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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Busy Busy Busy!!!

I have not updated this blog in a bit, mostly because I've been too busy running, riding, working, eating, and sleeping!  However, I'm sacrificing some sleep to put some thoughts to paper.  This is quite an interesting time in my active lifestyle as things seem to be changing for the better.

First, my training over the past weeks...  I've stayed in the 50-62 mile range for running, and 86-106 miles for bike riding.  All in all I feel like I'm getting more bang for my buck with less chance of injury this way.  The bike seems to be playing a its part in getting me back into shape.  My speedwork times have tended to be about 5 seconds slow for 800 repeats.  This could be caused by the weather, by me doing the workouts at 5am instead of the afternoon, by me being out of shape, or a combination of the three.  My tempo pace is about 10 seconds per mile too slow while my long run is about 20.  I'm not concerned or forcing anything right now.  I'll keep plugging along and as my mileage increases and the weather cools, I'm hoping for a drop in my paces.

On the racing front, I do have a new and shiny PR at the 1 mile distance.  I managed a 4:49 a couple of weeks ago, a 7 second PR.  Now I can legitimately say I'm a sub-4:50 miler.  It was all done on rather even splits too.  I also ran a 5K that was about 1/3 of a mile too long, and all uphill at the end.  I believe it was in the high 16s, similar to what I ran back in May but don't know for sure.  I managed to finish second overall.

Now onto what is quickly becoming a massive conflict of interest.  I joined a cycling team, Adventures for the Cure.  I was told by a few strong cyclists that the best way to improve your cycling legs is to join a team, ride with the fast group, and get yourself destroyed until you can keep up.  Well, that is what I've been doing.  To all the runners out there, you might want to shut your eyes, because the rest of this post will be about cycling.  Since this is my blog, I'll write what I want!

The group ride in cycling is a substantially more interesting dynamic than group runs, largely because wind resistance has a much greater effect on cycling.  In the group ride, you can draft off other cyclists to go faster, bust your butt to stay with the pace line, and really push yourself much harder than riding solo.  Imagine riding in a line of cyclists, someone overtakes the leader and then "pulls" the group on by increasing the pace.  You have no choice but to stay on the wheel in front of you, because if you get dropped, it becomes you against the wind solo trying to catch back up!

I've done two group rides with AFC.  The first was with their slower B group, partially because I was late to the ride, and partially because I had no clue about group riding.  It is not as hard as it looks, but it can be intimidating riding so close to so many riders at once.

Today, I dared to try the A group.  I had just raced a lot of these guys in a 5K and handily beat all but one of them.  So of course my pride got the better of me...  The A group ride goes on a 30 mile course through Catonsville, starting across from a park-and-ride off of I-195.  There are two designated sprint sections, one crazy hill people are supposed to attack, and another hill just thrown in there for kicks.  Some of the other terrain can be quite challenging as well.

The first sprint was to come at around Mile 8-9.  This was also unfortunately the day this group was going to try and break their record on that sprint (my thoughts were: oh F$%*&).  We started off and kept the pace somewhere between 20-25mph, occasionally dipping under 20 as turns and traffic forced us.  It was rather exciting riding in a group of 15ish riders, flying down residential and park streets at the speed limit, not having to worry about cars behind us because we were the traffic.  I would later discover I was experiencing what is known as "hiding in the draft."  Essentially, the group was not pushing all that hard, and the pace felt good to me thanks to drafting, covering up my weakness at cycling.  My key mistake was staying at the back instead of riding more in the middle of the peloton (aka pack), which varied between a single file and double file pace line.

As we approached the area of the sprint, the pace started picking up early.  Apparently someone decided to go for an early pull.  It also killed him and he got dropped from the group big time.  We hit a decent uphill before the sprint, and I started to lose contact.  This happens on hills as the better climbers overtake the weaker ones, but I also think I was overreacting to how bad I felt and probably should have just gone for it.  I'm also not used to how quickly things happen on the bike.  I thought decisions in 5Ks had to be fast, but decisions on the bike are even more intense.  Lose concentration for a moment, and you've already been dropped!

Regardless, as the pace continued to quicken, I struggled more and more to stay in the slipstream until finally I got dropped about a block or two from the sprint street which is conveniently called Race street.  Apparently they sprinted so hard that a few of the regulars ended up blowing up also.  A random road biker who realized I was dropped actually started riding with me and we drafted a bit off each other to try and get me back to the group (without actually exchanging words) but it was no good.  I was riding at best 22mph and they were clearly over 30.

I regrouped with some other casualties and we got to the 2nd hill climb which you can cut out to catch back up with the group.  So I chose that option in order to try and finish the ride with the group.  After they climbed the hill, I rejoined them for a rather long, winding, technical decent.  I hit close to 40mph in a group...talk about an adrenaline rush.

As we got closer to the end, I rode further up in the group to try and stay put and it helped.  At the very end there were a couple more decent hills followed by a relatively flat 2-3 miles back to the park-and-ride.  Our group was rather small by then as a lot of the area cyclists broke off to ride home.  Though I fell behind a bit on the hills because once again, I didn't really push as hard as I could, I did manage to catch back up on the last flat.

We did one more sprint, and this time I was determined to stay with them.  After the signal to go, the pace immediately went from the low 20s to right around 30mph+.  There were 6 of us and I was riding in the back, cranking those damned pedals as fast, hard, and smoothly as I could.  I don't think I've ever gotten as much benefit from my clipless pedals as right there.  I was barely, just barely staying on the rear wheel of the cyclist in front of me and my legs were hurting bad.  But I managed to hold it together and stayed with them the rest of the short way back.

That successful sprint at the end really sparked my competitive spirit.  I am certainly over matched, though just being a little more confident in "riding harder" will help me in the future.  Rather than be discouraged, I'm already counting down the days until next Wednesday, and my next shot at staying with that group.

All the while, I'll be training for the Philly Marathon, which I've officially signed up for.

Don't just RUN MORE...CYCLE MORE too!

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