Monday, November 23, 2009

Bloomer CX - 2009

“It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.”

- Vince Lombardi


Probably the best thing about this race was that I hung in there and finished...


I woke up to a foggy morning on Sunday. When I looked outside, I was hoping that the fog meant it was a little warm, but it wasn't. It was cold enough that the fog made you even colder. Good 'cross weather I suppose.


My legs felt a little flat during my warmup, but not bad, so I figured I should be OK. The course was pretty fun again; a good mix of fast open corners and some tighter ones. We also went back through the woods for a while.


After questioning my effort just a bit last week, I planned to try for a faster start this week. Apparently, that was everyone else's plan too. So, even though I was going hard at the start, it felt like the whole field swarmed by me. Before the end of the first lap, I was well out of the top 10, and I felt like crap.


I continued to lose ground on the second and third laps, getting passed by people that I felt I "should" beat (didn't they know they were just supposed to follow me around?). After getting taken into the course tape, I was about ready to just stop. There were enough people cheering for me though that I felt like I had to keep going. I started trying to be a little more positive, "Hey, those guys started too fast, hang in there, they'll come back to you." Doing that, I suffered through the rest of the race. Finally, on the last lap, a few people did start coming back to me. I ended up passing maybe 3-4 guys on that last lap.



(Nice head position on this corner! Photo by Hans Nyberg.)


Still, I ended up finishing a disappointing 16th out of 25. For whatever reason, I was just physically way off the pace. Probably my attitude in the middle laps didn't help me either.


So what happened? I think that it was a combination of the following:

  • As I wrote last week, I haven't been sleeping quite enough. Friday night was actually pretty bad. I just woke up at 2am for no particular reason and never really got soundly back to sleep. I watched my daughter all day on Saturday, which was fun, but tiring. Anyway, by the end of the day Saturday, I was pretty wiped out.
  • I also wonder about my training. At this point in the year, the few training rides I'm doing are relatively short and intense. I think this is the right formula, but I wonder if I should have gone a bit harder? I also did some longer (15 minute) intervals on Wednesday night; maybe that left me a little flat?
  • I felt like I was starting to get a little sick this week. Nothing ever came of it, but maybe it did mess me up a little.


I think it helps to have a short memory and be a little bit delusional if you're a bike racer. You have to somehow really believe that next weekend you can line up against the same guys and perform better. So, that's what I'll try to do in two weeks for the last race. I think I've still got a bit of fitness, I just need to let it show.

2 comments:

chunky dunker said...

I know your faster than shit! Just gotta find that balance. Keep pushing. Becuase when you give up, that is when you really lose!

Keith said...

Thanks John, I appreciate your comment!