The race is 25 miles which is considered very short - 40 miles or more is way more typical. In my category 40-50 miles is probably the most you'll see, in higher categories they get longer. Hotter than hell is run as a race (as well as just a ride) and I'm pretty sure it's the full 100 miles.

These races that are short loops tend to be shorter, because you tie up the whole loop during a race. In a long road race, where you do one loop, or maybe 2 (like Walburg race is the same weekend and I think it's a 25 mile loop so the races are all 25 or 50 miles) you can start the fastest group, wait 5 minutes and start the next fastest, etc, and keep going and have like 10 races going at once. There's almost no chance that the 2nd fastest group will make up a 5 minute gap so basically they stay totally seperate.

On a closed short loop that doesn't work. They're going to run 3 races at a time at 5 minute intervals and I think that might be a problem. They're going to start us, and then the low cat women, and then junior women. If they wait for us to pass before letting the juniors go it'll be fine, but if they let them out a few minutes before we pass then we'll be getting in each others way big time.

Anyway if you can only run 3 races at a time then they can't take 2-3 hours to finish, otherwise your race will take forever.

https://www.strava.com/activities/258440969

Well, I just had my first road race. It was a short one - 25 miles, 4 loops around a 6.2 mile closed track. I almost skipped it - it was raining and about 50 degrees. I knew it was forecast to rain but I showed up anyway and told myself if it was raining I'd skip it. At the time the race started it had been raining but just stopped. I decided to start the race and bail if it was really sketchy, or if it started raining hard.

Fortunately, I'd pre-rode the course the week before, so I was pretty familiar with it, I'd done 8 or 9 loops last week. I was confident that there were no obstacles, no cracks, no crap in the road and nothing to really worry about. Which is good because in a race you can't see anything but the asses in front of you.

It *did* start raining, midway into the 2nd lap. Things were going fine and people were slowing for turns so I decided it was OK and I'd stick it out.

Right at the start of every lap was a hairpin turn, less than 90 degrees and you approach it down a hill. On the 3rd approach, I slowed down too much and the group gapped me. I tried to make it up on the hilly portion of course but couldn't do it, so I dropped off the back and did the rest by myself.

You almost never see people who get dropped before you (because they're behind you) but I think possibly I finished last (except for the people who didn't finish, of which I know there were a few)

At the finish I got caught by the race behind me (which started 5 minutes after mine) which was mildly embarassing. I let them pass me instead of joining them, because joining them seemed sort of... gauche?

Anyway, so I don't feel tired or worn out at all, it wasn't too hard, but I feel like a ****ing idiot for getting dropped like that. I'd rather have finished with the pack and still come in dead last, than to have it happen like this. Oh well.

if you haven't seen this yet, quite useful: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/02/s...on-plugin.html

nice race report with a ****ty ending

I just saw the results, I actually finished in 46th. 10 people behind me, 10 DNFs, and a few DNSs. Not as bad as I thought. I guess you really can't tell when people are dropping off behind you because you literally never see them.

I've never seen Strava Plus, checking it out now.

Grats on sticking it out and getting a finish at least

Did you have the dashcam going?

That race was in my training schedule - I had it alotted at 90 minutes. If I quit the race early that just means more time to make up. As is my time was something like 70 minutes so I came up short anyway, and I also missed a day during the week due to illness. I'm actually kind of far behind for the year which is not ideal. It's hard to get a lot of hours in during the winter.

I wasn't running the camera, I figured ain't no one want to watch 1+ hours of that.

I checked out strava's "flyby" feature today. It's pretty cool, it lets you select from a list of people who were riding in the same place at the same time and play back their movements, synchronized, on a map. So you can actually see the pack lose me in it. I can actually pinpoint the instant I gave up - I had the pack in sight for a few miles and was hoping I could catch them at the next 90 degree turn, because they'd all slow down.

There was a big hill leading up to it though. If I was stronger, a good place to catch them. The benefit of being in a pack comes from reduced air drag, if you slow down (such as when you go up a hill) then the drag doesn't help them as much. It doesn't help me any either but at least it puts us on even footing, if I put out more power I can gain ground on them. Just wasn't going to happen.

I don't feel as strong or fast as this time last year. I'm a little heavy and I've been dogging it on the hours. Going to try to buckle down more. Now that my job is a little more established I will try to get back to maintaining the hours.

Hey, at least you got out there and did it. You know what you did wrong, just don't do it next time.

The weather has been sucking mightily and I'm sick of missing rides, so I bought an indoor trainer. I already had a set of rollers, which are good for some things, but that I found useless for hard indoor rides. Among other problems, you have to pay constant attention to not falling off them. They are quite good for working on balance, smoothness of pedal stroke, and getting really good at riding hands free (I saw a sweet video of a guy on rollers who poured himself a bowl of cereal and milk while riding them)

Anyway, so I got the trainer and did about a 2 hour workout on it yesterday, which suuuuucked. I don't know quite why, but the same intervals on a trainer seem much harder than on the road.

