South Range Cycling Classic, it was hot out there!
Posted by: tjwoodruff, in UncategorizedToday’s race was a scorcher and I can’t imagine how hot it would have been anywhere that wasn’t so close to Lake Superior Temps were probably in the mid 80’s with full sunshine and a fair share of humidity. The first three of five laps where quite uneventful. We rolled around the 18 mile flat circuit doing about 100 watts or so. Seriously, one time I looked down to see that my HR was at 79 bpm. A couple of guys had rolled off the front, grouped together and put some serious time into our main group. With two laps to go the gap was at six minutes. Not long after this it was unanimously decided that we should start bike racing. One guy from GP, Bjorn, and I did a lot of pace making at the front with the help of some of the others that I don’t know too well. These last two laps were quite hard and I was pleased with the effort level since it would actually count as training. The final miles were full of attacks and late race antics. GP would attack, I’d bridge, some one would counter and this went on for what seemed like an eternity. In the end I came up one attack too short and was totally spent with about 200 meters to go so I rolled across in 11th. A huge thanks goes out to Mr. Chris Anderson, who was kind enough to reload me up with two bottles in the feedzone. With the heat and sun and 89 mile distance, I surely would have had problems out there without the help. All in all a good day of training. Thanks to the Lake Superior guys who put on this great first time event. Stop by the SickBlog for another, more thorough race analysis.
Yesterday I also did a length ride, 80 miles with good pals Chad and Frank. These miles fall into my ‘junk training’ category, but it was fun to catch up with these guys and a ride always makes for a good opportunity. I hadn’t seen Frank since the Off Road Classic back in May of ’05 and it had been since December since Chad and I hung out. The 80 miles was about the right distance to fit in the numerous conversations that took place. We rode about 10 miles of dirt too, half being on the Gandy Dancer Trail and the other being a section of road construction. Chad managed to get not one, but two flats on this section. He blamed the second flat on the red anodizing that’s on the inside of my frame pump… Maybe he doesn’t know how to get enough air in and that caused the second flat… Either way, his flat fixing commentary was enough to have Frank and me laughing pretty hard!
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