I had a disappointing but not all together awful race on Saturday. I started the race up near the front but in the first few laps the group was taking some really sketchy lines around turns, not using the whole road, and taking each corner differently each lap. My desire to not be stuck in the middle of things when it hit the fan (it came close, but never did) kept me out of the middle of the field. For some reason my heart rate was really high and i got dropped after 4 or 5 laps of doing 27mph. I was working with another guy to chase back on but the race official pulled us out and told us that we could rest a lap and jump in with the field the next time they came through on the condition that we took ourselves out of the race going into the final lap. Once i was able to rest for a lap and get back in for the rest of the race, i felt fine and had no problems staying with the group. It was really weird. But considering my main goal was to use the race to get me used to racing in a group at high speed and open the legs up a little for next week, i’d say it wasn’t a total loss.
I’m not sure what the reason behind yesterday’s struggles is. It could be that i’ve been sick this week and my body hasn’t recovered as much as i thought it had. It could be that i’ve been working on building endurance and haven’t started training the high end speed with much high intensity work yet. It could be that i just hadn’t raced in a while and it was a shock to the system. Or that i didn’t get a good enough warm up in. Realistically, it’s probably some combination of these factors.
During a race your adrenaline is going and you can push your body to do things it otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. Nobody, no matter how mentally tough they are can simulate race speed and effort in training. The first few laps my heart rate was sitting at about 175bpm, a heart rate that i can only hold in training for a minute or two, but somehow in the race managed to hold for 12-15 minutes. But for some reason, after i got back in, my heart rate settled down to 165bpm for the rest of the race. Weird.
Today Rachel and i went to a Giant bike demo in a park in the East Bay. We got to sign a waiver, hand over our driver’s licenses, and then take off on a demo ride with a pair of Giant TCR Advanced SL bikes (pretty much a pro quality bike). It was quite an eye opening experience.
The TCR is a carbon fiber bike. Since carbon fiber is an anisotropic material, they can make funny shaped frames with it (for aerodynamics) but can also control the stiffness with how the layups are done (multiple layers of fabric held together with a resin like fiberglass). This allows carbon bikes to be laterally stiff (for maximum pedaling efficiency, forcing all of the energy from the pedals into making the bike move forward) but vertically compliant (for a softer, more comfortable ride). My current bike is aluminum, an isotropic material, meaning that it is pretty stiff laterally and just as stiff vertically.
The demo was at the top of a big hill with a winding road so Rachel and i got to descend down the road and then climb back up. I was amazed at the difference between the TCR and my Specialized bike. My bike gets kind of twitchy on descents once the speed gets over 35mph. Once the speed picks up, you’ve got to be paying attention. The TCR got up to speed very quickly, and despite being freakishly lightweight felt nothing but solid at high speed. The biggest difference was in the climbing though. The TCR was certainly helped by being a few pounds lighter, but the accelerations are really where i noticed a difference. When you decide to get out of the saddle and really get on it, my Specialized creaks and moans as the aluminum flexes and you have to fight it up hill. The TCR makes no noise and just leaps forward. It was a dream to ride.
I had never ridden a carbon bike before and figured it couldn’t possibly be different enough to justify the gap in price, but i was most definitely wrong. While there are a large number of things higher on the list at this point in our lives, i’d like to hope that sometime in the next few years i’ll be investing in a carbon race bike. Giant sponsors my club and generously gives us great discounts on the bikes, so it may well end up being a Giant.
After we got back from the demo, i went out on a really good 50 mile training ride. I kept the pace pretty hard and hit some decent hills before making my way back home. Oddly enough, i felt much better today than yesterday. It was good to get a training ride with some distance in before the 63 mile road race out in Modesto next weekend. I’m really looking forward to it.
