Sunday I rode my first race of the year at Nieul, just out side Limoges. It’s a hard course, 8 laps of 6.5km with 150m climbing each lap. It didn’t go so great, but as mentioned in previous posts I wasn’t expecting too much. It was a fine day and it was the first race of the season, hence there was a lot of riders out - around 60 in my cat. For most it was probably the first ride of the year in shorts so there were a lot of untanned legs. Not only white mine were also unshaven!
The race started fast, unfortunately I was quite near the back and had to fight frequent accelerations, riders were soon going off the back. I held on until the 4th lap when I was dropped on the longest climb of the circuit. If I had a plan, should this happen, its was to wait for the 4th cats to catch me the ride with them. For the remaining 4 laps I either rode on my own of with 1 or 2 others, the 4th cats never arrived.
Stats for thought – if I go out training alone I normally average about 300 meters climbing per hour. On a good run out with the club this may increase to about 370m/hr. On this ride it was 575m/hr and it would have been hired if I’d held the pace, so quite a lot higher than I’m conditioned too.
The race was a good benchmark in otherways, so to speak, if anything I think I fared better than expected considering the disruptions to my training schedule recently. My body needed a good kick, just like if a car is driven around town all the time it does the car good to get it out on some fast roads and have a bit of a burn up, to clean out the engine. I certainly got a good kick, can’t wait for the next week its the annual ROC cyclo race, hopefully I’ll manage a few more laps before being dropped.
