There’s
a fine line between personal growth and sheer stupidity. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in athletics. For example, I’m writing this the night before the
SRAM Tour de Ranges road race which I’m entered to compete in… and naturally
I’ve chosen to start in the fastest wave. Let’s stress two words in particular
from that last sentence: road race. True
I spend quite a large amount of my training time on the road, but that doesn’t
mean I have any knowledge pertaining to road race tactics, race style, or
really even how to draft properly. No worries, I’ll definitely be fine in a 110-kilometer
race with about 400 other people, right?
Training
leading up to the event has gone well. My coach Matthew Parks and I worked on a
block-style plan which focused on one particular metric at a time, while always
keeping up on the necessary skills. The general idea is to form a kind of
pyramid with efforts, starting with the infamous base miles and elevation gain.
Slowly building time in the saddle and meters climbed, the weeks passed with
some encouraging results. My times up the local climbs began to decrease, I
could go harder for longer, and the hard things began to feel much more doable.
Between riding, gym time, a bit of running, quite a lot of stretching, and
focused recovery time both the body and mind began to show signs of progress. A
priority this year is to concentrate on the balance between going hard and
going easy: the hard efforts should be really
hard, and the recovery should be absolute
recovery. Sure, there’d be heaps of time spent in zone two, but in the past
I’ve let the training get the better of me, and fallen quite deep into
overtraining syndrome, which in turn had extensive negative effects on
performance, health, and life in general. But… what’s life without some
mistakes to learn from? This year, it’s all about the recovery. So bring on the
nerdy HRV sleep devices, compression recovery tights, meditation, and forced
couch time.
In any
case, the training was working. Stress and recovery were well matched, and coming
into the new year I was feeling great with the next goal looming on the
horizon: the SRAM Tour de Ranges. As mentioned before, my road experience was
extremely limited (read, none whatsoever), and the prospect of anyone deciding
to ride a road bike here is completely out of the question, so any attempt to
learn the finer points of drafting or group riding would involve chasing cars…
people tend to get upset when you do that. Therefore, I was going into this
event twice as blind as normal; not only would I be riding the course for the
first time, my technical ability and general understanding of tactics were
quite sub-par. Guess it was time to rely on skills gained from excessive hours
on the road bike and the watts stored up in my legs.
After
loading up the car with the skinny-tire bike, a four-hour drive up to Clevedon
awaited me. This time I’d learned one lesson and wouldn’t be sleeping in the
back of a car and huddling over a camping stove, but rather sleeping on a floor
mattress and staring into a microwave… progress. My little Airbnb place was
little more than a spare room set up for people traveling through on a budget,
but what it lacked in amenities it made up for with scenery. Set on top of a
hill (foreshadowing) overlooking the Hunua National Park, the view took my
breath away multiple times. The ocean peeked out in the background, and clouds
danced in patters of all sorts across the sky, highlighting the red-orange rays
of the setting sun. Well, if things went to shit during the race at least I’d
have one hell of a new phone background.
During
packet pickup, the usual nagging thoughts of I’m not good enough and seriously
Payson… what are you doing here began to creep in. Pushing all negative
thoughts out of my head I did my best to focus on the happy clouds floating
lazily across the sky. Paired with a bit of meditation before bed and dinner
overlooking the ocean, the negative thoughts slowly began to disperse.
Disperse, but not leave for good. Although I’m not sure going into an event
without any fear is healthy either, confidence is key but overconfidence has
its own fair share of negative effects as well. Or maybe that’s just what I
tell myself to pretend everything’s ok, and everybody stares at the ceiling
bombarded with negative thoughts the night before a big event. Well, nothing to
do at this point but roll over and attempt to force my body to sleep at 8:30 in
broad daylight.
Race day
morning brought the usual combination of nerves and excitement. After an early
morning breakfast it was time to get kitted up. I lathered sunscreen on my
arms, legs, and neck and stuffed my pockets with more bananas than one rightfully
should. From my accommodation it was all downhill to the event startline (more
foreshadowing) and I reached the expo area far earlier than I had planned. Now
I had 40 minutes to kill after getting adequately warmed up, so naturally I
spun up and down the same road again and again, slowly joined by progressively
more riders, all of which whom were much better judges of time than I. Guess
I’d rather be early than late…
Here’s a
striking difference between cross-country and road racing: the starts. In every
mountain bike race the start gun sets off absolute madness filled with pounding
hearts, sprinting legs, and rubbing elbows. Sheer lunacy. In contrast, when the
gun goes off to start a road race, people slowly clip in and begin rolling out
at a normal pace behind the lead car. Sure, there’s a little bit of urgency
present for people to get near (ish) to the front but everyone’s heart rate is
far below threshold. Incredibly thankful for the ‘relaxed’ start I slotted into
the peloton and began the charade of pretending to know how to draft. Just stay a few centimeters behind the wheel
in front of you… couldn’t be easier, right?
Somehow
my patchwork drafting skills helped me to stay with what quickly became the
lead group. A slightly sketchy gravel descent found a large number of roadies
grabbing at their brakes and creating a large split in the main group. Luckily
my flat-bar skills came in handy and I was able to stay with the leaders. As
our group of about 100 flew through the beautiful New Zealand day a few of the
strategists began launching attacks in the attempt to break the elastic and
create a gap. Everyone who tried to go off the front, however, was quickly
caught. 30 kilometers in seemed far too early for a solo break to stay alive
for the full 110. Status quo remained with a decently large lead group leading
the way.
