Thursday, September 25, 2008

Back to Back Fun

Since I'm going to race two back to back UCI 'Cross races in October, I wanted to do some back to back hard efforts to see if this old bod could handle it.

Sooooooooo, I figured that the Westlake A Group on Tuesday and Spin 'Cross practice race on Wednesday would be a good way to start.

Dumb.

Westlake As consisted of Lake Effect/RGF some Spin guys and Tom K, Gary B & I. We had a nice parade lap and then all hell broke loose.....distance was 11 laps at 21.3 miles, avg speed of just under 27mph, avg watts 304 and only twice during the race (like 30 seconds total) was I at below TH....avg HR - 159. Big fun until at the final group sprint a car pulled out and since I'm not even on the OA point radar screen, I sat up....

So the next day I'm feeling pretty good so I head over to Gary's to go to the 'Cross practice race with Gary & Sadie. We get there and David S, Tim F and low and behold did we see Brett D show up? I had just spoke to him and he had done a MTB workout that morning had wasn't going to show. Well Bart had set up a track that I thought I was going to need a GPS unit to find my way around....it was long but a real good mix. It was decided that we were going to go for 45 minutes and not laps. I didn't even get my splits during the ride...it was around 10 miles long. We started and Gary & I kept the lead group of 6 or so in sight. Brett D came up and what seemed like for two laps we kept going back-n-forth...I was with a group of 3 MTBers sitting in when they (Brett included) took off and I couldn't respond. Damn. Gary was on my heels the whole time and Greg (?) from Spin was in my sights so I had someone I could chase. Let's just say from 18 minutes through about 28 minutes into the ride I really wondered what my sanity level was for wanting to do this. Things got better or went numb at the 30 minute mark and I felt better. Except for my back which was screaming by now. I have never been in my drops as much as I was that night trying to take the pressure off my lower back. Felt pretty good......once we were done.

Much more training to get ready for Oct. I'm off today.

Caio,
Rick

1 comment:

Gary Burkholder said...

I have to say that I hurt more at the practice than at the races on both Sat and Sun. Granted WL was a great shock to my system, but damn my back hurt after last night! I've got to figure out what kind of excersises to do in order to strengthen my back for all the abuse that Edgewater deals out.