Crystal Palace

Watch that pedal strike (and the tongue won't help in a crash!)

In my quest to get enough points for cat 2 and to visit all the race circuits around London in the meantime, I headed to Crystal Palace on Tuesday evening for their weekly race. It's by far the best atmosphere I've seen yet for a cycle race: lots of folks on the grass lounging around and chatting, a course that only takes about two minutes to ride per lap, and sunny weather that's the requirement for the race to run (too slippery and dangerous if it's raining). Apparently the women's race tends to attract pretty low numbers, so it was nice to see a dozen of us on such a beautiful late summer evening lining up at the start.


Early on and we're already chasing escapees

The Palace is more crit-like than any other circuit I've raced, save the Nocturne: a 1.3km course consisting of a 50-metre straightaway after the start, then a sharp 180-degree turn, a quick little twisty downhill, a long 180 degree corner, and a draggy uphill before a flat finish. The course is wide enough to allow overtaking, though with three groups racing (women's, men's cat 3/4, and men's cat E/1/2) it can be a little crowded at times -- as evidenced by the guy who swung wide into me on the corner and hit my front wheel, nearly taking me out! But as I proved at the Smithfield Nocturne, my cornering is pretty awful, and my descending and cornering combined is even worse, so even though I'd ridden a few laps in warm-up, I had no doubt that I wouldn't be going off the front anytime soon, if ever. And in 23 laps at Crystal Palace, I swear the lap counter said 14 before I even felt comfortable in the drops, not braking, and managing to lean my bike into the turns! The good news is that by the end, I sort of had it worked out, though I had to keep shouting to myself "lean! lean!" on every lap and focussing on weighting my right leg as much as I could for those left-hand bends. But for my first time at the Palace, I wasn't disappointed with how I rode.


Following Rachel's line, I'm getting better at the lean

I'd read some other reports of how this race usually goes down -- a strong rider goes from the off and manages to stay away the whole race -- but with Charlie Blackman out of town, it was going to fall to someone else this time. I thought, "if only I can keep her in sight, whoever she is, til my legs come around in the second half, then maybe we have a chance to get some ground back." Little did I know the effect the men's race overtaking us every 7-8 laps would have. Basically I learned from the wrong end the prime rule for racing at the Palace if you're in the women's race: get a bit of a gap, hold it as best you can, let the draft from the overtaking men's races give you a little boost to get even further ahead, then repeat seven laps later. Not sitting on wheels, mind you (that's not allowed), but just using that massive pack of guys to disappear from the sight of the women chasing you. I must admit I tried to do that myself when the guys came around -- use them to get a bit more speed and momentum to make catching our ladies' break easier -- but by then it was too late. If someone's away by the time the guys come around the first time, you can pretty much plan to see her at the finish line unless she either punctures or blows up.


Trying not to lose touch on the downhill



The effort is starting to show for all of us


Is that a grimace?

Still, a race at the Palace turned out to be the best 51-minute workout I could have asked for. Once I settled in (took me a good half-hour as usual -- and I'd ridden an hour to the race as warm-up!) I sat a lot on the front and drove the pace up the hill in particular. One of the two girls who went off the front was brought back; the other was too strong. I didn't trust my legs to try to get away myself, so I just worked hard and brought our group of 11 down to six by the finish. My teammate Leona and I -- both of us never having raced there before -- didn't have any kind of plan, so it came down to a bunch sprint. I knew that there'd be at least one person trying to come around and outsprint me at the finish, and given my awful acceleration and sprint power, I knew I had to use my head instead of my legs. Coming up the final hill, I was caning it quite hard but eased off just before the top, thinking I could jump on the inevitable wheel when it came around, but I mistimed it and she was by me before I knew it. A valiant effort to get on her wheel, but I ran out of road and finished a bike length behind, 3rd place overall.

Leona and I both have rental powermeters on our road bikes so we've been comparing power data lately. We're about the same weight, though she's taller and younger and I've been cycling for longer. Still, thanks to Leona's recent push into training and racing hard, we're remarkably close: FTP, top-end watts, even heart rate. It's interesting to break down the differences in our Crystal Palace race.

