kush
Active Member
Ha! Thanks man. I really feel like it's paid off.
Kush's semi-training thread
- Thread starter kush
- Start date
Ha! Thanks man. I really feel like it's paid off.
kush
Active Member
Quick Battenkill Update
Fred, Norm, JimV, EricO, Joe Mundi, and I and a few other folks lined up in the front row of Cat 4 Grey. There were about 120 people. We talked about strategy, but we didn't really conclude on anything. Except for parking. We nailed that.
Then there were some hills. And more hills. And more. It was a race of attrition, and there were actually absolutely no attacks anywhere. However, the pack was pretty fast, my avg speed was 20.4
I was playing it safe (but not foolish) upfront for most of the time, so didn't know what was going on back of the pack. After Feed Zone 2 (mile 42), it was Fred, Norm and I from the group of 10 we started with. The lead group at that time was maybe 25-30?
I ate and drank every chance I had. I ate like 4 bars, bunches of GU chomps, and my wife and kids gave me bottles twice at the feed zones, so 4 bottles almost gone.
After Feed Zone 2, the real war of attrition started as the hills just got murderous. I found myself with Freddie at the front, and he was trying to coordinate a faster pace for more separation. It was amazing that we still had 20 people after the hell we went through.
Long story short, the lead pack with Freddie pulled away on one of the monster rollers sections, don't know what one.
I formed a chase group with 3 others. I put in a huge effort to bridge the 4 of us together, and then I struggled to do another pull. So one of the 4 was some kind of dickhead, who shouted that I should sit towards the back "if I can't take a pull". Not in a nice way.
I thought about this for about a minute while recovering at the back. (I have to say that intervals are a wonderful thing to get you back up to speed).
Then I took a hard long pull, and dropped the a**hole in about 30 seconds. We never saw him again.
So it was the 3 of us, The Tattoed Guy, Kush, and A Bearded Guy. As we team-time-trialed it the remaining 10km, we had to do frogger around a whole bunch of people from preceding groups who looked like Zombies that just wanted to finish. They were wandering through the road aimlessly, and it was kind of a sad sight.
We came upon on to a Cat 3, who told us he was a Cat 3. I said congratulations. He was a very nice and tall man. He pulled our little train along at 25mph, which was like taking a magic carpet ride.
We pulled into the finish sprint, where The Tattoed One got ahead of me, but I got the Bearded One. We also caught a few stragglers I think on the finishing stretch from the lead pack, and passed them. My sprint actually felt good for a change. Nice acceleration, and power.
I took 19th place. I am thrilled with this, as I think this was a really strong bunch.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/78458415
Btw, they advertised it as 2900 feet of elevation. My ass. 4300.
Then we ate at the Cheesecake Factory. Huge burger, cheesecake, and whatever the kids didn't want. And two beers. All good
Results attached
Fred, Norm, JimV, EricO, Joe Mundi, and I and a few other folks lined up in the front row of Cat 4 Grey. There were about 120 people. We talked about strategy, but we didn't really conclude on anything. Except for parking. We nailed that.
Then there were some hills. And more hills. And more. It was a race of attrition, and there were actually absolutely no attacks anywhere. However, the pack was pretty fast, my avg speed was 20.4
I was playing it safe (but not foolish) upfront for most of the time, so didn't know what was going on back of the pack. After Feed Zone 2 (mile 42), it was Fred, Norm and I from the group of 10 we started with. The lead group at that time was maybe 25-30?
I ate and drank every chance I had. I ate like 4 bars, bunches of GU chomps, and my wife and kids gave me bottles twice at the feed zones, so 4 bottles almost gone.
After Feed Zone 2, the real war of attrition started as the hills just got murderous. I found myself with Freddie at the front, and he was trying to coordinate a faster pace for more separation. It was amazing that we still had 20 people after the hell we went through.
Long story short, the lead pack with Freddie pulled away on one of the monster rollers sections, don't know what one.
I formed a chase group with 3 others. I put in a huge effort to bridge the 4 of us together, and then I struggled to do another pull. So one of the 4 was some kind of dickhead, who shouted that I should sit towards the back "if I can't take a pull". Not in a nice way.
I thought about this for about a minute while recovering at the back. (I have to say that intervals are a wonderful thing to get you back up to speed).
Then I took a hard long pull, and dropped the a**hole in about 30 seconds. We never saw him again.
So it was the 3 of us, The Tattoed Guy, Kush, and A Bearded Guy. As we team-time-trialed it the remaining 10km, we had to do frogger around a whole bunch of people from preceding groups who looked like Zombies that just wanted to finish. They were wandering through the road aimlessly, and it was kind of a sad sight.
We came upon on to a Cat 3, who told us he was a Cat 3. I said congratulations. He was a very nice and tall man. He pulled our little train along at 25mph, which was like taking a magic carpet ride.
We pulled into the finish sprint, where The Tattoed One got ahead of me, but I got the Bearded One. We also caught a few stragglers I think on the finishing stretch from the lead pack, and passed them. My sprint actually felt good for a change. Nice acceleration, and power.
I took 19th place. I am thrilled with this, as I think this was a really strong bunch.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/78458415
Btw, they advertised it as 2900 feet of elevation. My ass. 4300.
