View Single Post
Old 06-07-19, 04:49 PM
  #234  
cmh
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 2,910
Mentioned: 2 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 140 Post(s)
Liked 327 Times in 161 Posts
My season got off to a slow start due to work travel, family and a bad cold at the wrong time. So I was fairly out of shape, but improving at the start of May for my first race of the year. My plan was to use the Tuesday night races we have through the season in Portland as training and motivation to get back into shape, and progress has been good. The course is a 1.9 mile auto race track that is flat, and with no hard corners. Very often it is windy, and it is almost always a fast race with many break attempts, at least in the P123 field. It is also run as a points race which adds to the fun and the attacks. My three races to date:



5/7: The plan was to sit in, get back into the feel of the pack, and maybe move up a bit towards the end if I felt good. The result was to plan. I didn’t do any work at all. At times it felt pretty easy, but at other times it was incredibly hard. I had no influence at all on the outcome of the race so it was more riding in circles than racing. Finished mid pack (33/~60).

5/21: I stepped it up over the first week’s race and moved to the front during the second hot lap (about ½ way through the race). I didn’t try for points, but instead went with the attack that usually follows the point sprint. I was away for half a lap with one other rider, that grew to 4 riders and then was caught before a lap was up. That effort just about did me in and I had to recover in the pack for several laps. In the bell lap, knowing I wasn’t going to contest the sprint I worked my way to the front and took a hard pull for ¼ of the lap to keep the pace as high as I could. It wasn’t a lead out for a team mate or anything, just riding fast to keep it safe and for the training. Rode in at the back of the pack for 63/73.

6/5: This week I really raced. I went with 2 different break attempts, although neither lasted more than a lap. I worked to bring back 2 breaks that didn’t have any teammates in it, and I was generally near the front. I found myself able to recover in a lap or less in the field even after a really hard effort. In the final sprint I managed to get good position, but couldn’t hold the wheel of the fastest 4 sprinters in the pack when they really went. Finished 6th in the sprint for 9th overall of ~45 riders in a fast race (my garmin showed 28.5mph avg for the 30 mile race, 39.7 mph peak in the final sprint, which had a slight tailwind).


Overall I’m happy with my fitness improvements and motivated to keep working.
cmh is offline  
Likes For cmh: