Athlete Blogs
March 27th, 2009Fired up for the weekend
This week has gone well - monday and tuesday were rest days, I was pretty tired from the weekend. Even though the races were short I saw some of my highest in-race power numbers ever, due to the aggressive nature of the racing. So 2 days were in order.Yesterday I felt awesome - did two indoor sessions that included VO2 work, threshold and even some sprints. 195 points all indoors. Not bad.
Rest day today - felt fine, spun on the TT bike a bit. It's hooked to my KK trainer so I can jump on whenever I want.
Tomorrow is the usual pre-race tune up ride. Few minutes at 100%, then a few shorter intervals above threshold to open things up. Usualy these rides feel awesome if recovery is on target.
Saturday and sunday are two fun courses in greenville, NC - the home of ECU. Technical crits. Both M35+ and p1/2 options, I'll do the M35+ races for sure, might double up saturday. It's a big team event for mock orange as a good friend is putting the race on. So we are all going to support the event. Kristy is going too and we'll make a nice weekend of it.
Riding the standard race setup now - which is 1080 rear, 808 front, both 2009 models. The combo works great, is stable in windy conditions and blistering fast in breaks. Stiff to sprint on too and no wheel flex. Not the lightest setup ever, but they are tubulars and the whole rig, with SRM, comes in at 16.1 lbs so I"m not exactly riding a pig.
My tactics will again be to go out super aggressive and cover everything, force a break, etc. The tactics are so much fun when you are in a break with 2 or 3 riders from the same team. Sometimes you get worked over, sometimes not. Like a painful game of chess. There are 3 or 4 really strong masters guys who are always in the mix and it's so much fun to go up against each other every weekend. Of course it tends to make the race single file and painful for the guys at the back.
This is also a big weekend in the mid-atlantic with the Jefferson Cup on Saturday. A classic start to the season (at least up north) and I'll have several really strong athletes I coach in the race. I'm sure they will do great - but the field is stacked! Can't wait to see how that one shakes out.
Next weekend I'll be up in the DC area for the Tyson's corner race - so for any of my peeps up in DC - look for me up there and come say hi! Looked to get together with some folks for dinner/drinks after the race.
That's about it for now.
-Coach Pete
