A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
- ldrcycles
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Thu Feb 23, 2012 10:53 am
Tuesday morning was hill repeats at Tinbeerwah, 4 runs and none under 7 minutes, a little disappointing (bearing in mind i'm on the Apollo which is pretty damn heavy, and my pb on the much lighter and stiffer Scott is 6:48) this morning i did another 3 runs and managed a 6:59 along with 2 around 7:10. Not too bad but i need to get a LOT better before the Coot-tha.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Fri Feb 24, 2012 11:06 am
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Thu Mar 01, 2012 9:49 pm
However i'm now only a little over 2 weeks out from the Coot-tha Challenge and virtually back at square one, still no base to speak of and sweet FA in the way of climbing power. With some radical rescheduling of activities i should be able to get things back on track. Watch this space!
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A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby toolonglegs » Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:13 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Mar 04, 2012 1:25 am
Confirmed my suspicions that while all my muscles were shamefully tight, all the ones on my right side were worse than the left, surprisingly though he thought the alignment of my hips was pretty reasonable and in spite of the tight muscles, thought the range of movement i had was also not too bad.
Gave me a few pointers on my stretching while he was at it which i will be applying tomorrow. The interesting, and very pleasant thing is that after a very difficult day and night of work on friday, limited sleep, and then another very difficult shift this morning, i felt GREAT after the massage, better than i have for quite some time. Might make a habit of it then .
As much as i want to go on the bunch ride with spinner, duds et al tomorrow morning, i've had a sore throat the last 2 days which is almost sure to be a full blown cold tomorrow or monday. Sigh. Patience...
- foo on patrol
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby foo on patrol » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:20 am
Sport specific masseuses are totally different to relaxation therapists and they do like to make you suffer.
Foo
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:30 am
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A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby toolonglegs » Sun Mar 04, 2012 6:36 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Wed Mar 14, 2012 7:43 am
Was going to ride today for Ride To Work Day but it's raining and doesn't look like clearing much.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Thu Mar 15, 2012 10:25 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Mar 18, 2012 11:21 pm
I sat down on a rock, absolutely heartbroken, pulled out my spare tube and set to work. Ended up with a 'time' of 28:27 . Aside from rolling across the finish line with the front tyre flat again, the rest of the ride went very well though, and instead of focusing on the puncture, i'm choosing to take it as a lesson that every now and then horrible things are going to happen, and the way i respond to them is what matters. There's always next year.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby duds2u » Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:25 am
I had something similar happen in another life. Paddy Pallin cross country ski race at Mt Perisher (I think it was 30K) quite a few years ago. 5k from the finish I hit a hole in the course and broke a ski.
It hurts like hell to watch 50 people pass you and not be able to do anything about it. I was having a really good race until then.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby foo on patrol » Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:06 am
Foo
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:23 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Wed Mar 28, 2012 9:36 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby foo on patrol » Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:52 pm
Foo
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:11 pm
This morning the Sunday bunch headed from Noosa out through Cooroy and Belli Creek to Kenilworth, via Moy Pocket and Kenilworth Bluff. A very tough ride, lots of hard climbs and some ripper downhills, and gorgeous scenery to boot. Not to mention great company as always . As i'm having issues with the Scott i took the Apollo, very thankful that i swapped the original 52-42 cranks for some 53-39 1st gen 105s i had. Had plenty of really enjoyable moments doing this one, climbing the gap from the north of Kenilworth was one, and taking off on a solo breakaway from the top of Eerwah Vale to Eumundi, 6k at maximum effort with 100k already in the legs. I really surprised myself with how well i did at that. The ride ended up at 133k, the longest i've done in a loong while. Also got me to 246k for the week, and 1739k for the year so far, 130 ahead of schedule for my goal of 4000 miles (6437k). Finally feel like things are getting back on track .
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby duds2u » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:09 am
It was a good ride though. As Old Tony would say - a quality ride.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:47 pm
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:07 pm
The ride home wasn't too bad, slowish start, cracked on a bit through the middle and then bonked a bit towards home. As i was making my way up Gyndier cotterpin came rocketing down, on sundays ride he was in front of me coming down there and try as i might i couldn't even hold onto him. I had lunch a bit earlier than usual and a banana and orange juice at knock off evidently wasn't enough. I noticed today that my singlespeeding has had the very welcome effect of getting me into the habit of spinning much faster than usual. It is also threatening to get me into the habit of tackling every upward gradient out of the saddle, hands in the drops and smashing it out at 20rpm . Mind you Eddy Merckx knew a thing or two about going up a hill and he had more grind than an adult film star.
