Race #3: Yankee Springs TT

First mountain bike race of the season under my belt.  I was slower this year than previous years, and even though I expected that, the reality is still disappointing.  My Garmin race time is 1:56 for the two laps, which puts me in the bottom third of my category.  The take-away from this race include:

First, My rear tire keeps losing pressure.  I’ve been dealing with this damn wheel for a few months now.  I’ve added sealant and changed tape, but the tire will consistently lose pressure.  Just traveling from home to race sight it lost half pressure.  After the race, it had lost 12 pounds of pressure.  This had minimal impact on my performance, just very frustrating.

Second, my anaerobic capacity is good.  Although I spent 80% of my time in Zone 4+, I still felt I was in control of my HR.  This is most likely a result of my swim training, which is all cardio. 

Third, muscular endurance needs help.  Much like Barry Roubaix race, I am just not a strong climber anymore.  I’m sure I’ll make this statement with every mountain bike race I do this season since my training focus is endurance not power.  A consistent theme for my training has been to increase intensity and I’ve failed to do that.  If I want to compete with other racers, this needs to be addressed quickly.  Otherwise I will remain in the bottom third of my category. 

The challenge to address this is balancing hard bike intervals with hard running intervals.  My running sucks, so if I really want to move up in triathlons, I need to become a faster runner.  However, if I want to move up in mountain bike racing, I need to become a faster biker. Looking at triathlon training schedules, I could tweak some of them to look like this:

Day 1: Hard Bike, Endurance Run
Day 2: Swim, Endurance Bike
Day 3: Hard Run
Day 4: Swim, Endurance Bike
Day 5: Hard Bike, Endurance Run
Day 6: Off
Day 7: Swim, Hard run 

Anyways, just something I will need to change starting this week.  I have a few years of training plans prepared for me by coaches, I’m sure I’ll come up with something.  Moving on:

Final take-away from the race is my mountain bike handling skills.  These skills have become rusty.  I did better during the race, however I am still braking too much in the corners and I have zero trust in my front tire to stick to the trail.  For this to improve, I just need to stick my ass in the saddle. 

The race was still fun, nice to see fellow riders and the weather was perfect.