Why I Love HUP United

I sent an email about my health and perhaps taking it easier this summer instead of killing myself training for the fall. This was the response...

Bob! No worries, man. Hup isn’t about results. I hope all is well with you. Share as much as you feel comfortable. You are most definitely still Hup and Hup always. ZD

This team is the absolute best!

2007 GTC Championships

It was a really nice day to race. The temperature was low, the sky was blue, and pretty much everyone showed up. This included 3 previous state champions, an ex-pro, and many cat 1-3 riders. The race would be really tough for me and my goal was to simply hang on and see what happened. Predicably, there were a lot of initial accelerations and testing of the legs. Eventually a group of 5 or so made off the front and in the group were 2 former state time trial champions and a tri-athlete. The group of 16 or so just let them go. The eventual winner had the brains to bridge the gap while it was still 10-15 seconds and the rest was history as 12 riders tried unsuccessfully to chase them down. After many pulls at the front, I joined the 3-4 guys who did no work at the back and ended up enjoying a nice, fast group ride.

Eventually our club's star Cat 1 decided to stretch his legs a little and I gave up. This was after 50 miles and a 23 mph average. I enjoyed my nice cool down ride back to the finish where I saw a group of 15-20 riders waiting on the side of the road. None of them decided to finish the race since they were behind, so the only 3 left were on the finishing loop. In the end a very experienced racer and former TT champion took 3rd, the tri-athlete took 2nd, and the Cat 3 road racer took first. They worked hard and worked together and their ride was exceptional. In looking at the data, for the race (before the drop), here are the stats:

RACE (before the drop at mile 50):

Duration: 2:11:21

Work: 1767 kJ

TSS: 196.1 (intensity factor 0.946)

Norm Power: 270

VI: 1.2

Distance: 50.03 mi

Min Max Avg

Power: 0 938 224 watts

Heart rate: 82 179 156 bpm

Cadence: 32 141 97 rpm

Speed: 2.8 36.7 22.9 mph

Pace 1:38 21:27 2:38 min/mi

Once I was dropped my averages came down a bit. In looking at the power distribution and the training zone information, the conclusion is that this race was way too hard for me. I was anerobic for about 28 minutes which is a stupid place to be right now.

And here is the power line graph for the whole race-drop period. You can see my threshold (285watts) by the red line.

The ex-pro in the group complained at one point that we were riding like a bunch of Cat 4's, which is basically true since that is what most of us were. The biggest lesson from this race is this:

1. Pay attention to who goes off the front in a break. (2 state champion TT and 1 tri-athelete should have garnered an immediate response).

It was fun but I think that will be my last one as a racer. Although I like the concept, the race is a bit loose. It will be fun to watch the others try their luck though.

Base 1 Week 1

The new plan is together. Might as well start now.

Week 1...

Monday: 45-60 minutes easy (200W)
Tuesday: 2x15 threshold in a 1-2 hour ride (260-301W)
Wednesday: 45-60 minutes easy
Thursday: 2x15 threshold in a 1-2 hour ride
Friday: 2x23 minutes tempo (217-258), 4 sprints in the 39x17, warm up and cool down
Saturday: OFF
Sunday: GTC Championship Race

Ronde Van d'Appalachee

The GTC version of the Tour of Flanders is a fun, hard ride. It has sections of dirt road and steep climbs as well as 3 sprints along the way. For me, all of the sprints are hard. The first is a steep wall on a road called Harmony Grove. It is short and the tough part is that you turn left onto it from a gravel road and a stop sign so momentum is lost. I suck on this sprint because I can't climb. My average wattage up the climb yesterday was 386W and my max was 585W. It took about 50 seconds.
The second sprint occurs at the top of a ~1 km hill on Jack Pittman St. It used to be broken up tarmac but now is paved and easier than back then. It has two pitches that get pretty steep and I always peeter out near the top and end up losing places in the sprint. But, this time no one cared to sprint so I went up solo and got the mercy win. It took me 3 minutes to do and I averaged 376W and 647W maximum.
The last sprint is at the top of a really steep hill on Brooks Rd. It comes after a long paved downhill and a right turn where you lose your momentum. The hill starts out pretty easy and then gets very steep for about 20 seconds but then you still have 400m or so to the sprint. In the past, many guys have gone a bloc on the hill only to die at the top. I did not try for this one because i had just done a big pull to get someone else caught back up to a solo break. But for about 45 seconds or so i hit it hard and managed to do 411W average which is no big deal.

We did do a little attack on a long hill on Indian Shoals Rd and that was tough. The initial pop was 1047W on the hill and then sustained for about 23 seconds or so was 750W. After that I did a nice bridge to the solo leader (I mentioned before) at 300W foir about 5 minutes until we caught him.
I had been sick for about 12 days on and off so it was encouraging to see I could do little efforts with some power. I did manage to sit in 20% of the ride which was beneficial.

Next week is the GTC club championship and I will have a detailed breakdown for the race and where/how I got dropped.