Maryka

Entire workout (207 watts):
 Duration:   51:29 (51:33)
 Work:       640 kJ
 TSS:        85 (intensity factor 0.996)
 Norm Power: 234
 VI:         1.13
 Pw:HR:       5.2%
 Pa:HR:       3.09%
 Distance:   30.413 km
 Elevation Gain: 683 m
 Elevation Loss: 682 m
 Grade:      0.0 %  (1 m)
               Min Max Avg
 Power:        0 678 207  watts
 Heart Rate:   123 187 175  bpm
 Cadence:      38 170 101  rpm
 Speed:        0 60.9 35.4  kph
 Pace          0:59 0:00 1:42  min/km
 Altitude:     73 99 87  m
 Crank Torque: 0 89.7 19.3  N-m

Leona

Entire workout (204 watts):
 Duration:   51:32 (52:41)
 Work:       630 kJ
 TSS:        94.9 (intensity factor 1.051)
 Norm Power: 231
 VI:         1.14
 Pw:HR:       5.25%
 Pa:HR:       1.58%
 Distance:   19.018 mi
 Elevation Gain: 1504 ft
 Elevation Loss: 1467 ft
 Grade:      0.0 %  (38 ft)
               Min Max Avg
 Power:        0 624 204  watts
 Heart Rate:   117 188 175  bpm
 Cadence:      31 182 91  rpm
 Speed:        4.6 41.4 22.1  mph
 Pace          1:27 13:03 2:43  min/mi
 Altitude:     219 303 266  ft
 Crank Torque: 0 1303 187  lb-in

-- FTP: judging from this race, I think Leona's FTP is probably higher than the 220 she's got in WKO+. In fact, given that Crystal Palace is the kind of course where you don't get much rest (sprinting out of corners, riding uphill, even blasting downhill to catch up to faster descenders), I'd say that if we'd ridden another 9 minutes to bring the race to one hour, her NP wouldn't have been much lower than 231. My tested FTP on my road bike is 235, and both my perceived exertion in the race and the numbers show that that figure is probably still about right.

-- Work: according to the kJ spent by each of us, I did more "work" per se, even though the overall training stress score (TSS) for me is lower than for Leona. This is because TSS is directly related to FTP -- the higher the FTP, the lower the TSS for the same training session, all other things being equal. The reason I burned more kJ is because I sat on the front of the group more and didn't draft as much behind other riders.

-- zero watts: what you can't see in the data summary above is how much time we both spent freewheeling, or producing fewer than 20 watts. According to Coggan and Allen's book, "most winning road racers do not pedal at least 15 percent of the time". Looking at our cadence distribution charts, I pedalled for 86% of the race at Crystal Palace, but Leona managed to pedal only 80% of the time. Again, this shows how much she was drafting and how much I wasn't -- and in fact, how much smarter she raced because of it! Maybe if I'd pedalled less, drafted and conserved more, especially in the last lap or two, I would have been the one coming around the others to sprint to the win. Or maybe not...

In any case, both Leona and I are signed up for a men's cat 3 race this coming weekend (Jim and a bunch of other Kingston Wheelers will join us), and you can bet that both of us will be doing as little work as possible!

The speedy P3C and the Hed wheels that were worth the wait

The weather's gone from beautiful and sunny and almost but not quite too hot the past couple of weeks to cool and rainy today, more typical English summer weather I suppose? Given a hard couple of training weeks including a 165km ride on Saturday, I've felt a bit blah the past couple of days. So I figured I'd blog about my new (used) TT bike to help pick up my spirits. It's a 2006 Cervélo P3C with a Powertap Pro+ in Hed Jet C2 60mm rims. In short, more carbon fibre than I've ever seen in my life, and easily the most bling bike I've ever owned.

It's funny to reflect on how my bikes have evolved since I did my first Try-a-Tri on my old mountain bike back on Labour Day weekend, 2003. After that race, I was well and truly bitten by the tri bug, so I set about finding a "real" road bike and ended up with a circa 1988 12-speed Italian roadbike knock-off that I picked up for $100 at a secondhand sports store. I replaced the drops with tribars and managed to rig up the downtube shifters to the aerobars, though I couldn't get up any hill over 5% without standing due to its 53/39 Biopace rings and 11-24 cogset. Still, it did the trick for the next two summers and even saw me through my first half-Ironman. Alas, it's been sitting in my parents' shed ever since I left Canada and though I've been resisting for a while, I've finally given in to their wishes to just get rid of it. My sister will probably sell it at a garage sale for $50...

The trusty old 1980s "Finelli"


When I moved to Holland in 2005, I bought another old steel roadbike, this time a Batavus, as my daily getabout, stuck some flat bars on it and used that for the first few months of bike training until I found a secondhand 2002 Giant OCR for €400. With clip-on aerobars and a nice female-friendly saddle, I rode that Giant into the ground for the next 10,000+km, including a trip to Lanzarote where it got lost on the way for three days, all kinds of races from sprints to 3/4-Ironmans, and even a city criterium on the cobbled streets of Utrecht. It was finally replaced by my Cervélo Soloist Team a year ago, and after riding that for a few months I realised that the OCR is actually just a bit on the big side for me. So with the addition of the Fuji track bike cum fixie last Christmas into the overcrowded bike room, I knew it was time for the OCR to go. With sadness I sold it for £180, trashed Rolf wheels and all, where it was parted out by an enthusiastic Bike Radar bike flipper -- hopefully the frame has gone to a good home!