About 60
kilometers into the course there were three sections of road construction due
to crazy weather throughout the area around Christmas time. The sections were
mundane, and simply just added a few bumps and potholes to avoid. My luck,
however, saw me go straight into one of the potholes and come out the other
side with a rear tire making the dreaded hissing sound. Moving to the side of
the road I went into full panic mode and started the practiced dance of fixing
a flat: bike upside down, wheel out, tire off, used tube frantically tossed
aside, new tube put in (no time to line up valve stem and words), tire back on,
CO2 on valve, engage CO2 canister, watch tire inflate. Apart from the panicked
circumstances, I was quite proud of how quickly I got rolling again… wasn’t
exactly timing it but it’s probably a record. After a cross-style mount I was
back to pedaling, and pedaling hard. Knowing the stragglers of the lead group
weren’t too far ahead I threw caution to the wind and buried myself to catch
up. (Geek side-note: I don’t have a power meter on my bike but the Strava
estimated power put me at 450 average for this effort.) Luckily, I had a bit of
a tailwind and the road began to pitch upwards, giving me all the best conditions
for catching back up to the group.
Around a
sweeping bend I finally saw what I’d been looking for: the tail end of the lead
group. Granted these were the people getting dropped off the back, but nonetheless
I was over the moon to have a bit of a draft and basically a springboard up to
the rest of the pack. Moving through the ranks I did my best to recover from
the chase while still gaining on where I really wanted to be; and against all
odds it was somehow working. Whether it was just an on day for me or there were
some hidden watts in my legs I was moving quickly from rider to rider, feeling
strong and once again well in control of my effort level. All that was left was
a final uphill effort between a bit of a gap to the lead group. Putting my head
down I dug a little deeper and lit another match, sprinting out of the saddle
towards the welcome draft of the wheel 20 meters in front of me. Pushing hard I
gained meter after meter, but we were getting awfully close to the top of the
hill and I knew for a fact there’d be no way I could keep the pace of a large
group on my own on a downhill. Finding another gear I got back out of the
saddle and lit another few matches. But it worked. Ever so slowly I reached the
furthest back rider and thankfully jumped straight onto his back wheel, feeling
the welcome pull of the riders in front. I was ecstatic that I had made it
work, made it back to the lead group in a relatively short time, and did so
under relatively my own power. The mental game was strong at that point, and we
were fast approaching the KOM climb where I intended to make my move and
hopefully form a bit of a break from the main group, ideally taking a few
strong riders with me all the way to the finish.
But lady
luck was not on my side this day. Throughout the whole chase effort I had been
so focused on catching the riders in front of me I hadn’t noticed my rear tire
slowly becoming more and more squishy. So on the final gravel section I felt a
bump straight onto my rim and heard yet again the sickening sound of air
rushing from the tire. With language enough to make a sailor blush I meandered
back to the side of the road once again… only this time I didn’t have another
tube. Even though lady luck decided to ruin my chances at a decent placement,
she did allow me to finish the event. Because of the spur-of-the-moment gravel
patches, race organizers had set up a flat station to help out the unfortunate
riders to fall victim to the potholes. Where I flatted the second time was only
about 2 kilometers short of the station, so it was just a bit of sketchy
rim-riding and even some running (yep, I pulled a Chris Froome… and I like to
believe I was just a little faster)
to get to the oasis of new rubber. Once there, the volunteers played team
mechanic, and swiftly changed out my lifeless tube for a new one while I
smashed my last banana and gel: it was going to be a hard chase back.
Sometimes
people say hardships are blessings in disguise. First of all, screw you guys.
Second, there might be a shred of truth to that statement. See there were about
40 kilometers left in the course, and I was all on my lonesome, so that can
only mean one thing: time for the hour of power. It was time to turn a
once-race event to a VERY hard training day. I figured what better way to train
for an extremely hard sustained effort at the end of an event than the actual
thing? So, I put my head down and set the effort level right around all-out to
see how far the legs would carry me. To make a long, pain filled hour go by
quicker, the endgame was I held a power well above my FTP all the way to the
finish line; where I then proceeded to lie on my back helplessly staring at the sky, trying to get some semblance of feeling in my aching legs.
At the end of the day I crossed the
line in 70th place out of about 500 riders. The more interesting
thing to note is in the intermediate time splits. A closer look shows I was
sitting in 7th at the 30k check, 368th at the 70k check,
and 70th at the finish at 110k. So, even though the final result
isn’t really what I was after in the slightest, I am quite proud of the effort
put in and the solid proof of what the legs are actually capable of.
Remember the whole foreshadowing of
mentioning that my accommodation was situated at the top of a big hill? Well as I struggled up the hill at a snail’s
pace with every muscle in my legs screaming, I truly hated past Payson for his
prior decision. If you’d like a comparison, when we went up the hill during the
event our average speed was 16 kph, but when I did it afterwards, I struggled
to keep the pace of 6. The only plus side of the extended suffering: that was definitely worth adding another ice
cream stop during the ride home.
