Downtown South Milwaukee. Probably the coolest course to date. 2.8 mile circuit, clockwise. A little bit of city racing, a little bit of park racing.
Consistent laps. Fairly easy race. Finish mostly uphill, did not play to my characteristics.
Italian Beef and fries helps recovery for sure.
As does the occaisional ice cream.
Well, I definitely have a cold. Really just in my head. Slight sore throat, eyes watering, congested sinuses. No fever or cough so OK to race.
Much cooler – highs in low 80′s, but very humid so really a wash pre-race compared with prior days. My cold made me feel like crap, I had a mild headache and really didn’t enjoy the first few laps of today’s 35 mile (12 2.8 mile lap) circuit race. Breathing OK. Legs felt lousy first few laps.
Felt better as the race went on and the cooler weather really helped as it felt cool while we were racing. The first half of the race saw a few attacks, nothing really stuck. I attacked on the downhill into the climb on around lap 7, got up over the hill and made a classic mistake. Two riders came by me, separated from the group and I was a little cooked so I saw how close the group was and didn’t give the extra dig to stay onto these two. Big mistake. As soon as I was caught the group eased up and the two rolled away, soon to have 10 then 20 seconds. A small group bridged to them leaving 5 up the road at the finale.
I have learned that the best time to attack is when you are caught! I should have made the extra effort today, if it didn’t work it would have only been a few seconds more of hard effort which I could have recovered from. If it did work I would have rolled away with the group that stays away. Man, if you aren’t going to be strong, you at least have to think and I didn’t think. I was lazy mentally and physically today.
Oh well, that’s bike racing. Tomorrow will be much better cuz Terri is flying in!! The racing will be harder – 40 mile circuit race in Milwaukee with the Masters (the 3s race 70 miles! and later and I want to pick the Turk up from the airport so that works well.) The real drag is that the race is at 9am so I have to get up before 7am for the first time in a couple of weeks!
Tomorrow afternoon Turk and I should be able to hit the Lake Michigan beach here in Kenosha. The race the next day is in Racine, about 10 miles north, the following day here in Kenosha, so that all works out well. Ara fixed my bike and I plan to go see him and his mom the night after the Racine race, so I should have the S3 for the last few days of racing.
Funny things from the past two days. You know I use spray adhesive on my numbers (some might call it lazy, I call it efficient.) Since I’m now alone up here I now put my number on alone. Yesterday I put my number on and fortunately noticed in the window of the car that it was upside down, before I rolled over to the race start. Also fortunately since these races have been circuit races, and a little longer, I have been wearing jersey and shorts instead of skinsuit. That way I can carry a 3rd water bottle. I quickly took off the jersey, ripped off the number, resprayed, replaced (right side up this time) and no one was the wiser.
Today I sprayed my number, put it on (right side up) and got ready to race. Went to grab my car keys out of my pocket and I had placed the number over the pocket with the keys in it!! Off came the jersey, off came the number, out came the keys, resprayed the number and headed to the start line.
Speaking of bottles. My plan coming into Superweek was to carry 3 bottles each race. The crits are faster and shorter (1:00 to 1:15) than I had anticipated (I had expected racing around 1:30 as most of the races are 35 miles.) I quickly figured out that I only needed 2 bottles so I wear a skinsuit for most of the crits. Doing so much racing, day after day, I figured nutrition, hydration, and recovery were the 3 keys. With that in mind I carry a bottle of sports drink (HEED) and a 500 calorie bottle of protein drink (Accelerade or Endurox) and drink those during the race. Lots of sparkling water pre and post race and another 500 cal Accelerade or Endurox bottle immediately post race. Seems to work OK. Italian Beef seems to help also…
5 days to go. Looking forward to the end, but still looking forward to the coming races!