2002 Giant OCR


Once I knew I'd want to tackle an Ironman -- and coincidentally decided that I was finally a "good enough" cyclist to get a nice new bike -- I figured I'd better get a proper TT bike. The mid-priced and solidly engineered Cervélo P2SL fit me like a glove, so I picked up a new old stock in beautiful anodised black when home on vacation in the late summer of 2007. The difference in speed was immediately noticeable, as it had 650c wheels which allowed me to get quite a bit lower and more aerodynamic. It got me through a number of races including Ironman Germany and with some secondhand Hed Deep wheels it was going to be my IM Lake Placid bike this year.

2006 Cervélo P2SL with Hed Deep wheels


Which brings us to the P3C. Jim found the right-sized frame for a great price on ebay, and once we won the auction and picked up the bike, I set about transferring over all my bits from the P2SL. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for my Hed wheels to be built with the Powertap Pro+ for the bike to be race ready. And frustrating as that wait was, it was well worth it as this is by far the fastest bike I've ever ridden! After three weeks of tweaking the bars and stem and saddle, all the while hoping my legs would remember what it was like to ride in that low TT position enough to regain their power, last weekend it all finally came together.

2006 Cervélo P3C


Hed Jet C2 60 rim with Powertap Pro+ hub

With a 30km run in my legs from the day before, I set off on what I thought would be a ~150km/5-hour ride on a more or less flat course, the goal being to cycle at Ironman watts with a few harder intervals thrown in. The wind was pretty strong but to my surprise it never felt like a headwind unless I was literally riding straight into it; at every other angle, I felt like the wheels were being pushed along like a sail. I kept looking down and seeing speeds between 34-38km/h while barely hitting 150 watts, something that would be unheard of on my regular road bike. When I caned it along at 200 watts for 30 minutes into that direct headwind, I managed to hold 36km/h! Later with the tailwind it was an effortless 45km/h as I overtook cars in the towns I passed through. Finally home 5 hours and 23 minutes later, to my amazement I had ridden 165km in 5 hours flat of riding time.


All that shiny gridded carbon

No doubt that Ironman Lake Placid is hilly but that one long ride has done more to boost my confidence for the race than any ride has in months. I've started to taper this week, easing back on the high volume though keeping up the intensity, and my last big race rehearsal ride this weekend on reasonably fresh legs should yield similar if not better results. I've got half a mind to find a last minute 100 mile time trial if only they'd let me have a late entry...


A few more shots of the P3C and my setup:


Profile Design bars, nearly infinitely adjustable


Nice narrow profile for the wind

Melbourne Team Series race report

Yesterday was my toughest road race to date, and surprisingly turned out to be my best performance to date as well. At the finish line, I was shaking my head disappointingly, but after a day of reflection and studying the results, I now feel like I can be proud of how I did. Fifteenth out of a field of about 50, in an 80km race with over 1000m of climbing. Oh yeah, and on a hot and sunny day (who knew England could be so summery in May?)



5 Laps of Hilly Joy

This was my last race in the women's Team Series for a while, as I'm turning my focus 100% to Ironman Lake Placid training now. Well, I've got one final race next weekend, the South East Regional Women's Road Race championship, where I hope to go top 5 or so -- but aside from that, I'm doing the great majority of my cycling miles on my TT bike these days. In fact, my new Hed Jet6 650c wheels just arrived and once the rear is built with a Powertap hub, I'll be all the more motivated to ride that bike hard and fast.

Yesterday's race consisted of 5 laps of a 10-mile course, with 1 longish climb, 2 medium climbs and a couple of shorter lumps in each lap, getting to about 10% at their steepest. The finish line was after 1km of false flat road at the top of one of the medium climbs and there were hill primes for laps 1, 3, and 5 on the longer climb. We started out fairly quietly from the town of Melbourne through the neutralised area, but once the lead car took off, so did the group, gunning for the first hill prime. I had decided already not to try for those unless I was really well-positioned mid-way up the climb, as I'd rather conserve my energy for the attacks and breaks that invariably would happen later in the race when I tend to be stronger anyway. My ultimate goal was to get away in a break somewhere in the middle of the race and guarantee myself a top 5 finish if I could.

Lap 1 was fast and furious, dropping lots of not-as-good climbers from our starting peloton of 50 in the process. By lap 2 we were down to about 30 riders in the main bunch, with little attacks going regularly and being chased down. There were 3 large teams with several contenders each, plus a handful of other teams who had one or two strong riders. Nobody seemed to really get organised to launch attacks as a team; it seemed like (as usual) everyone for herself, and over the course of the next 3 laps it was a war of attrition as the hill prime accelerations tired lots of legs and the steep and fast downhills strung the group out quite a bit. I managed to stay near the front, thanks to my good climbing fitness and a newfound descending technique: elbows below the drops, nose to the handlebars, chest on the top tube and rear end in the air, AKA the "don't try this at home" position that the pros do. I hit 70km/h as my top speed at one point, not bad considering the descents were into a headwind!

