The 60k 4-Man TTT race was cool but I was disappointed with my performance. I didn't really have any real race goals aside from having fun and not popping out on course and I failed at one of those.
The day started off super early at 4:45 AM outside of the VQ Chicago location. I was planning on driving myself to the race, but ultimately decided to ride with Dave and others in a large 15 passenger van. There were really only about 8 of us riding in the van but the rest of the space was taken up by our gear and bikes. After a groggy drive downstate to Lenore, IL we started setting up our gear and warming up.
Our 4-Man team practiced a bit more before the race started. The wind was coming out of the west and a majority of the course was north/south, so we knew we’d be facing a crosswind all day. We practiced doing a wide echelon formation and overall we felt pretty good with our team dynamic. We lined up at the start and waited for our turn.
We started out at a nice steady pace and rotated smoothly. We were in a solid echelon formation and only had one minor hiccup early on with our lead rider pulling off to the wrong side. I felt pretty good for the first half of the race but soon after that it started taking me a bit longer to recover after my pulls. I noticed that when I rolled back to join the back end of the formation that I was allowing for the gap to become too big between my front wheel and the last rider. Then I would have to accelerate a bit to be sure that I caught the back wheel so I wouldn't fall off the back. At first I thought I was just falling back too far but I finally realized what was happening was that the strongest guy on our team was pulling right after my turn, and as I was falling back to rejoin the tail end of the group he would accelerate a bit up front which would cause the group to shift forward. Once I figured this out I asked him to count to 3 before he accelerated when I pulled off so I could have a chance to latch back onto the group. That helped out. Still, that took me a while to figure out and ask for the group adjustment, and having to accelerate again each time after doing a full pull took its toll on me.
On the way home I started losing it. I shortened my pulls from 1 minute to 45 seconds. I felt like I was exerting a lot of energy even in the back of the train. (I tried to keep a low profile while in the 3rd and 4th position but I wouldn't drop into my aero bars until I was in the 2nd position for safety’s sake.) My teammates noticed that I was really laboring and they asked how I was doing. I told them I was at a 9 by that point, instead of the 8 where I wanted to be. So I took a couple non-pulls up front and quickly moved to the back to recover a bit more. But I just couldn't seem to recover.
With 3-4 miles left in the race I popped. I couldn't even hold on to the train at that point. I hit the wall hard… I blew right through a 9 on the perceived effort scale right into my 10. I stayed in my lactic threshold zone for too long and I just couldn't recover. This is the “worst case scenario” on the bike I worry about every time I race… that I will push it too hard and not be able to recover properly while out on course. And that’s what happened Sunday morning in downstate Illinois. There was nothing more I could do than watch my teammates roll on in the distance without me. It was a sucky feeling, having to ride by myself back to the finish line like a dog with its tail between its legs.
So that sucked, I really wasn't expecting to get dropped by my team that day. During our practices I had kept up pretty well with everyone but I guess race day was another matter. A couple miles before I bonked I knew I was in big trouble because my stomach had shut down and I couldn't take in any more nutrition. Normally that only happens to me during heavy anaerobic efforts like sprinting on the run, so I knew I was way above my threshold by that point (in fact I couldn't put down any solids for a couple hours after the race.) Bah, I hate being the weak link on a team.
Anyways, the rest of the day went a lot better with Ironman spectating.
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