Monday, May 14, 2007
Race report Part 2 – the Bike
So where was I? Oh yeah, out of the water J, my favorite part!
My blistering transition of just shy of 10 minutes will no doubt break absolutely no speed records but I am ok with that. On to the bike and out to the first climb – beach hill. Beach hill sucks! So I am grinding up beach when I realize that something is wrong. Beach is not an easy climb for me but my back is in knots about ½ way up and is making it very hard to generate any power at all. I climb down and do some quick stretching to try and loosen it up a bit. I am fairly close to the top and on a fairly steep section so I opt to just walk it up the last bit instead of trying to mount up on the steep section. I make it to the top and head off but my back is still tight. Not a good sign but I am optimistic that it will loosen up when I get warmed up. I push on through the small rollers in the park to some of the good down hills just out side of the park before turning right and heading out on Interlake Road. There is a number of decent rollers here (they were crazy climbs last year but I am a much better climber this year) and this is the first time that I was really exposed to the crazy head winds of the day. At this point I was cruising along at a decent pace considering the hills, the wind, and my back but I needed to stop for a few minutes to try to stretch out my back again. The pain in my back was severely limiting my ability to push a big gear. Anytime I tried to generate any real power, my back would just start killing me. By the time I finally reached Jolon and some relief from the wind, I was significantly behind my pace from the training weekend and in serious danger of missing the time cut. Luckily Jolon is the fastest part of the course. If my back would just cooperate, then this would be the place to make up some time. Unfortunately, my back just continued to get worse all along this stretch of road and I continued to lose time. My goal at this point was just to stay positive and just keep going. I knew that if I let the pain and the disappointment get to me then I wouldn’t be able to finish the ride and the last thing I wanted to do was quit.
By the time I finally reached mile 40 and Nasty Grade, I knew that I would miss the bike cut, but that was the least of my problems. My main concern at that point was just getting to the top of Nasty. I had hoped to be able to just grind my way up it but my back was just screaming when I got about 65% up and I was forced to walk the last bit of the hill to the right turn at the first “top of Nasty”. I then was able to get on and ride up and over the other 2 “tops” of the hill, but my back was through at this point. I couldn’t muster anything over 8 mph for any length of time unless I was going down hill and the uphill climbs were just a nightmare of slow and steady pain. It took more almost 90 minutes to go the last 12 miles and when I finally got back to transition, I could barely get off the bike. I was almost glad at this point to have missed the run as there was no way in hell that I could have even hoped to run any portion of the course right then.
Well, that was my Wildflower 07. Perhaps a better race then my Wildflower 06 but that doesn’t mean that much to me at this point. I still don’t really know what caused my back to be such a huge factor in my race but I have dramatically increased my work on improving flexibility in my lower back and glutes in hopes that my back will not factor into IMC. There is no way I could have ridden with that pain for 112 miles.
My blistering transition of just shy of 10 minutes will no doubt break absolutely no speed records but I am ok with that. On to the bike and out to the first climb – beach hill. Beach hill sucks! So I am grinding up beach when I realize that something is wrong. Beach is not an easy climb for me but my back is in knots about ½ way up and is making it very hard to generate any power at all. I climb down and do some quick stretching to try and loosen it up a bit. I am fairly close to the top and on a fairly steep section so I opt to just walk it up the last bit instead of trying to mount up on the steep section. I make it to the top and head off but my back is still tight. Not a good sign but I am optimistic that it will loosen up when I get warmed up. I push on through the small rollers in the park to some of the good down hills just out side of the park before turning right and heading out on Interlake Road. There is a number of decent rollers here (they were crazy climbs last year but I am a much better climber this year) and this is the first time that I was really exposed to the crazy head winds of the day. At this point I was cruising along at a decent pace considering the hills, the wind, and my back but I needed to stop for a few minutes to try to stretch out my back again. The pain in my back was severely limiting my ability to push a big gear. Anytime I tried to generate any real power, my back would just start killing me. By the time I finally reached Jolon and some relief from the wind, I was significantly behind my pace from the training weekend and in serious danger of missing the time cut. Luckily Jolon is the fastest part of the course. If my back would just cooperate, then this would be the place to make up some time. Unfortunately, my back just continued to get worse all along this stretch of road and I continued to lose time. My goal at this point was just to stay positive and just keep going. I knew that if I let the pain and the disappointment get to me then I wouldn’t be able to finish the ride and the last thing I wanted to do was quit.
By the time I finally reached mile 40 and Nasty Grade, I knew that I would miss the bike cut, but that was the least of my problems. My main concern at that point was just getting to the top of Nasty. I had hoped to be able to just grind my way up it but my back was just screaming when I got about 65% up and I was forced to walk the last bit of the hill to the right turn at the first “top of Nasty”. I then was able to get on and ride up and over the other 2 “tops” of the hill, but my back was through at this point. I couldn’t muster anything over 8 mph for any length of time unless I was going down hill and the uphill climbs were just a nightmare of slow and steady pain. It took more almost 90 minutes to go the last 12 miles and when I finally got back to transition, I could barely get off the bike. I was almost glad at this point to have missed the run as there was no way in hell that I could have even hoped to run any portion of the course right then.
Well, that was my Wildflower 07. Perhaps a better race then my Wildflower 06 but that doesn’t mean that much to me at this point. I still don’t really know what caused my back to be such a huge factor in my race but I have dramatically increased my work on improving flexibility in my lower back and glutes in hopes that my back will not factor into IMC. There is no way I could have ridden with that pain for 112 miles.