The 3rd lap saw Twickenham's Natalie Creswick, a former triathlete turned road racer who's having a stellar breakout season, pushing the pace on the front to try and catch some escapees and drop some more out of the back of the group. I knew if I could stay near her, I would eventually be rewarded with one of her patented "hey she's speeding up! no, actually she's breaking away" attacks. I did some work on the front but mainly just kept an eye on everyone around me, tried to stay behind fast wheels and not get trapped behind riders suddenly hitting a wall on the climbs.

All was going well until lap 4, when we were riding into the headwind slightly downhill along the main road. I had been seesawing between the left and right side of the road all race long, trying to strike a balance between the dangerous cat's eyes and oncoming cars on the right with the chances of getting boxed in on the left. At this particular moment I was on the left, directly against the curb. Just as I started thinking "gotta get over to the right, something's going to happen", it happened: Natalie accelerated cleanly away to bridge to a couple of girls who had gotten 100m on the group. I had about 3 seconds to decide what to do: wait to see if the line of BC Junior team riders in front of me would chase? Or try to squeeze by on the gravelly left-side of the road to give chase myself? In those 3 seconds, another rider took off from the outside to chase and nobody did anything, and I suddenly realised with a sinking heart that one of the escapees up the road was a BC Junior and the girls sitting on the front were actually going to work as a team to police the front of the bunch for a change. MaxGearRT and Mischiefcard.com, the other strong teams in the race, were no help either, as they also had riders represented in the break. The bunch kept riding along as if it was a club ride while I watched helplessly, trapped and boxed in by my own lack of attention: the winning break was being made and I wasn't in it.

By the time I got clear enough to chase, it was too late. And having no great acceleration on my own -- had I been where I should have been on the right side, I could have timed Natalie's jump and tried to grab her fast wheel, working my heart out to go with her -- I gave up on any ideas of a solo attack and just decided to ride the last lap as best as I could and limit any more damage to my final placing. This meant driving the pace as much as I could up the climbs, hoping to tire out already tired legs for the sprint. I was well-hydrated and fed, and as usual had been feeling better and better as the race went on, so I had lots left to push hard on the front. On every climb I put in an acceleration to force the pace up, I descended as fast as I dared, and on the flats I put out near FTP watts.

By the final climb I was at the front of our whittled-down group of 15 and as it flattened out to the last km of 1% uphill, I let a few riders come around me to pick up the pace for the sprint. Held on to a wheel as best I could and was rewarded with overtaking a few spent riders 50m before the line to take 10th in the sprint and 15th overall. That effort earned me my first road race point ever, which took the sting out of missing the break. Natalie ended up finishing second in the sprint to Dani King (who usually rides with Nicole Cooke's professional Vision 1 Racing team), and the other 3 riders in the break were all cat 1 racers as well. I would have been in good company and hard pressed to stay with them I think!

In the end, I can't be too disappointed with how my race went. At least this time I knew when I was making a mistake as it happened, rather than realising it after the race was over. I need to do a better job of staying aware of the group in general, looking up the road for people who have escaped, and predicting when the next bridging effort or attack will go. I still don't have enough confidence in that kind of field to attack myself, though I'm hoping that will grow over time. I probably just need to race more often and try out different stuff to see what works and what doesn't, not be afraid to blow up or get dropped or be in a break that's caught before the finish line. One thing is for sure: next week's race is not nearly as hilly and therefore I will have to get away from a bunch sprint if I want any hope of finishing high in the placings. With the field of racers including Natalie, elite rider and strong TTer Charlie Blackman, and elite circuit sprinter Janet Birkmyre, it's going to take both physical ability and some good tactics to put in a good performance!



Gritting my teeth on one of the early climbs

Milestones and Benchmarks

Yesterday was my birthday and I've now hit that (magical?) 35-year mark. Halfway to 40, a "veteran" category runner, and apparently I should be starting now if I want to have kids someday. A lot to think about! Of course I benefit from aging up to the 35-39 category for my Ironman, and I get to use the excuse that the girls who thrash me soundly in my cycle races are young enough to be my kids (not that I was much of a sprinter when I was their age regardless!) In the sense, I should be glad to be aging, as not only am I genetically more inclined to the endurance side, I've got nearly 20 years of base-building behind me to support it. Put them in a 6-hour race against me and I'll win every time, right? So why am I racing those one-hour crits again?

Otherwise I've had a reasonable training week, getting over the cold I had last week and setting some new benchmarks and best times:

Cycling

• Tuesday: a hard clockwise lap of Richmond Park on the road bike, setting a new best time of 19:31. Had I really wanted to set a big PB, I should have ridden the other way to have the wind at my back on the long draggy climb up to Richmond Gate, but mostly I wanted to get a 20-min baseline power level.


