I miss the race.

It's kind of strange to realize that I have now gone an entire year without participating in a single bike race. Considering that in the past couple of years I would go to a race pretty much every other weekend (at least) through the summer, this year was a big change.

It's not that I was surprised by the fact that I didn't race. The move to a new country kind of throws a wrench into things like that. Hell, it took me most of the summer cycling season to find a club that was good to ride with. Even with them I realized that the training structure was vastly different from what I had been used to. Going from a club with as many as 5 organized/coached rides a week to a group that does 3-4 with lose direction of what is going to be done is like going from the military to civilian life. It becomes more of a choice to do the interval sessions, to ride long and hard, rather than having a regime in place to say that you should ride hard these days.

Now I'm not complaining about the lack of training structure, well not too much. I did enjoy the solid foundation that was provided by my old club, that there were specific workouts that could be done and that you knew that people would be there to suffer with you (trust me this makes things better). But I'm also very much of the mind that each individual needs to tailor his/her training around what they know to be right for their body. Though without a structure to the training this can take years to figure it out.

Funny enough, this year without training hard and not racing I learned a good deal about myself and how my body reacts to training. One of the nicest things to learn is that it seems that I do not lose my power/strength very easily. This Saturday was a perfect example of that. Likely one of the last rides of the year most of the people out for the ride were gunning to win the sprint for the town sign of Wyzata (there are a lot of funky town names around here). Well I've taken this sprint a number of times and though I never really thought of myself as a sprinter I think the power work I did in the gym last winter and spring payed off quite well in that regard.

Most of the people going for the sprint took off very early, at probably 400-500 meters out. For a sprint of a bicycle this is a really long way out. But most people want try and draft another rider until about 100 meters to go and then sprint around them. So when one person goes from far out a lot of people jump on his wheel to get an easy ride to the line. Well the one thing that I really gained this year was confidence in my ability to close a gap, so I don't worry when everyone takes off from far out, because I know I can stay with the bunch rolling a bit slower and then take off closer to the line. And that's just what I did this time. I stayed with the non sprinter group until we were about 300 meters from the sign, the sprinting group was about 20-30 meters ahead of us. I simply pulled out of the pack and started to accelerate. By the time I caught the bulk of the sprinting group they were at about 150 meters from the line and I just flew smoothly past them. There was one more guy up ahead, I caught him about 50 meters from the line and managed to pull past in the last 10 meters for a clear win.

Yeah, I know this is a bit of bragging, but damn it felt good to win that sprint. Sure I don't know if everyone was giving it all they had, but it was a bit of a test for me. To see if my body was still functioning like it should and if I have learned to be a bit more calm mentally in a race situation. So considering I haven't ridden more than a couple of hours per week for the last month or more, and that I did no serious training or racing this year, I'd say I passed the test rather well. And for a more quantifiable measure of the success, my top speed in the sprint was 63 km/h (39 mph) and I didn't do any drafting once I left the non-sprint group. So needless to say I'm itching to see what I will be able to do this spring.


Oh, if you are interested in seeing a recent picture of me go to Deirdre's blog, she has a couple of photos of us from Friday night (apparently camera phones have a use after all)