Race evaluation (Things to work on)

After the Spring Opener at Maplelag and the first Thursday night ride at Buck Hill I knew what I needed to focus on for training, starts and intensity. The same thing happened last year in the sport class. I would be blown out in the starts and wasn't able to get my self to push it as hard as necessary in the race. It wasn't until race #8 @ Spirit Mountain that I finally discovered what I needed to do. Last year after race #7 @ Welch I made a concerted effort to practice my starts. There is a fairly long gradual hill about 5 miles from home that I use for simulating starts. I takes about 20 minutes to bike out there which is a good warm-up. I then go to the bottom of the hill and line up as if it were a real start. I give a count-down from 30 and when I hit 0, I hammer. I stay standing for 20-30 seconds and then transition to a seated position continuing to push to the top of the hill. The road gradually levels off but I continue to push above LT until the road stops. I then turn around and push it as hard as I can to the top of the hill going back. The round trip is 5-8 minutes.

The next part of the puzzle is intensity. During the first two races I mentally was not able to push my body as fast or as hard as it need to go. I confirmed this by looking at the results for my average HR for the races. Last year during the "good" races my average HR for entire race were 181+. The first two races this year were 176 and 174. Part of this might be the fact that I am trying to pace myself for the significantly longer expert races. Either way, I must find a way to get the intensity necessary to compete with the leaders and maintain it for the race duration. One way to do this is by doing more race simulations. For example last night I went out to the local trail (Stahl's Lake) and turned 4 consecutive laps at race pace. I set up a course utilizing the ski trail and single track (1.2 miles double track 3.1 miles single track). For the area it is a very good place to train despite the fact that there are no sustained climbs. Last year my fastest time on the single track portion was around 18 minutes. Last night I turned laps of 16:04, 16:04, 16:06, and 16:08. These are real times and I was surprised by how consistent the times were. I know have a good baseline for training and I will measure my progress by these times.