• Wednesday: my first ever 10-mile time trial, a low-key event put on by my club every other week. It consists of riding 5 miles as hard as possible down a divided highway, turning at the roundabout, then riding the same 5 miles back (again as hard as possible). I put down a respectable 25:33 time, not bad considering I've never ridden the course and I was on my road bike with no aero bars. I wanted to get a baseline wattage from the Powertap so I could compare and contrast with later TTs on my TT bike (alas I'm still waiting for my Powertap 650c Hed wheel to be built).

Interesting to compare the 2 sets of data (taken from WKO+). The peak 20-min power numbers were also fairly similar (250NP/240AP for Richmond Park and 247NP/242AP for the time trial), though the shorter effort had a higher VI as I was resting in the 30 seconds immediately following the 19:31 effort!

	Club 10-Mile TT				Richmond Park lap
Duration	25:31 (25:37)				19:30 (19:31)
Work	369 kJ				283 kJ
TSS	41.8 (IF 0.992)				32.4 (IF 0.999)
Norm Power	248				250
VI	1.03				1.03
Pw:HR	5.48%				-0.6%
Pa:HR	-1.37%				6.07%
Distance	16.121 km				10.834 km
Elevation Gain	274 m				294 m
Elevation Loss	290 m				289 m
Grade	-0.1 % (-17 m)				0.0 % (5 m)
	Min	Max	Avg		Min	Max	Avg
Power	0	519	241	watts	0	397	241	watts
Heart Rate	118	182	174	bpm	146	180	169	bpm
Cadence	50	114	97	rpm	62	150	96	rpm
Speed	2	52.8	37.9	kph	14.5	54.1	33.3	kph
Pace	1:08	30:00	1:35	min/km	1:07	4:08	1:48	min/km
Altitude	79	119	100	m	3	57	30	m
Crank Torque	0	64.1	23.8	N-m	0	43.6	24.1	N-m

Judging from my data in the power distribution chart in WKO+, my FTP is around 250 watts, though I have yet to formally test it on a good, rested day. Both the efforts above run a little low if my FTP really is 250. However, I felt during both of them that I "could have gone harder but just couldn't" if that makes any sense. On Tuesday I was still feeling the effects of my cold, as evidenced by my low average HR, and on Wednesday my legs felt a bit tired from Tuesday. Still, it's good to set some numbers as a baseline.

My plan for next week is to complete two 20-min efforts in the park with a two minute rest between, to try and get a solid idea of my peak 60-minute power or FTP for training purposes. I'll probably do this on Tuesday after a reasonably easy Monday. The next club 10-mile TT is the week after that, when I'll (hopefully) have my tri bike PT wheel finished, or if not I'll pop some clip-on aero bars on my road bike and reverse the seatpost to approximate my TT bike position (not sure how much effect it will have on my wattage, but it should make me a bit faster!) Then at the beginning of the taper for my Ironman I'll do a 25-mile TT to get my real and current 60-min FTP to set my race wattages for IMLP accordingly.

• Saturday: a long ride with Jim into the Surrey Hills to tackle a couple of our favourite climbs (my first such ride with the Powertap). I managed to get up the nearly 1km 10% Whitedown in a new best time of 4:00 flat, average watts 281, knocking nearly a minute off my previous fastest. Since my peak 5-minute power is 294, I think there's room for improvement there too (and I'm already wincing at my next date with Whitedown, that's gonna hurt!)

Running

Probably part of why I was a bit tired on Wednesday was that I did some hard 1-mile running intervals earlier in the day. I've recently become a paying member of Endurance Nation again, as I felt I needed that extra little push in doing my best at Lake Placid. According to the Vdot calculator, I've got a Vdot of 48 these days (not having done a 10km race for ages, I had to use my most recent 3-mile club handicap for the calculations). According to EN's formula, my running paces are as follows:

Run Zones
Zone	HR	Pace Mile/km
Z1/EP	< 151	8:49/5:28
Z2/MP	152-161	7:32/4:41
Z3/HMP	162-170	7:14/4:30
Z4/TP	171-177	7:05/4:24
Z5/IP	> 178	6:39/4:08

Most of the workouts in the EN plan call for longer intervals at Z3 and Z4 pace, not a whole lot at Z5 (intervals of five minutes or less). Lo and behold, my mile repeats were exactly at Z5 pace which more or less confirms my Vdot zones, so that's useful. Thankfully I can now do the lion's share of my running at the more reasonable Z3 and Z4 from now on!


Swimming

Erm... nothing to report here yet, but I will be tackling some outdoor swims at the Princes Club on Monday evenings from now on. Apparently the water is a balmy 15 degrees Celsius, just cold enough to make me want to swim pretty hard, wetsuit or not! Yikes. Fridays I'll be hitting either the indoor pool in Kingston, or the heated outdoor pool in Hampton.


