Training Days

According to my training plan, this weekend called for a single day of high intensity riding to wrap up a week of recovery. Coincidently, it also happened to be the weekend of the Jiminy Peak Road Race over in Massachusetts. This event turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to not only get in some good training, but also some quality time with some great friends and fellow riders.

Friday night, my good friend Tim took the long drive over to my neck of the woods just in time to roll out with me on a couple-a-hour ride along the river. The weather was supreme for 6:00 at night, with temperatures still in the 60s and the sun warm and high. We turned the pedals over at a comfortable pace, with good conversation and beautiful scenery the whole way.

Saturday morning I was up before the alarm, making my usual Joe and debating my clothing options for a morning that was cool in the 40s, cloudy and wet. Not an easy task. Driving a few dozen miles east didn't help matters much either, as the weather on the race course was pretty much the same as in my backyard. Cold. Dark. And wet.

Rain jackets, undershirts, leg warmers, arm warmers and long-fingered gloves on, and it was off onto the course to warm up. Fortunately, Tim likes to get to races just about as ridiculously early as I do, which meant on this particular morning, we had about an hour and a half to warm up. The Jiminy course is about as simple as it gets: each lap consists of a long flattish-to-downhill stretch followed by a gentle turnaround, a gradual climb back towards the mountain, and then a sharp mile-or-so climb back to the top of the start/finish. Hence, the only important part to be familiar with is the sharp climb, and so during our warm-up we concentrated on going up, over, and down this climb a few times.

It worked. By the time the race start came around, my core was warm and my legs were nice and loose. The rain had also stopped, and things were just about starting to warm up a bit. Tim and I ditched a few layers and rolled up to the start. At the same time, another good friend of mine (and frequent contributor to The Daily Grind comments department), Sebastian, rolled right on up with us. We chit-chatted for a few moments, and then rolled as a pack at the sound of the figurative gun.

During the first half of the first lap, our group was moving along pretty well. I saw power values up in the 300s as I hovered around in the middle of the group. And aside from the shoulder bumping and occasional mechanical forcing riders to bunch up and get nervous, things were pretty smooth sailing. I was riding super-threshold for a while, and the slinky-ing that was going on in the group was perfect for building those "surge" efforts that are so hard to simulate in solo- or group-ride training.

As we came around the backside of the course, the climbing started and people were starting to get a bit excited. I moved to the front and did a little work, then drifted over to the inside, right-hand side of the peloton. I knew that the turn up the sharp kicker of a climb would be a very gentle right-hand turn, and I'd figured this would be a good place to be. But just as this key turn came into sight, the whole left-hand side of the group took off and I wound up getting a bit boxed-in right at the base of the climb. Frantic to catch back on, I gave it as much as I could to get around those folks who'd ruined my line and boxed me in, and bridged up to the boys on the back of this lead group, pushing power values well above 500 and wrenching my bars every which way in order to gain more power out of my machine. The road flattened a bit and I hammered it - I had managed to latch on, but just as I did, the road turned up again and I lost contact as the group pulled away.

Left in no-mans-land, I powered up and over the climb with a few stragglers, and then busted ass down the other side as fast as possible. I'd been with 5 other guys, but none of them wanted to work - instead, they all just got in a tuck and coasted down the backside of this monster. I could see the lead pack about 200 meters up the road, but they kept pulling away. This is when weighing 148 lbs is miserable. I'd shouted at the guy nearest to my shoulder to do some work, and that must have woken him up, because for the next couple of miles we worked very well together (dropping the other 4 guys that had taken the descent with us). All was mostly for naught, however, as the pack had finally gained enough momentum to pull away from us, and out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind.

So I continued to ride tempo for a little while, but before I even made it to the halfway point of the last lap, I'd spotted 4 or 5 other guys in green and blue standing on the side of the road. I'd thought perhaps one of my fellow NAV riders needed a wheel or something, so I pulled off to join them. Turns out, each of them was having their own "bad day" and had decided to simply regroup and ride the rest of the course out together. No complaints from me - I'd gotten what I needed to get done already and the rest was icing on the cake. Keeping it relatively easy and rolling through the finish with such a good group of guys was a fine way for me to finish up the day.

And speaking of a good group of guys, special kudos to Tim and Sebastian, who both finished in great spots for the day. Tim pulled in a top twenty finish while "going just hard enough" to save his legs for Sunday's race at Hollenbeck's, while Sebastian significantly bettered his placing at Jiminy over last year's results.

After regrouping back at the car, it was great to be basking in the satisfaction of another day of quality training with a great mix of friends. I hit all my training metrics for the day, and I felt fresh as a daisy after what ended being 3 hours in the saddle. My legs were actually eager to run, and I felt strangely neglectful by not obliging.

As we rolled through the twisting backroads of New England on our way home, I realized this was it - this was the last of my training races, the last of my targeted training goals on race day. Base building has been done for a while, and I've moved through the first block of my Build phases with supreme satisfaction. From here on out, it's go-time. It's time to start leaving it all on the course, and hopefully, bringing home the hardware.

Thanks for reading.