Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Tuesday Night Track = Good for the Soul

I haven't been writing, because I had my crappiest race of the season on Sunday, and was struggling to come up with positive thoughts. But, I'm happy to report that we went to the track last night, and things are once again right with the world.

So, back to Sunday. The Wente Crit. It should have been a good race, as I was coming off my first build period and had been in a recovery week. So, fitness-wise, I should have been gangbusters. But no. The heat combined with a HUGE delay in our race (hoping all the ladies who crashed in the prior race are healing up!) conspired to completely shut down my body. After sitting in the heat for several hours, I just had no energy at all. My legs were heavy. And, I was hungry to start the race because I hadn't brought enough food or electrolytes. The end result was that I popped during the second of two preme laps and was unable to claw my way back to the peloton. It was rather disappointing and disheartening. The silver lining is that my team mate, Lala managed to get 5th place - her first podium finish. And, another team mate who was trying her first crit hung in almost to the very end and managed to have a lot of fun! Yay!

OK, back to the track! There was a good showing of ladies last night. Beth, Alicat, Velobella, Marscat, Ippoc were all there, along with a couple non-blogger chicas and we had a junior boy and a senior man, so they gave us our own race. On the rail a couple of younger guys tried to sneak on, but I said we only wanted girly men, and that seemed to get rid of them. Between Ali, Beth and Erika, there was almost never a moment's rest between attacks. I was able to hang with quite a few of the moves, but sometimes not. I was able to claw my way back in a couple times, which made me happy. I even was able to lay down a couple attacks of my own. I can put out a real big burst when I am recovered. But, when I am already sitting at red-line, that is when I have a hard time matching the attacks of others or putting on my own. In that situation, I am hugging the apron, just trying to stay attached with all my might. So, I guess I need to work on Anaerobic Endurance as well as trying to raise my threshold a bit. Because, I can still put out a good surge, even if I am sitting just below threshold. Oh, and I got one heck of a cramp in my right calf during the first race, which probably means I really screwed up my electrolytes on Sunday....and, I realized that one cannot stretch out a cramp on a track bike. I tried riding with my heel down for a while, but couldn't completely work it out until we stopped.

So, it was a super-fun night. I got to work on a lot of stuff and got to learn from watching the more experience racers, which was cool. Thanks for the good times, ladies!

10 comments:

Lorri Lee Lown -- velogirl said...

yay!

EB said...

I'm glad there was a good to cancel out the disappointing. The part of racing that makes it exciting -- unpredictability -- also makes it a b*tch sometimes.

:)

Velo Bella said...

last night was super fun!

Itinerant Rick said...

You forget to mention Velo Bella as one the animators; she had one heck of an attack in the 2nd race that looked like it would stick until Beth decided to end it.

You were a real trooper on Sunday going out and trying even though you were cooked. Maybe an air-conditioned RV with a warm-up room and ... ;-)

Glad you had fun last night. We need to fix the bike fit issue; either do more changes to the Fuji, or get another one and have it fit to you.

chatterbox said...

panda - so true!

rick - yes VB = BIG attack. VB knows how to put a gap between herself and the other competitors! She wasn't throwing them out constantly, but when she did, boy it was good!

marscat said...

very good for the soul!

beth bikes! said...

last night was bunches of fun with great folks!

Allison Krasnow said...

how do i love racing with women...let me count the ways.

it was such a blast! we need to cooridnate so we have the numbers for our own race as much as possible.

You were great out there Sarah!

~ lauren said...

that's what's so fun about racing - you may have a bad race, but then it's onto the next one!

good fun!

chatterbox said...

thanks, VB, marscat, beth, and alicat for the great racing!

lauren - yes, it is amazing how things can swing from bad to good one race to the next!