Racing

As I've been writing this, the Grand Prix criterium at Hillingdon was taking place (i.e., an hour of pain and punishment at the hands of the country's elite female crit riders and sprinters). I'd signed up for it, but once I found out the course was going to be run backwards from what I'm used to -- meaning the normal uphill finish becomes a flat tailwind sprint -- I decided not to bother going, in favour of getting in that 90-minute run I never did this week. I went through a major review of my training schedule the other day, and with only 10 weeks to go before Ironman Lake Placid, I think running today is infinitely wiser than racing a crit, from an IM training point of view. So today's run will include two 15-minute intervals at Z3 in Richmond Park, which is a great ipod pace for my first post-35th-birthday run.

10 weeks to go! Holy @#$%!

Het Ardennenweekendje

Even though I lived in Utrecht for nearly 3 years and was a member of Hellas Triatlon for most of that time, I never managed to make it to one of the club's patented weekend training trips to Belgium -- til now. This past weekend was the road cycling variant (in November it's the mountain bike one), so once I had confirmed that I could go, I set about planning how I was going to get all the way from Kingston to a little village in the Belgian Ardennes called Petit Mormont.


Friday

It began with Jim dropping me off at the station in London for the 06:59 Eurostar train to Brussels, where I grabbed a Belgian Intercity train to Liège, then loaded up a rental car to drive the last 90km to Mormont. Everything went smoothly, though I cursed my soft-sided bike bag with every step I had to carry it through the train stations and down to the rental car place. Certainly the bag is a lot more discreet than a giant bike box, but some small wheels would have been handy! Traffic along the E25 highway was light and I managed to arrive around 1pm at our hostel-like accommodation in Mormont. I unpacked and built up my bike, and got ready to head out on a sunny but windy ride.

By then several others had arrived from Utrecht, so we got a small group together and did 60km through the Ardennes, taking in villages with names like Samrée and Erezée and Manhay. Villages in that part of Belgium, I soon found out, consist of a few houses, some cows and maybe a gas station. Hardly a pub or cafe or convenience store to be seen. And judging by how quiet the secondary roads were, I had to wonder what these Wallonians did for provisions, let alone for fun. Then again, I suppose there just aren't many of them living there. After spending several years in crowded Holland and England, I guess I've forgotten what it's like to be in the middle of the real countryside where there's maybe 30 people per square km. In fact, the Ardennes reminded me more of rural Canada than anywhere else I've been in Europe so far: forested valleys as far as the eye can see, logging operations along the twisty and rolling roads, and friendly albeit simple and slow-moving local folks.


Saturday

By morning our full complement of 40+ triathletes had arrived at Mormont. Most of the bunk beds were taken and the common areas were jammed with bikes and various clothing and gear. In typical Dutchie fashion, the cars coming from Utrecht carried not only people but bins full of the groceries we needed for the weekend -- everything from huge sacks of potatoes and kilograms of cheese to a few dozen packages of ontbijtkoek -- so our only local requirement was fresh bread from one of the bakeries in a nearby town.

After breakfast, the cycling groups for the day began to form, based on distance and speed of the ride (and the company!) desired. I ending tagging along with the "long, fast and strong" group heading into Luxembourg, led by one of the club's cycling coaches who was marked closely by our club's resident pro Dirk Wijnalda. I figured at the very worst, if I couldn't keep up, at least I had my Garmin to find the way back. But I needn't have worried; even though the first 2 hours were a hammerfest at times, as the stronger guys relentlessly attacked each other up every climb and across the flats, I managed to hang on pretty well without blowing up.

At the 60km mark, our first stop for coffee and cake, the group split into two with half turning back for home to complete a respectable 110km for the day. The rest of us ventured further into Luxembourg, with the highlight of the day being Vianden and its 6km climb from the river valley to the castle above, the first km of which was on typical Euro cobblestones (photos found on flickr and courtesy of HappyMac, since I forgot to bring my camera along).



The rest of the day ebbed and flowed, the biggest ebb being at 135km when we realised we were over 35km from home, it was beginning to rain, and we'd nearly run out of food. A quick stop at a Wiltz gas station and its miraculous bakery section with fresh cakes and bread for an energy refill and we were off for the last hour or so, climbing yet another beautifully paved 6km 4% grade traffic-free Luxembourgian road and then descending into the less-well-maintained Belgian roads back home through Houffalize. In the end I was quite happy with my day: 172km, 2220m of climbing, 174 watts normalised power, for just under 6 hours of riding at 28.8km/h. I even managed to hit the final 2km climb with good legs, hitting an average of 230 watts (pretty close to my FT) and proving that the longer the ride, the better I get relative to most of my riding companions!