Then we ate at the Cheesecake Factory. Huge burger, cheesecake, and whatever the kids didn't want. And two beers. All good
Results attached
Attachments
Last edited:
ArmyOfNone
Well-Known Member
WKO says 4061 ft of elevation gain
Training peaks has 3701ft
Either way it sure as hell aint 2900ft. And it hurt WAY more! Great job today SON!!!
kush
Active Member
THATmanMANNY
Well-Known Member
Just cant shake mtbnj. First, stared at this car pulling in with a mass of bike racks on his roof as I enjoyed my turkey sub, thinking what a poser. Those damn VW kids throwing racks on their cars for style and prob cant ride for sh!t. Oh it's Norm! Damn im an ass. Then I double honked u on great road. Thats was you, right?
kush
Active Member
Pain. And suffering
That was the French Creek Endurance race.
This place has more tech and rock gardens than any of the parks in NJ.
Relentless hills and screaming technical downhills that jar every fibre of your being. There were maybe 30 feet of smooth single track, out of 14 miles. I've not seen this much techy terrain in a long time. Maybe it's cause I'm a roadie now, but still. Wayway - no, Ringwood - no. Even Sourlands, not the same scale or elevation at all. Maybe Blue but that's in NY. Also some killer riders over there, they started the Elites when we were still on the loop, and those guys just murder those rocks with style.
It took me 7 hours to do 4 laps, and rang up 8000 feet of elevation. That was good enough for 8th place out of 25.
I met and spent some time with the VTC crew there. Really good bunch of guys. Except for Bill, he's a dick 😀
Seriously though, this has to be the hardest, most painful thing I've done like ever.
Unfortunately I didn't have any mechanicals to put an end to the madness. The Superfly just kept on ticking. Speaking of, there was some serious bling in the lineup. Saw a lot of SF 100, including Bill's new SF collection one which looks damn good. Better than in pictures
After 2nd lap, TJ was manning the VTC hydration table (he broke his bike in 2 pieces), told me I was in 16th or so. After 3rd lap, Roger took over the table (he broke his fork), told me I was in 6th or something and fixed my h-bar, so while I was seriously considering calling it a day as everything was already extremely sore and I was hurting, but I went out for 2hrs more.
That 4th lap was just a nightmare, no amount of gu or monster would revive my legs. My first lap was 1:30 and my 4th lap was 2 hrs. Something about pacing again. Seems I didn't learn anything from SSAP. Anyways, I got passed by 2 guys I think I shouldn't have been passed by at all on 4th lap, but I was just trying to survive.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/84120016
That was the French Creek Endurance race.
This place has more tech and rock gardens than any of the parks in NJ.
Relentless hills and screaming technical downhills that jar every fibre of your being. There were maybe 30 feet of smooth single track, out of 14 miles. I've not seen this much techy terrain in a long time. Maybe it's cause I'm a roadie now, but still. Wayway - no, Ringwood - no. Even Sourlands, not the same scale or elevation at all. Maybe Blue but that's in NY. Also some killer riders over there, they started the Elites when we were still on the loop, and those guys just murder those rocks with style.
It took me 7 hours to do 4 laps, and rang up 8000 feet of elevation. That was good enough for 8th place out of 25.
I met and spent some time with the VTC crew there. Really good bunch of guys. Except for Bill, he's a dick 😀
Seriously though, this has to be the hardest, most painful thing I've done like ever.
Unfortunately I didn't have any mechanicals to put an end to the madness. The Superfly just kept on ticking. Speaking of, there was some serious bling in the lineup. Saw a lot of SF 100, including Bill's new SF collection one which looks damn good. Better than in pictures
After 2nd lap, TJ was manning the VTC hydration table (he broke his bike in 2 pieces), told me I was in 16th or so. After 3rd lap, Roger took over the table (he broke his fork), told me I was in 6th or something and fixed my h-bar, so while I was seriously considering calling it a day as everything was already extremely sore and I was hurting, but I went out for 2hrs more.
That 4th lap was just a nightmare, no amount of gu or monster would revive my legs. My first lap was 1:30 and my 4th lap was 2 hrs. Something about pacing again. Seems I didn't learn anything from SSAP. Anyways, I got passed by 2 guys I think I shouldn't have been passed by at all on 4th lap, but I was just trying to survive.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/84120016
Attachments
bigW
Well-Known Member
Wicked. Just reading about it induces pain, well done to stick it out.
Your HRM data tells the whole story ( steady linear decline ) about legs/body taking a steady beatdown.
Doing something like this is great for training, it makes you stronger for sure.
Looking at your HR you can see you went out too hard and continued hard until your heart would not put out. Mtbing for 7hrs is no joke, to finish strong you need some 6 hr training rides under your belt and the ability to pace yourself. Or ignore the pacing, deal with the pain and pedal your ass off, which is what you did...Nice job!
Looking at your HR you can see you went out too hard and continued hard until your heart would not put out. Mtbing for 7hrs is no joke, to finish strong you need some 6 hr training rides under your belt and the ability to pace yourself. Or ignore the pacing, deal with the pain and pedal your ass off, which is what you did...Nice job!
kush
Active Member
I haven't learned my lesson with pacing. I'm approaching these longer MTB races like a road race, i.e. if you put enough of a gap, you won't get caught. Well, that's absolutely wrong. On the 4th lap, my legs absolutely refused to turn over. I do 5-6 hour rides on the weekends, so I don't think I was out of my element, but the hard start was just stupid.
The 3-4 top elites from the 1pm race were really encouraging though as they blew by me. Seriously nice people. Every single one said something nice.
The 3-4 top elites from the 1pm race were really encouraging though as they blew by me. Seriously nice people. Every single one said something nice.