5 Race Check-In

Wow, I can't believe I've competed in 5 races this year. Why? Well it's probably due to the fact that last year I only participated in 4 races for the whole year! Last year, I wasn't motivated enough, but (this year) after joining the newly developed Leopard-Sapporo team and racing Collegiately for my school SF State, I can--without hesitation--say that I'm motivated to do A LOT more races this year.

And because of that, I can gauge race-readiness and preparedness compared to past racing. I'll do these check-ins every 5 races which should be enough.

I know that I've improved quite a bit compared to my last race of 2012; the Burlingame Criterium. Last year, I finished in mid- to late-pack (Elite 4). For this year, apart from my race in UC Santa Cruz, I've been able to grab 3 top 10's and a top 20! And I survived an Elite 3/4 race in which half the field dropped out of! So onto the things I've noticed...

- I'm more comfortable in Criteriums: How so? Last year I always raced Criteriums above LT, at 100% of whatever my max sustained effort for 30-40 minutes is. The past Criteriums I did this year, I've been able to race them under Threshold, which gave me enough to attack the field several times. So if you read my race reports, you'll see that I always attack the field in hopes someone will breakaway with me. That's because it's fairly new to me, I've never felt that experience of attack the field, and I've always wanted to!

- I'm not much of a climber: I mean, I can hang on in a climb, but I can barely launch an attack on one. I even have the physiology of a climber. Less than 1.8 lbs per inch of body height! My training partners Eric and Christian are better climbers than me and I have the lightest bike too. So I've labeled climbing as my official limiter, and will probably fully work on it after Collegiate Regional Championships.

- I suck at handling my bike: I wouldn't draft myself in a criterium or any technical course because my rear wheel is always tail-happy. Sometimes on a climb I can't hold my line. I definitely do not want to be the guy who causes a crash (and I almost did at the Stanford Crit) so I'm aware of this glitch I have and will fix it for the safety of me and the others. Maybe I'm just rusty from not doing Crits or something. But I know I need to keep my butt down and not jump out of the corners to hard because my rear wheel can get off the ground and potentially lose its traction during a fast corner.

- I can move up the field solo: I can also bridge gaps if they're not too far! In both the UCSC RR (MB) and UCB RR (MC) I bridged a large gap after getting dropped on the climb. In UCSC, I bridged a gap that was as wide as half of the 2 mile lap. Before, I would see a gap and have nothing left in me to close it. So I must've been doing something right!

- Pedaling Economy: It's a lot better. And I'm more comfortable spinning fast. I need to do a time trial. At the UC Berkeley Crit, I moved up the field on the climb (in the E3/4) at 125 RPM and didn't even realize it was that fast. Pedaling Economy is not consistent and either goes one way or the other so I need to pay attention to it during the various stages of training.

- I'm a rare breed and probably evolved for a Hummingbird: Or maybe not, but in a graph of people's Max Heart Rates, we know that it will be in the shape of a bell curve, and I would be on the right. My Max Heart rate is so far 211 BPM and my threshold ranges from 183-204 with my LTHR at 183. Does this mean I'm not fit? I'm not sure, I need to more races and plus its only March. I hope my heart isn't inefficient though! My resting heart rate on the other hand, is finally making its way into the 40s. the lowest I've recorded was 40bpm in 2011.

So far that's all, I'll learn more about myself in the next 5 races. Check my Racing Schedule to find out what's next for me :)

--D