Today, at a friends suggestion, I did a "sufferfest" video. Strava pro offers a few of these, but I actually just got a few on my own so I could download them. I fired up Golden Cheetah, which is a desktop app that among other things can display these videos, and at the same time tell you when to increase power/cadence/etc. So it was displaying the video in the middle of the screen, with stats on top/bottom. The video is usually segments of races and stuff like that. Has a music sound track.

Holy ****, it's probably the hardest 1 hour I can think of outside of some races I've done. Came very close to puking, had to actually stop and lay down for a second in the middle. I think I had it set a little too "high" (you give it your 'critical power' and it goes off percentages of that) and in addition I think it was reading power a little lower than it actually was, because I just could not cut it. Sweat pouring off me, gasping for breath, etc. Anyway I got through it by cheating on 2 of the intervals.

I'll probably add these into the rotation, esp since it will continue to be rainy/cold.

2 things:
- make sure that you have at least one (or if possible several) large fan(s) around you.
- indoor / outdoor power readings are often quite different. there are many factors for it. but in general: just do separate ftp testing for indoors and work with those numbers.

I had a ceiling fan on high, but not directly above me. I think having fans would definitely help.

And yeah, the same power on a trainer seems... harder. I can't really explain why. When I looked at the power plan for the workout I did, I thought it was weird that the max power was only 350. I do one workout a week where I do 5 3-6 minute intervals and that level, and yeah, they're hard, but they don't max me out.

I sincerely doubt I could do 1 3 minute interval at 350 or above on the trainer.

I wonder what it is? Heat/sweat buildup? Something mental? I spent most of the workout at 175bpm, it's actually extremely difficult for me to get my HR up that high and keep it there unless I'm actually chasing in a race or I'm doing a long climb.

it's a mix of different reasons. read e.g. http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/01...rformance.html or http://fitwerx.com/does-your-power-d...riding-indoors
but definitely improve the cooling situation. at least one large fan right in front (or slightly on the side) of you. that should already help a lot.

What are you using (if anything) for a recovery/post ride mix? I decided to bust out some Recoverite today after a 90 minute Xc ski session, and thought I'd see what you use for cycling.

Eh, it varies, I don't really stick to anything.

If it's a short ride (say under 3 hours) probably nothing. These days I rarely do more than 3 hours.

If it was pretty hard and I have some around I drink chocolate milk.

When I do tons of volume, I use Hammer's recovery drink - I think it's the one you mentioned, Recoverite. When I did the tour du rouge last year and year before we averaged 85 miles/day for a week, so I definitely kept on top of hydration/salts

I also don't typically drink anything but water while on rides. If it's going to be long/hard (twss) I'll take along gels and salt tablets.

Races at my category level are basically never longer than 2 hours, there's not a whole lot of benefit in riding at more than 150% of your longest races. On/after ride nutrition is not that important on rides of that distance (imo)

I got myself chewed out pretty good for never using anything post training.

The paddlers up here are all using something for any session over 90 minutes. The Old School ones all go the Chocolate Milk route. The fancy lads use Recoverite or something similar (along with a few home brewed concoctions).

Today I was thinking about it, and found a sample I received from Hammer when I ordered my Perpeteum last year. Decided to give it a shot. Can't hurt anything, and I really don't need to lose anymore weight at this point.

Got my bike out of storage today. I'm supposed to do a 340 mile race in 106 days. Training this winter has been a disaster so not sure i'll be ready. Really looking forward to get going tho.

Those 25 mile races look awesome. Really not any of those around here.

How many miles do you ride a year?

sven: several stages or just one ultra stage?

By whom? Your mammy?

Most rides I do just aren't that intense that I think I'd need anything afterwards. I dunno, maybe I'm ****ing myself over big time.


Is this some kind of solo thing (like a time trial?) Or a regular peloton race? And yeah, single ride or stage race or what? Sounds pretty epic.

They're not common here either. Usually they happen when the race is on a short closed loop. If your race is 1 or 2 long loops then you can start a bunch of races in succession, like 10 minutes apart, and they'll never see each other for the most part. (It's illegal to join another race or interfere with it). On a short loop you can only run 3 or so races at a time. If all races were 50 miles it would take 2 hours per set of 3 and you'd be there all damn day.

I think I did around 6500 last year, I'd really like to break 8k but it'll be hard.

It's a single stage between Trondheim and Oslo (the 3rd biggest city and the capitol) Had over 5000 participants in the peak years.


