitors.
A quick recap, the ChainDrive back in June was one of those days that shoulda gone well but was just a nut-kicker the whole time. Still was in a building phase of training so my racing legs didn’t really show up & I struggled to race like I’m usually capable of. Also, note to self… don’t switch out bikes two days before the race. Handling single track on a bike you’ve not riding in 10 months isn’t doing you any favors. Especially if it’s going from a 29er to a 26” model (wanted the full suspension on a chaindrive course that’s prone to being bumpy).
Great time racing with the guys I did however. A second group formed behind the lead group of 5 guys(Matter, Todd McFadden, Tom Carpenter, TG & Ryan Baumann), we were as many as 6 but widdled down with Ryan Tervo & another guy dropped off after pushing it. Tervo reminds me so much of me back in the day… lot’s of gas off & early in the race but if he’s like me, he’s prays the race isn’t too long. Genetic coding? I don’t know but with time & effort it can be worked on. Colby L., Kyle S. & Justin Weber was our crew, it split up later on as Justin who’d lead at the front a big part of the time dropped off, I had a front wheel malfunction & we all stumbled in at different time with Nik Anikin coming up from behind to grab a couple spots.
Brought along a great friend for support with the family out of town. It was really appreciated.
Next up at the end of June was the Eau Claire Firecracker WORS race…more of the same when it came to the results, not having the racing legs and a first lap crash didn’t help matters dropping 20 places trying to shake out the cobwebs of the shaking I took to the old brainbox. I pulled back a few spots & by lap 3 was back to racing decent but it came at cost at lap 4. With a rejuvenated Nate Lillie coming around with a Adventure 212 racer Myles Beach passing me back.
Ok… disappointing results often lead to motivation to work harder (hopefully smarter too) and June’s races hadn’t exactly given me the confidence builders I was looking for. It was onto 3 weeks of lot’s of hard training efforts building on the weakness & tossing in some lower key less performance/result important races.
Coach Gordy has repeated told me my power #’s in training clearly show I’ve got some top end power to match the top end guys, it’s just being able to extract it during the races, even top end guys have told me with my #’s they don’t understand how I’ve not had some better results.
Call it blind confidence, having the abilities, not the results… how to pull it together. With any luck July has been pulling that together for what starts the part of the MTB race season I put the most emphasis on. The 6 weeks of racing from Ore to Shore to the Chequamegon 40.
The 3 weeks of training I really hiked up, something Training Peaks calls a Training Stress Score. Really cool metric that sorta quantifies your training effort whether is due to shorter interval rides or longer endurance rides. I tossed in 3 races & a triathlon for good measure.
More on those stories… when time allows and I’d like to get a review out there on the crankbased Quarq MTB power meter & the Cycle-Ops hub based power meter…
In the meantime… gotta get on the bike & work on peaking into the Ore to Shore…
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