Sunday

This was the day of Liège-Bastogne-Liège aka Luik-Bastenaken-Luik aka La Doyenne, the final race of the spring classics season. The riders were going right through Houffalize, a mere 9km from where we were staying, but since they weren't due to pass through til 2pm or so, a few of us decided to ride west towards one of the earlier climbs on the route at Ny. We got there just in time, dropped our bikes by the side of the road and tried to create something interesting for the TV cameras to see (note the yellow helmet in the photo below; from left to right Peter, Jeroen and Gerard hamming it up).


Within 10 minutes the caravan of trucks, motorcycles and official race cars had started to drive through. Then we heard the helicopter and spotted the riders through the trees below, with the peleton moving very fast to the bottom of the climb. Even on the climb they never dropped below 30km/h, I'm sure. They were past us so fast there was no time even to identify the riders! I did make a video of them going by, however, catching the beginning of the attack off the front that would turn into the day's long 4-man break, not to be reeled in til more than 150km later. And listening to this video makes me realise how annoying my voice is and how bad my Dutch has become...


We had planned to head to Houffalize where the riders would come through again in a few hours, but in trying to avoid the busy main road, we ended up underestimating how far it was and realised that we'd miss them. So instead we rode a leisurely few more km, a couple more long draggy hills and nice fast descents, stopping for coffee and to sit in the sun for a bit, then continuing back to Mormont. I grabbed a quick snack then a few of us rode down to Houffalize in search of the town's beer tent where they were showing the last bit of the race on big TVs. Wallonian Philippe Gilbert had escaped solo at this point so the crowd was quite excited; a short while later, Andy Schleck caught and dropped him and then went on to win the race, much to the Belgians' disappointment. We rode back up the hill to Mormont for 120km on the day, with 1600m of climbing over 4.5 hours.


Monday

It rained quite heavily overnight, and the morning dawned with a chilly wind and variable weather. With 350km of cycling in my legs for the weekend -- added to the 250km I had already done in England earlier in the week -- I was happy to take a day off the bike and go for a short run instead. Many of the off-road routes around the Ardennes are well-marked with signs on the trees and arrows pointing the way, with big signboards showing how they intersect. Mistakenly thinking that since the paved roads had all been a nice gradient, the walking paths must be as well, I followed the 5.5km route down to the river and was met with a narrow path that descended 60m in 240m: a 25% grade! In my running shoes on wet, slippery, rocky and rooty ground I descended as carefully as possible, and didn't dare turn around and try to go back. The path along the river was equally treacherous, but I was finally rewarded with the climb back up to Mormont, an Achilles-punishing kilometer averaging 10% that I half-ran and half-walked. It took nearly 40 minutes to run 5.5 km in the end, ouch!

Though I didn't have my camera with me, I managed to find some shots taken by a previous traveller, Karen Hendrix, of the same path, giving a pretty good idea what I was up against.




Monday afternoon I drove back to Liège and took a train to Brussels, then dropped my stuff at the left luggage kiosk at the station and wandered around touristy Brussels for a few hours until my train back to the UK was ready to board. My legs are still recovering from the weekend's punishment, but in a few weeks I'll be all the stronger for it.

And I had a great time! I got to hang out with my Dutch friends for a weekend, re-experience my summer camp days, cycle tons of miles, catch a bit of a pro race, see two countries I'd never visited before, and tax my brain to remember a bit of its rusty French. Definitely worth the trip!

A tale of two races

Sid Standard Memorial Race

Having had a little break from cycle racing the past few weeks for the marathon, I was eager to get back to it. Last week my monster 15 hours spent training (but the weather's just been too nice not to get out there and ride!) meant that Sunday's National Women's Team Series race just outside Nottingham would be an interesting test of the legs. As a member of the Surrey League ladies team, I was racing with a handful of other women from local clubs -- all of whom, like me, don't have enough teammates to put together their own teams -- for the first time this season. It's a team series, meaning that the top 4 results per team count toward the points ranking, and the final trophy goes to the winningest team rather than an individual (though each race rewards individual winners too of course).

The race started out fast with several riders on the front (most notably elite rider Charlie Blackman of the London Dynamo) driving the pace and controlling the attacks, but after four laps when it appeared that no cohesive break would stay away and the bunch was whittled down to 30 or so riders, things settled down a bit. On the sixth lap as we approached the main climb on the course, a little 500m 3% affair, I found myself at the front and decided to take a run at it and see what happened. I hit the climb hard and didn't look back til I got to the top -- much to my surprise, the bunch was more than 50 metres behind me! Unfortunately I was now descending into a crosswind so I tucked down and did my best, but after 2km the bunch came back (note to self for next time: if the motorcycle pulls in front of you, you've been caught and can stop working now).

