Today is my last somewhat stressful race day. Like most of the last few days, my event is late in the afternoon so I can have a later alarm, 8:30 but the Airbnb decides on some kind of loud noise from the plumbing I guess I am up at 7:30 instead, thank you so much. This time around, getting used to the time change has taken about 10 days. Last night was a no middle of the night reading sessions. I’ve gotten attached to my book, The Name of the Wind, but not so much in love with reading time at 2 A.M.
Breakfast is getting easy these days; I’ve gotten used to the process. This morning, I have a savory scone from last night’s Pâtissier visit, not my favorite but quite good. Like yesterday, I have lots of morning time to relax, catch up on emails, ride data and blog stuff. Plus, I need to make up a lunch/afternoon feed I can have at the track. Race prep plans are almost identical to yesterday. Some trainer ride time, a short span on the track deciding on 51 or 52 chain ring which has been my dilemma since USA Nats. I just have not had the opportunity to train on a track and find that “golden” gear set so I keep having doubts about riding my biggest gear ever or trying the slightly smaller gear and hope my ability to spin over 100 rpms to stay with the fields.
I start out with the 52-chain ring and with a no resistance trainer, of course it feels ok. Up onto the track at 1:00 and my legs feel some fatigue after about 10 minutes. Humm, back to the infield and after some internal deliberations, I put the 51 back on.
The afternoon passes without any drama, Larry arrives and we talk a bit. We are both somewhat concerned with the other riders in our field after the Monday Scratch race chaos. Then there are the injuries to other riders sustained Monday. Our Aussie power house looks like a DNF, he has some cracked ribs from the Monday crash he was involved in so no more races for his 2025 event. Sad, only one race for the entire event. That’s gotta hurt more than just body pain. Larry gives me some info about a few of the racers to be “aware” of. We talk about some strategy that I suggest which may work and might be safer for all of us. It’s a thought that may or may not work.
I’m on my trainer a few times. Did I mention my dislike for pre-race warm ups? I know I need to do them, I understand the concept, and I have proven warm up effectiveness repeatedly. Unfortunately, the trainer I have has zero resistance and that makes warm ups on them less than effective.
With plenty of time to spare, I head to the bike check area, I haven’t changed anything, so all my adjustment seals are still in place, and I am good to go. I take a chair in the “on deck” area and just relax. The official does however use a tablet to scan my bike tubes for internal electric motors, mechanical doping it’s called. Cheating with motors for the bike instead of drugs for the body. I pass. This race, like the Scratch, we line up, half on the rail and half on the blue band. I get the rail, last rider. As I wait, a French coach I met at Worlds in 2018 in LA and again in 2019 at Manchester, great guy, comes by and we talk. He asks why I’m not still warming up? Maybe I should be but here I am. To get to my start position on the rail I have three options, walk across the track to the rail, highly frowned upon, roll around the track and up onto the rail, (I haven’t done that in 7-8 years) or have a coach/helper push me up to the rail. Even though he has an athlete in this same race, he says he can push me up. But then he disappears? But he is back soon and says his athlete has some medical issue and is withdrawing from the race. The field is down to 7.
I hope you want to read how the race went and you can just click the below link to get to the full race details and some pictures.