Apr 18, 08:24 PM by Steve | Sea Otter Road Race: A Lesson on Attacking

Today I had a pefect attack on the second lap—it looked promising, but ultimately a rider bridged the gap and brought the field back to me. I attacked again at the top of the climb after the feedzone. It was dicey for a while, but ultimately this one stuck. Another rider joined me later and we rode together to the end. Oh yeah… did I mentioned it was off the back? I sprinted him to the line and took… 40th. This is a lesson I learned from the Cycling Insight podcast, the age- old “attack off the back”. I probably would be more disappointed in my performance if it wasn’t somewhat expected.

I felt pretty good going into this weekend, and I don’t think I rode that poorly, I’m just outclassed by nearly everyone. I’m wondering if I should take some time off racing for a while and just focus on training. Note that the race was fast, the winning time in the masters race would have been 30th in our race. The 35+ race which started 5 minutes behind didn’t catch me until my 4th lap (of 6), despite me losing 5 minutes per lap to the leaders after I fell off the train. The 45+ race caught me a little further in the loop on the 5th lap, and I was able to fairly easily stay behind them (but outside of their draft) for most of the rest of the lap.

Overall, the problem continues to be my lack of ability to hold an over-threshold effort for any significant amount of time, and more importantly, difficulty in being able to do it over and over again. Note that the spike in the following graph at about 17 miles is where I lost the pack, and my threshold is about 165.

1. Bazzman & Hutch would be proud.

   — Kim at Apr 20, 05:53 PM

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