The legs felt good though, almost like that little super-threshold effort woke them up, so I stayed near the front of the remainder of the race, hoping a late break would still materialise. My teammate Jen Hewitt had a few digs, as did some other riders, but again nothing stuck. So the flat finish meant a bunch sprint, where my skills are not particularly well-suited. Being a bit scared off by the argy-bargy and generally poor bike handling of the field in the final lap, I did not try to contest the sprint and instead just stayed safely out of trouble, finishing 23rd overall. The race was won by Laura Trott, the up-and-coming and talented junior who placed quite well at the recent KW Dunsfold 3rd cat road race. I discovered one of my teammates, Nikki Wheeler, can put in a sprint, so next time I'll know to try and help her out better if it comes down to a bunch finish. The photo above of Jen on the front with me a ways back in the bunch (both of us in white jerseys) is a pretty typical view of the Sid Standard race. The British Cycling write-up, where we both earned a nice mention despite finishing outside the top 20, is here.

But the truth is, for me to have any success at women's racing (or any racing for that matter), I need to create, join, or force a break to happen -- not solo! -- so I can put my ability to suffer at threshold for a long time to good use. Looking at my power profile according to Coggan, my five-second peak power is the equivalent of a lowly cat 4, and at one and five minutes I'm only a bit better at mid cat 2 level. It's power at FT where I'm strongest, as I'm putting out ~230 watts with my 54kg, making me a 4.25watts/kg solid cat 1 equivalent. And given what seems to be some hill climbing ability on steeper grades, I think I need to find some hillier races with better prospects for a break escaping and staying away til the finish. (As an aside, now that we've got our new Powertaps, I need to do another round of testing to make these numbers a little more firm and set myself some goals.)


Hillingdon Tuesday Night Series

Jim's been wanting to do some more racing, so despite a nice steady 90km ride on Monday afternoon that left our legs a bit tired, last night we headed over to the Hillingdon summer series (my favourite local circuit of all that I've raced so far) to take on the cat 4 race. I had been playing with the idea of entering the E/1/2/3 race as there's a £15 prize for the top female finisher, but once I got there and saw a) how huge the sign-on list already was, b) a well-known pro men's team warming up, and c) women's pro rider Leda Cox who would undoubtably take the prize money, I wisely decided that the cat 4 race was the way to go. And that way Jim and I could race together, a first!

All was going well, with both of us in the front 5-10 riders for most of the race. I had gone off at a good pace almost immediately, as the bunch had started so slowly that I feared a massive acceleration where I would not be able to grab a wheel, and ended up leading most of the first lap. Then the attacks started, but with a headwind going up the hill and a tailwind coming down the back straight, conditions were not great for a solo break to last. Jim bridged to (or chased down, depending on how you saw it) a London Dynamo rider but that didn't last, and he ended up on the front as the E/1/2/3 race stormed by. A few other guys put in some digs and the bunch always collected them back into the fold after half a lap or so. The E/1/2/3s passed us once again, rather scarily through the hairpin turns where a lot of riders have difficulty holding a line, but everyone made it through safely.

Around 15 laps into it, I put in some effort latching onto escaping riders, thinking that even though the sun was setting, there was a lot of time left in this one-hour race. That cost me as I had slipped back to 15-20th place by the time we got to the lap board, and stupidly failed to notice that we were heading for the bell lap til the bell was actually ringing. Well out of position to do anything in the final lap, I tried valiantly to move up on the back stretch and nearly did it on the final corner, til the wheel I was following sat up and stopped working. Alas, unless I'm in the top 5 or so coming around that corner, I just don't have the power to put in a strong finish against the guys, so even though I got around him and got some speed up for the little climb, it was too late. To add insult to injury, some well-meaning guy who was determined to get 19th instead of 20th place muscled me over towards the grass in the final chicane, killing all my speed.

At that moment, I could see Jim ahead who was in a better position for the final sprint, but then a massive crash took down four guys right in front of him, so I slowed up completely and just rolled across the line (after I had a close look at the four downed riders and determined with relief that he wasn't one of them!) The crash looked nasty and I think one of the guys involved was a Twickenham rider that I'd already shouted at twice during the race to hold his line (the second time after he'd been weaving all over the back straight in an attempt not to do any work on the front and get people to come around him). Jim had to lean into a rider next to him to avoid riding over one of the downed rider's heads, but he stayed upright himself, though his sprint was finished.

I'm a bit annoyed with myself for missing the lap boards and losing focus right at the moment when I needed it the most, but given the crash, maybe I'm glad to have been in the back half of the pack towards the finish. It didn't look good and an ambulance with flashing lights turned into Springfield Rd as we were riding home, presumably to collect one of the victims. That's about the 3rd or 4th race I've done at Hillingdon that contained an ambulance-worthy crash, and I've only raced there 5 times! I wonder how long til the law of averages gets me. I definitely wish it could have been longer as my legs felt great and longer races suit me anyway. As it was, the one-hour came up a bit short, only 42 minutes which was about 17 laps, 38.6km/h avg speed.

I think some of the riders in our race could learn a thing or two from these guys on how to hold a line going up the final hill...