This past weekend I raced the Milford Criterium. Once again this year
it was the state championship criterium race. I have never ever done
well on this race course, so I decided not to pressure myself and just
focus on training for a couple other races. My real goal was to do well
the previous weekend at the Flint criterium and later in the season.
However Flint never really went as planned and I missed out on a great
opportunity. My legs felt really good that day, however I missed the
break away. At the time that was ok because a team mate of mine did
make it. However a few laps later he dropped. I spent the next 10-15
minutes killing myself trying to bring the break back. I leveled a
blazing pace that kept the whole field single file holding near 26mph.
In the end it just left me dehydrated on another hot day with a lot of
great interval practice. Nobody really could help me or my team mate
pace and we just couldn't catch the group off the front. I blew up on
the last lap of the race to finish 20th. I was bummed at the end of the
day, but there is always next year.
So my real focus has been the Hines time trial and the Cherry
Roubaix weekend. Cherry will be a really tough test for me with a lot
of climbing. Hines TT is now my home turf so my expectations is first
or bust. My training for the two coming weekends to end my road racing
season has gone really well, it also has caused me to overlook Milford.
I probably trained to hard during the work week, before the race I
could tell I just didn't have the pop in my legs to fight hard for
position. It wasn't a horrible day though, last year I DNF'ed and the
previous year finished a lap down due to a wheel issue. So just
finishing the race was a good goal. Once the race started I could tell
finishing with the pack wouldn't be an issue, it would just be about how
well I could keep myself towards the front. Well I failed bad at
keeping myself near the front, every lap we would sprint up this little
hill and I just didn't have the pop to prevent people from taking spots
from me I gained on the rest of the circuit though. The other bad thing
that happened was someone's tire exploded next to me and completely
knocked out my hearing in my left ear.
Five laps to go I finally got some urgency to dig and try to fight.
My endurance is really good, so I took many spots from other riders
that started to suffer. I still just couldn't make any headway to get
near the front. I probably should have taken a few more risks earlier,
on the last lap I just had too much ground to cover. My sprint wasn't
great, but I closed some serious gaps out of the last corner to take
18th. After the race I wasn't tired at all. It left me with a lot of
what ifs, if I had trained a little lighter in the week I could of maybe
had the pop to contend. Then again my training would not be as good
for the coming weeks. I will just have to see how the next two weeks
pan out if I made the right decision. My new focus the second half of
the season has been training more specific, leading to situations like
the past weekend when I didn't have my 'A' legs. It seams to work though
and I am getting faster. I also started running again, for the past
month I have been trying to run 1-2 times a week and do 3-10 miles a
week. My current goal is to do a 5k in under 20 minutes. Right now I
am around 23:30, but I did that on a blistering hot night. Its amazing
what all the cardio from cycling gives me. When I started running I had
no issues pegging 7 minute miles, the only thing I had to wait up for
is my legs to adjust to the pounding of running. I haven't ever been
able to run this fast in my life though, so I am curious on how fast I
can actually get. The long term goal is to do a sprint triathlon, which
is a 800 meter swim, 20 kilometer bike, 3 kilometer run, and hopefully
break 70 minutes. This winter I will just have to learn how to swim.