Tomorrow i will have to drive, to take the stricken Scott, wobbly Apollo wheel, and rims and hubs that need lacing for my Tom Wallace to the shop.
EDIT: and i forgot to mention, over 2500 views for this thread now! Feels great to know that it is keeping people interested.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Sun Apr 08, 2012 8:33 pm
Thursday i was only able to get out for 18k on the Dawes, to the top of the Kin Kin Range and back, not feeling particularly strong but still managed 32.7kmh avg.
Saturday morning i had the short Coolum-Noosa commute on the Repco, and while it again went exceptionally well, with an average of 32 for the 26k run in, the flat bars were literally a pain. Trying to tuck down with such an upright position lead to a ridiculous amount of pain from my elbows, so i flipped the bars upside down for the return, which helped quite a bit. The round trip of 52k ended up at 31.7kmh.
Overnight i flipped the bars around so they were upside down and backwards, and popped on a road stem from an old Malvern Star, and all was ready for the Sunday morning bunch ride. After only 2hrs sleep i woke up just in time and got to the meeting point at the noosa river 5 minutes late, with no-one around. Knowing which way there were headed, i jumped on the bike and tore off up the road, hoping to catch them. Just as i was about to give up hope (after about 6-7k) i spotted them up ahead. Now the usual procedure would be to get on the back and mumble a breathless 'morning', but what kind of an entrance is that?
No, far better to wind it up to 50kmh (on a 44-16, so something like 175rpm) and roar past in a blur of supersonic legs.
The ride that followed was one of the best i've ever been on, a quick blast down the highway (with a max of 65kmh, very quick for the Repco, which tends to be rather nervous), spinning up from Eumundi to Eerwah Vale with mist and soft early morning sun making for an extraordinarily beautiful sight (the highlight being 2 horses running alongside the road with a backdrop of a misty dam, i mean you couldn't make this stuff up), some hills which were obviously not especially enjoyable, and finishing with a ridiculously quick run up the coast which almost made my legs explode (sustained 110rpm pedalling is not familiar territory for me!). In total, 94k at an average of about 30kmh.
A priceless morning, made only better by the particularly attractive young lady who served the magnificent tomato cheese and ham omolette i got afterwards . Of course if my girlfriend asks, the waitress was old and hideous .
With the Noosa Century (the most important event of the year for the wannabe racer) less than a month away, i'm very pleased with how the legs are getting along, whether that translates into an improvement on last years placing remains to be seen. Once i get the geared bikes back on the road i'll be hitting up gyndier for some solid hill repeats (as that was where i was dropped last year) and at least 2 runs of the full course to get an idea of where i am in relation to last year.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Wed Apr 11, 2012 1:43 pm
Sunrise over the maroochy river.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:06 pm
Managed to drag myself out of bed at 3:45 , and head down to noosa for the 5:30 group ride. Only 2 other blokes turned up there due to the rain and wind, so we headed over the other side of town to meet the 6:00 group. It was raining lightly, gusty winds and about 17 degrees, very difficult conditions and potentially fatal for a queenslander!
We eventually set off, the legs feeling pretty poor, and i hung off the back for the first 25odd k. My legs felt reasonable after that and i was able to sit in the bunch at 37ish for a while.
After the turnaround a few blokes took off from the front and i naturally followed hanging on ok for a few k but ended up getting dropped off. The ride back was into a very stiff headwind so i suffered quite a bit on my own, at one stage down to a pitiful 21kmh. I eventually made it back into town very disheartened. On checking the sppedo and working out my average was 31.4kmh i felt a little better though, but i'll be doing some hill repeats this arvo to make up for it .
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby ldrcycles » Thu Apr 12, 2012 8:23 pm
So i grabbed the multitool, did some tweaking and hopped back on. After one run up and down i had warmed up alright, although i felt fairly ordinary, and gave it a good go for my next run up. By about halfway up i felt i was going reasonably well and started to really knuckle down and focus on my time. I threw myself across the line at the top and hit the stopwatch, then spent a good half minute desperately sucking in some air. Looked down at the speedo and it showed 6:31. My previous pb was 6:48! . Absolutely over the moon with that, the previous time had been looking pretty damn good, just getting under 7 takes a bit of doing, and i reckon there is still more to come . Very encouraging stuff for the Century.
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Re: A year in the life of a wannabe racer.
Postby foo on patrol » Fri Apr 13, 2012 4:35 pm
Foo
Goal 6000km
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