Month: March 2017

Time for the first road race of the season and a return to the rain shadow of Sequim on the Olympic Peninsula. This race is a 12 mile loop on rolling country roads with a slight uphill finish. The Cat 3 race is 5 laps (60 miles) which we ended up averaging 24 mph over 2 1/2 hours (a fair bit faster than I would have done the 100k SIR Populaire in which was on the same day) . It’s a very different style of riding from Randonneuring as the pace varies much more with various surges and attacks throughout the race as compared with the steady tempo riding which is much easier on your body. That said the benefit of the peloton and drafting in a pack meant I only had a normalized power average of 214W.

All the teams park and set up their tents in a field beside the course and there is always a great buzz leading up to the race as racers get ready.

We had 6 team mates in the race itself (of a field of 47) and had loosely defined roles to follow during the race itself. Kyle and Aaron were the designated sprinters for the race and were just going to conserve energy until the end. Zach, Hani, Jim and myself were to cover breaks and help out with lead outs at the end.

The team came through and had a great race, Zach and Hani reeled in a troublesome break pretty much singlehanded over the penultimate lap and it ended up in a bunch sprint. I felt comfortable with my positioning and led out Aaron on my wheel into the 1K to go sign. He then jumped over to another rider going past and carried on to finish 3rd. Kyle had picked a different wheel on the right hand side and ran out of road to come around him but finished with a fine 2nd place by half a wheel.

My fitness felt fine during the race but my left leg had been threatening to cramp up for the last 3 laps despite downing two bottles of Scratch (electrolytes). I think they need to adjust a bit to the surges of racing again. I’m going to try drinking some Pedialyte before next weekends race and see if that helps. I had to shut down my sprint over the last 200m so that my leg wouldn’t seize up completely and rolled in for 16th place.

The lads; Aaron on the left (3rd place) and Kyle on the right (2nd place).

Some shots from the race (I’m the only blue helmet if you want to play “Where’s James” in the pack shots)

The Icebreaker Time Trial in Auburn, WA is the traditional kick off to the Pacific NW racing season. It’s a good early season fitness test and an opportunity to see friends on other teams that you may not have seen since last year. It’s a 10 mile flat TT on country roads (5 miles out, turnaround and return the same way) with riders going off at 30 second intervals. This means you always have both a target up ahead to try to chase down and/or someone bearing down on you from behind to keep you motivated.

I decided this year to view it as an opportunity to do an FTP test on my regular road bike as I wanted to try holding a specific power target with my power meter for the duration. This meant that I wouldn’t be as fast as I would be on a dedicated TT bike but would have more useful data to check my fitness level. (I wasn’t going to be in contention at this level, Masters Cat 1/2/3, regardless of what type of bike I rode in any case).

In this regard the Time Trial was a success, I was aiming to average 280w over the 10 miles and ended up averaging 279w. According to Strava this brings my current FTP estimate to 270w (or 3.5W/KG). My target for this year is to get my FTP up to 290 W and drop 10 pounds which will get me to the 4.0 W/KG number which I think I’ll need to be truly competitive at the Cat 3 level. That said it’s just a number and I’ve certainly won races in the past against people with higher FTPs than me.

This year we caught a break in the variable weather that had been with us all week and had near perfect conditions.

I drove down with a car load of supporters; my mum, Ashley and the boys. Susan was away for the weekend and Caitlin opted out for a quiet day at home.

My team were out in force and we had the tent set up for our warm-up.

Then it was off to the start for a 9:26 start time.

I caught the rider ahead of me a couple miles in to the time trial but was in turn caught by the rider behind me shortly after the turnaround.

And then ~26 minutes later it was all over

A great start to the season and such fun to have Ashley, my mum and the boys along to experience it with me.

It’s been a while since I last wrote anything for this blog so a brief catch up is in order. Over the past three years I’ve focussed more on road racing rather than ultra events.

I’m now a Cat 3 on the road and in addition to road racing this year am planning to give track racing a try as well.

Here’s a summary of my 2016 Cycling highlights.

I went in to the year with a goal of getting in the bulk of my riding before the schools broke out for the summer. I had sketched out a balance of randonneuring and racing objectives and intermingled those through the spring.

Randonneuring