Diary of a Rookie Veteran Racer – July/August ’11

July’s racing started with the Kingston Wheelers Club 10 time trial where I once again endured 26 windy minutes of torture to beat my previous time by just 5 seconds, posting a time of 26:07. Still, a PB is a PB, and with that in my legs I turned up at Dunsfold aerodrome a couple of days later for the Surrey League Friday evening 4th cat race – this time with a proper full racing licence instead of a provisional one, so that a top-10 finish would net me some actual points (see last month’s post for the sorry tale of a pointless top-10 finish).

Unusually for Dunsfold the pace was high for most of the race and this caused a split quite early on with about a dozen of us in the leading group. Two laps from the end a VC Meudon rider went off the front and the bunch let him go, fully expecting to reel him in within half a lap but amazingly he maintained a gap and went on to win solo. Along with the rest of the front group I came into the final straight (and the now-traditional vicious headwind) and managed to hang back a bit, stayed on a wheel, transferring to another wheel halfway down the straight and eventually launched my sprint about 150m from the line. Another rider who sprinted at the same time ended pipping me to second place but I just managed to take 3rd. My first podium place – and points for real this time!

A week later I was back at Dunsfold. Once again a solo breakaway got the win, but I’d spotted a strong rider leading the second group home in the previous race so I managed to stick onto his wheel on the final straight. Without knowing it, he led me out nicely and another good sprint got me 4th place, and 6 points to add to the 7 points from last week. That gave me 13 points, enough for an upgrade to a 3rd category licence with 3 points to spare. I was very happy to have upgraded so quickly, tinged with a little sadness that I would no longer be racing at 4th-cat-only Dunsfold.

In the meantime, as I mentioned last month, I had signed up for a lab study at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham. The idea behind the study was to investigate the effects of dietary nitrate (such as is found in beetroot juice) on 20km time trial performance. As part of the study I would get a VO2max test which would be useful for comparison with the VO2max test I did last year. 5 lab sessions and a fair amount of suffering on a turbo later, I got the results. My VO2max was similar to last year (65 ml/kg/min, down very slightly from 67 ml/kg/min), but maximal aerobic power was up considerably from 313W to 350W which reflects an increase in metabolic efficiency due in part to the increased core stability I’ve achieved from doing Pilates classes. The effects of the nitrate on TT performance were shown consistently to be about 1% across all the subjects – in other words, theoretically worth about 15 seconds off my 26:07 10-mile time.
To test this out I entered another Kingston Wheelers Club 10 and drank a couple of Beet-It! shots beforehand. These came as free samples as part of the nitrate study, so would be perfect for testing theory in the field. Having previously done 26:12 and 26:07 on the course, this time I came in at 25:17 – a 50-second improvement on my previous time! I’m now hoping to enter another TT on the same course this year, and with a little less wind I hope to break the 25-minute barrier.
The next race I was going to enter was a Tuesday evening crit at Hillingdon, but this was unfortunately cancelled: the London rioting and looting had only just happened and the organisers weren’t sure if the event would be safe. The next race would have to be a Surrey League road race on the following Sunday, and not wanting to get up early for the 9.30am 3rd cat race after a night out in London (yeah, not the best pre-race approach, I know) I ambitiously entered the 1.30pm 2nd/3rd cat event. My aim for the race was simply to learn what I could and finish in the bunch.
I was happy enough for the first 8-mile lap of the 8-lap race, keeping up with the bunch nicely, staying in the front half and not getting left behind on the hills & corners. On lap 2 I even got right to the front and spent a minute or so there leading the bunch. Shortly afterwards though we hit the 17% Henfold Hill for the second time. That’s where it all went wrong: I was having to put out over 700 Watts to stay with the bunch up that hill which is not far off my all-out sprint power. I fell from the front to the back, got shelled out and had to put in a massive dig to try and catch the bunch. I got within 20 metres of getting back on before I just ran out of endurance, my heart and lungs just maxed out. Some others who got shelled abandoned at that point, but I figured I might as well plug on and get a good training session in with the hope of getting a Surrey League point for finishing.

The marshals were great – I got lots of cheers and support from them as I soloed around, and coming to the end of lap 6 I thought I was in with a chance – but then the lead car came past followed shortly by the 4-man break several minutes ahead of the bunch, so I decided to call it a day and help out at the finish. The positive side of the day was a new 2-hour PB for mean-max power, and a very educational racing experience. Lesson learned. I will just have to resign myself to getting up early for the 3rds race in future.

July/August summary:

Tags: RookieVeteranRacer