"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

So for the first time ever, my family and I decided to make this a whole weekend affair. Before the bike races kicked off at a civilized 10:20am, hundreds of 5k and 10k road runner took to the rolling hills of "in the middle of nowhere, Lancaster, PA." My wife was one of them. She used to do a lot of running and fair amount of racing before my son Peter came into the picture, and just like me, she's been back on the training "train" of late. Today was, we think her first race in about 4 years. Very proud of her for her giving it her all. And finishing in the top 30% of both men and women is quite impressive if you ask me!

After her race, I took advantage of all the free Turkey Hill goodies, and "pre-loaded" with a bottle of chocolate milk and an ice cream sandwich. It seemed like a smart move. Even though it wasn't my normal pre-race routine, I figured: Easily digestible sugars and carbs plus some protein? What could go wrong? Did I ever mention to any of you that I'm what I would call "borderline" lactose intolerant.

And as I lined up against at least 63 riders (not including day-ofs) including pros from Optum, Astellas, and World Champion track medalist Bobby Lea (I overheard the Optum dude say there were 5 pros in our field), plus the usual mid-atlantic hammer heads from DC and PA, I was praying that the enormous rock in my gut would just fade away. Please, please fade away...

The 10k loop is, in a word, hard. Slow pavement, several tricky turns that you descend into coasting because they are that fast, then its a 90 degree right turn into an out of the saddle climb that is only fun for the first 10 or so riders who get to go full speed through the apex. The rest of us are hammering the breaks then max wattage sprinting up the hill. Ugh. Plus there is a long sustained stretch of of rollers that I am forever scarred by the time Joe Papp and his doping team killed us in the way-back-machine. And lots of wind and gutter ball. Classic Belgian Kermesse style racing.

But the thing about being scared and scarred and riding around with a big rock in your gut? It means, you can't be stupid, or lazy. You have to take every opportunity to rest, hide and recover. You know that slow easy spin on the downside of a roller is your only hope to switch your nervous system from "fight or flight" to "rest and digest" mode. And if you are at the back of the field, chasing up every roller, you will get no rest on the downside. NONE.

And so I did, and for 5 of 10 laps I was good. Or rather good enough. Right where I needed to be. Ish. Not actually that close to the front, but in a few laps we had already burned off a lot of the weaker riders in the peloton. To the point where I was not worried as much about getting gapped off during the single file stretches. My wife sees a lot of bike racing. She sees a lot of me, and she said that I "looked like I belonged." That's a pretty nice compliment coming from someone who doesn't let me bullshit myself about my racing performance on any given weekend day.

The belly was still bad. There were some tough moves off the front, an eager field chasing. Lots of single file into crosswinds. When I saw 5 laps to go, I suffered a mental breakdown.

I had started the race thinking there were 6 laps, and after 3 or 4 times around I just couldn't figure out what was going on. The "math" just wasn't adding up in my head. Why? Because sometimes I'm just an idiot. "We were supposed to hit the Gamber's Wall extension 2 laps ago, what is going on!?" And that confusion and frustration coupled with a main field that had split in efforts to bring back a dangerous move, plus my friend "rock gut." And I was done. Dropped on a stretch of rolling 3-5% climbing.

I chased for a couple of laps, picking up, passing other dropped riders (my stomach finally started to loosen up abit when I was just riding threshold/Low VO2), but it was too late. With 3 laps to g, (the first lap I was to climb the 20% Gamber's Wall) I was yanked. I was confused and upset. Would I be pulled and placed?" I asked the official. "No," he responded non-nonchalantly, "just pulled." A bit of a back and forth ensued that ended when some other guy, not in an official's shirt got nasty and made a crack about listing me as a DNF, "How about that?" he spits out. Jerk.

Mental note, don't talk to anyone but my wife immediately after a race. No good comes of it. It's not like cross, I don't need "the points," It doesn't actually matter. But it kind of does. Drop the needle now on "broken record" Marc: I still wanted a finish. I wanted to know where I stood.

Epiloge: The best I could do was count riders the next lap through. 39 left. Okay, I'm going to call me in 40th place. And while I can wonder "what would have been?" Had I done this or that or not, the reality of the matter is that if I had done this same race last year, I would have been dropped on the first or second lap, instead of surviving 1/2 the race against a field of that caliber.

And so while I wanted to make a big jump on my training curve, to perform above what was realistically expected of me, I probably finished pretty close to the curve of what I "should" be doing right now. Which is how it's always been in my racing "career."

From that entire first season as a Collegiate Cat D getting DNFs/DFLs EVERY race, to finishing DFL in Cat 5/Citizen crits...I've sort of clawed my way to some respectable finishes here and there over years and years of training and racing, but never any "leaps" that would have my competitors asking for my biological passport. So why should this year, what I'm calling my "comeback" year be any different? It shouldn't, it won't be...and I'm just going to have to be okay with that.

Tomorrow looking forward to fun family time (not that all the free food, bouncy castle extreme, mascots, giant cow figure wasn't fun family time) riding an old time steam engine train, and visiting some train museums with my son who currently knows the NYC Subway system better than me and most of you too!

By the numbers.

