Listening

I went out to the track to ride last night. There were a couple interesting things:

Nasal breathing - What a difference a week makes! Last week, I could hardly get through the warmup without breathing through my mouth. Last night, I only had to breathe through my mouth twice. The first time, I was riding by myself and went a little too hard into the wind. The second time was in a practice race, just before I got dropped.

The other thing I noticed was how much more I ended up paying attention to my gearing, position on the bike, etc while I was breathing through my nose. Since wasting energy makes breathing more difficult pretty quickly, I found myself trying to maximize my efficiency whenever possible.

Practice race - After doing some very good group riding drills (the drills were good... not necessarily the group!), we did a short practice race. Gearing was restricted for the race, meaning it was much more important to hold on to wheels.

Like I mentioned above, I was able to maintain my nasal breathing for the first two laps. We weren't going too hard, but it was hard enough that I was a little surprised that I could maintain my breathing. At one point, while we were in a double paceline, I could hear the person next to me breathing hard, while I was still breathing, more-or-less easily, through my nose.

For the first couple laps, I also felt like I did a good job of riding with the group. I seemed to do better than usual holding on to wheels, drafting, and moving up. In particular, there were a few times where I saw a gap opening a few riders ahead of me and I was able to move up into it. In the past, it seemed like I usually wasn't looking far enough ahead to notice this. I've found that not noticing a gap opening ahead is a good way to get dropped!

The pace kicked up a bit during the 3rd lap; this is when I needed to switch back to mouth breathing. I was still with the group, but I was working harder than I wanted to, so I pulled off. I waited for another rider that had already been dropped, and we worked together to finish the race.

In general, it was a good ride for me again. One of the things I'm noticing this year, since I've been focused about building skills rather than fitness, is that my rides are generally more fun and I finish them feeling good about what I've done.