I'm aiming for sub 18 h if i'm doing it. My brother is doing it for the second time this year. He has joined a 40 man strong team and is going for sub 15. It really is a test of will more than anything.

I diden't do more then about 5000k last year. Alot of the people i rode with a couple of years ago have given it up or at least scaled down a lot. So a lot of my training have to be solo this year. Which i don't enjoy nearly as much. Hopefully i don't lose steam.

Sub-15 is some strong **** especially if there's any elevation gain. A good group that size could help if they work together. Never rode further than about 110-115 personally, just no need for it.

I do about 2/3 solo and the rest is group rides. I have never been able to have a small regular training group, wish I could though. Some of the toughest rides I've done have been hanging on to a single person or two's wheel.

Most of the elevation gain is in the first third of the race. The homepage for the race is also in english http://styrkeproven.no/en/frontpage you can check it out if you are interested.

Three years ago we were a group of friends. About 20 in total. We had a facebook group for planing rides. Could find a ride with 3+ people every single day. It was heaven. I was about middle of the pack in form. So some days i was in front a lot. And some days i was just hanging on for dear life.

post training nutrition: for recovery it is ideal to eat / drink something with around 4:1 carbs / protein ratio (and low fat) and ~200-250kcal asap after a ride. (and then more food 1-2 hours later)
now, is it important? really depends on your situation and your goal. i'd say for the large majority of people it doesn't really make a difference (or a negligible one). now as rusty said, if you're doing a stage race and racing (or training very hard) every single day and your body is already close to being overtrained / over exhausted, then absolutely, make sure to optimise everything as much as you can. (but massages and a ****load of sleep is definitely more important). but if you're just doing 3-4 rides a week (1 or 2 hard, 2-3 easy), i don't really see it as a big deal.

ultra cycling: i'm definitely tempted to do something similar. still looking for the perfect event (and probably waiting for 2016, hehe). http://tortour.com/tortour/ is the big one here in switzerland, it's a little over 1000km and ~13'000m of climbing. fastest solo rider last year had 36 hours. nooooooo way i'm doing that, but something between 300-500km would be an interesting challenge.

A couple of the big time paddlers. We didn't go out and do anything extreme that day. They said it's more of habit to start forming and getting in to, and a must do during the times of the year that we are on the water 5-6 days a week, putting in 15-20 hours of hard paddling.

The rest might be broscience, but they said it also helps your body get used to a rapid recovery. Our short races are 2-4 hours, but the main long event is 15-19 hours. Part of what makes the difference between a finish and a DNF is the feed down the river, and how well your body processes what you put in to it before and during the race.

OK, so, race season starts in earnest now.

This coming thursday is the first Driveway crit series. These run every thursday from now until the next time change. I'll probably do a lot of them. If you're in Austin and are into bikes I recommend coming to check it out, it's pretty fun. Free beer, usually pretty good (non-free) food, good spectating, pretty girls, dogs, etc.

For the next few months there will be road races available most weekends. Next weekend I am doing a stage race in Corsicana (time trial, crit, road race). If you're in the area, come out, it would be nice to meet you. If I were you I'd come for the crits (saturday afternoon) because they're something you can actually spectate. Watching time trials has to be the worst thing ever, and in a road race you'll only see the peloton twice.

The following is a list of races I'm considering
The Jesuit Ranger Roundup - Richardson - March 22nd
Hammerfest - Fort Davis - March 28-29
Blackland Classic - Greenville - April 11-12 (dallasish area)
Fayetteville Stage Race - Fayetteville - April 25-26 (between Houston and Austin)

There's more in May and June but I'll look into those later, more races will be cropping up or disappearing as plans get finalized.

This **** is all kind of expensive and I think my wife has some surprises coming, even though I told her I was going to do all the races this year I don't think she expected me to travel. But there are only a few races in the area and most of them are done now.

Actually today/tomorrow are an austin area race. I couldn't make today and tomorrow is 80% chance of rain, so, yeah.

Starting to get the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Right up until race time I always want to quit. Once it gets going I feel fine. I'm not much of a worrier and I don't have any specific fears, but I get nervous about races. On my very first race I couldn't sleep the night before at all and I spent the whole week before it kind of a wreck.

I guess before I started I was afraid I might embarass myself totally by getting dropped. It turns out to be a dumb fear. The only people who will ever know you got dropped are guys who got dropped immediately before or after you.

The first race this year I got dropped in last 3 out of 4. I literally thought I was in last place, because looking behind there was noone for a half mile at least. But it turned out that *twenty one* people finished after me or didn't finish.

In other words, I entirely failed to notice 21 people giving up. Ain't no one gonna notice you either. And if they did, no one cares. So if the thing stopping you from trying is the fear of people seeing you fail, imo, go for it.