So lately we've been talking a lot about how we want our big power numbers to be during the week on our trainers, or out on group training rides, and not in the races. And that remains true especially for longer efforts, but I just downloaded my power data from the race and was surprised to see some of the data. So remember, for about 5 laps I was with the group, positioned fairly well to avoid unnecessary power output? And yet, what was at one point, required to stay with the P 1/2/3 group?

Lap 1: Max at 16.2 w/kg; 5 seconds 14.06 w/kg
Lap 2: Max at 14.5 w/kg; 5 seconds 13.44 w/kg
Lap 3: Max at 14.8 w/kg; 5 seconds 12.21 w/kg
Lap 4: Max at 13.4 w/kg; 5 seconds 11.36 w/kg
Lap 5: Max at 13.5 w/kg; 5 seconds 12.04 w/kg

And in 2 hours of racing, I surged 15 times at 10 watts/kg or higher. And 19 times I surged from 8 to 10 watts/kg.

Marc - interesting stuff. I'd love to know the avg w/kg for each lap, cause I have about 1.5w/kg right now. ;-)

Marc Bertucco said:

By the numbers.


And in 2 hours of racing, I surged 15 times at 10 watts/kg or higher. And 19 times I surged from 8 to 10 watts/kg.

How many seconds are you counting these surges?  

Craig Zolan said:

Marc - interesting stuff. I'd love to know the avg w/kg for each lap, cause I have about 1.5w/kg right now. ;-)

Keeping in mind, when I wasn't pedaling hard, I was doing everything in my power to pedal very little. In fact, if I look at the breakdown of time spent, while racing in the pack, in various zones, the numbers are revealing.

A full 46% of the time there, I was generating between 0 and 160 watts! That said, my next biggest chunk of time (18.75%) was spent between 331-500 watts. Next at 12.46% comes my time at 211-290 watts, then we're in crazy man territory (for just 90 seconds less than the total of my time in endurance/tempo/threshold), where I'm living above 500 watts for 8.83% of my total racing time.

All of this adds up to some pretty "pedestrian" averages per lap...

3.2 w/kg
3.0
3.0
2.8
3.2

And then 2 more laps by myself chasing, or riding with one or two others.

3.2 w/kg
3.0

THE SAME? Not really, yes, but no.

But averages are deceiving though, right? Because thinking back to those laps, I don't think anyone in the field (well MAYBE Bobby Lea), could describe those first 5 laps as "tempo" even though my wattage averages were squarely in tempo territory.

Plus, those 2 solo laps? From a Kj point of view, I actually worked harder, and went significantly slower. From 24/25mph and 13-14 minute laps with the field average, to 20/21mph and 16-17 minute lap times solo. When in the field I only burned 165-185kj, but by myself I was at 210-218kj.

Of course thinking back to those 1000+ watt jumps, it makes sense too that the "IF" numbers are range from 1.005 to 1.127 for the laps I was with the field (1.076 total for that block of time), while solo I was at 0.935-0.978

As a reminder from Training Peaks (http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/normalized-power,-intensity-factor-training-stress)

Typical IF values for various training sessions or races are as follows:

• Less than 0.75 recovery rides
• 0.75-0.85 endurance-paced training rides
• 0.85-0.95 tempo rides, aerobic and anaerobic interval workouts (work and rest periods combined), longer (>2.5 h) road races
• 0.95-1.05 lactate threshold intervals (work period only), shorter (<2.5 h) road races, criteriums, circuit races, longer (e.g., 40 km) TTs
• 1.05-1.15 shorter (e.g., 15 km) TTs, track points race
• Greater than 1.15 prologue TT, track pursuit, track miss-and-out

I've gone into some boring details here, not for navel gazing, but hopefully it illustrates some of the actual kinds of demands in road racing and will encourage you to hit your interval workouts extra hard when the time comes. NO SLACKING!

By the numbers I was--when actually racing with the bunch--either "off" or "full-on." 46% of the time under 160 watts, 27% of the time over 331 watts. There just wasn't that much in between. And that kind of matches with what I feel to be true about the energy demands of bike racing. It's just so important to be go crazy hard, then recover, crazy hard, recover. Over and over again.

mugwump said:

Marc Bertucco said:

By the numbers.


And in 2 hours of racing, I surged 15 times at 10 watts/kg or higher. And 19 times I surged from 8 to 10 watts/kg.

How many seconds are you counting these surges?  

Good question. I didn't do a manual count. PowerAgent has a window/view that counts the surges. I don't know precisely how they measure a "surge" but I assume I've got to be at each number for a second at least.

I think another interesting "take-away" and "lesson to be shared" from this power file compared to my Prospect Park racing files, is the fact that in PP races I generally am trying to be aggressive, actively making those surges happen with attacks, etc. But at a race like Turkey Hill, those surges are "happening to me." I'm doing my best to avoid that kind of intensity, but can't.

 And I think it would be similar to many KCC riders who are going to be traveling to bigger "out of town" races. So when you are racing locally, and are in a position to test your legs and your racing brain, GO FOR IT! Because when you get to that big out of town race, you're going to need what you experienced and learned by riding outside your comfort zone in the park.

Anyone interested in doing this one. I did it a few years ago and liked it. 

https://www.bikereg.com/turkey-hill-country-classic