Finding The Opportunities In Challenge

I rode out to Stafford Lake in Novato last Saturday to dip my toes in some local racing again, and to watch Anthony Lee clinch his series title.

I’ve been full of excuses to skip racing the last couple of years, mostly driven by my challenges to get “race-fit” after two bouts with COVID and more importantly long COVID symptoms, including some mystery pericarditis, and weird HR behavior that have really put the kibosh on any hard efforts. This challenge, combined with getting older and naturally losing VO2 Max after 55, has not been awesome, as you might guess.

This spring, I refocused my training on longer base work and bigger overall volume, which is the main priority with the bikepacking tours that I’ve been enjoying each summer. This has resulted in some good improvements in both Fatmax and Anaerobic Threshold, getting my LT up close to my mediocre Vo2 Max.

 I have also been logging and weighing my food using the Athletes Food Coach app, which is the same app that Visma Lease-A-Bike uses with their athletes. There are no real secrets here, a focus on high carbohydrates and protein in the 1.8 G/Kg range. I like weighing my food and doing way too much math, converting all US-based foods to a metric system with foods on a Benelux database. My point is there are easier ways to do this, but I’ve been sticking with this one for 16 weeks and building a positive habit, and have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 lbs. 

Anyway, back to the high percentage of AT to VO2 Max, or “ceiling”. What this felt like is I had an okay diesel motor, but if I tried to do efforts that were anywhere close to my watts from 10 years ago, I felt absolutely fucking awful :-) So over the last few weeks, I’ve been taking the icky medicine known as Vo2 Max intervals, mostly on the fire road behind my house. These have been really simple, with longer recoveries than I would have used in the past. This decision has been informed by frequent INSCYD testing and modeling lactate combustion rates, and it seems to be working. I’m getting more comfortable doing bigger watts, and my four-minute hill is now a three-minute hill.

I had looked at the Strava profile of the race course and figured it would be twelve short climbs over three laps. I rode out from my house, which took roughly an hour, put on a number, and had time to recon the trickier south side of the course. I’m so used to the bike park side of the course, I figured I could figure that out on the fly.

I lined up in Sport behind the series callups and a standard understated Jim start of “ okay, 5,4,3,2,1 ,GO”

I technically started fine, but wow that start was spicy! I was concerned about going into the red early, with only three weeks of intervals in my legs in the last three years. I got myself too far back over the first two steep climbs, and then was stuck behind quite a few good climbers who were having issues going downhill. I got out of the scrum for good after the dual slalom section on the first lap, and started to move forward and overtake riders in front of me. 

The next two laps were much better, with me focusing on my process goals of riding the short climbs sustainably at about 5 W/KG, and descending the choppy, loose, grassy hill and off-camber trails.

I came in P2 out of 10 in my division, which I was pleased with! 

Looking at the splits, I gave away almost all the gap to the 50+ leader on lap one, then was right there for laps 2 and three. I also would say I felt like I could have done another lap, so all in all a very confidence-building day at a local race.

 Of course, I would now like an XC bike again, after donating my old Air Nine to Recyclery a couple years ago!

Anthony won his race and the series, which is fantastic to see! Bonus to his dad, who also raced in Beginner and won his division!