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Race The Training Thread

Congrats. That sounds pretty promising, I think. If you worked a little on your endurance, you could compete at the pointy end!

Also, fitness loss after illness is real. (I'm still sick, coughing and all, ugh!) In my experience, I need 2x the time to get the fitness back that I lost.
 
Actually, I'm doubly disappointed since the front group had literal women and children in it...
OreoCookie said:
Congrats. That sounds pretty promising, I think. If you worked a little on your endurance, you could compete at the pointy end!

Also, fitness loss after illness is real. (I'm still sick, coughing and all, ugh!) In my experience, I need 2x the time to get the fitness back that I lost.
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It should have been trivially easy to surf the pack if I was at my normal level of fitness. It had children and a lady in it. Hehehe.
 
I didn't have as good of a weekend as @GrantT but on Saturday I managed to hang in there with the "peloton" until the finish. Even with the small field, it was a fairly brutal day. Around 60 starters with half DNF'ing. I snuck into the top 30 at 28th. 120km in just under 3 hours with 3.5w/kg average for that duration. This is the longest and first "Gold" (there's not a platinum is there?) level JPT event I've finished. My best result too!

Even snuck into what I think turned into the winning breakaway for about a quarter of a lap. It was a little accidental. Happened to be hovering near the front when some riders went, so I followed. On the descent I was sitting in, looked down and saw I was still riding at ~450w. Drafting! Yikes. Promptly pulled the plug and dropped out, thought my race might have been over. But I managed to stick with the bunch when they caught up. That was around lap 5 of 20.

Sunday's race actually ended up getting cancelled, which is kind of wild. I had already dropped by that point and I'm not too sure of the reasoning. I was in the car driving home and keeping tabs on the timing when I saw it stopped at 12 laps & the results show everyone DNF'd. So I guess in hindsight... dissapointed in my performance (maybe more mental than physical), but happy I decided to call it quits and start the 5 hour drive home early.
 
Yeah, got my first podium in E1 on Saturday. Made a solo break for it with 2 laps to go and held on for second. Guy who beat me is a speed skating phenom who also won on Sunday, but I still beat a couple of legends so I can dine off that for at least a year. Here's my break broadcast live in full 360 p below:


My race was only 2 hours. In terms of watts, my average power on the last two solo laps was 4 and 4.2 w/kg. Which wasn't to dissimilar to the watts I was doing in the pack, for whatever reason. Oh yeah, I remember now, I attacked on every downhill. That's what did it. Have to show these young guys how it's done :)
Was way more active from the start on Day 2, a bit too much, and got dropped from the front group on the last climb.

Congrats to @Tsuga as well, he was in a strong group and beat half the pro guys on Saturday.
 
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GrantT said:
Yeah, got my first podium in E1 on Saturday. Made a solo break for it with 2 laps to go and held on for second. Guy who beat me is a speed skating phenom who also won on Sunday, but I still beat a couple of legends so I can dine off that for at least a year. Here's my break broadcast live in full 360 p below:


My race was only 2 hours. In terms of watts, my average power on the last two solo laps was 4 and 4.2 w/kg. Which wasn't to dissimilar to the watts I was doing in the pack, for whatever reason. Oh yeah, I remember now, I attacked on every downhill. That's what did it. Have to show these young guys how it's done :)
Was way more active from the start on Day 2, a bit too much, and got dropped from the front group on the last climb.

Congrats to @Tsuga as well, he was in a strong group and beat half the pro guys on Saturday.
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Wowzers! Only a Shinkansen beats the Roppongi Express!

Andy
 
Tomorrow is the Tori no Umi Criterium just outside of Sendai. Pan flat, not too technical, but lots of wind from the ocean. Last year I attacked from the gun and sloughed off the back after I was reabsorbed. This year I will save energy and try to contend the sprint.

They just announced that you can sign up day of, so…….. Y’all come on, ya hear?

Just across the border in Fukushima, there’s a pump track with rental bikes, if you need any extra motivation.
 
Sounds like fun!
No need to make me more excited, if I can sign up at the venue, I’m in!
 
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I came within about 30 meters of winning from a solo breakaway with just over a lap to go. The pack was just a bit too fast at the end. There was a really bad crash early in the race. Guy highsided and was thrown into the air and onto his face. Apparently he regained consciousness some time before he was put in an ambulance on a stretcher and with a neck brace. Not good at all. Hope it’s nothing newsworthy in the end.

OreoCookie managed to stay upright and not get dropped, which is a pretty great result for someone who hasn’t been training!

I do regret not going harder on the final straight, since I kind of thought I had it at that point. But I was already at my max heartrate, so there’s only so much more I could have done.
 
I had a blast with @baribari today.

As he said, I wasn't really in shape, but I did get a taste of racing and liked it. Power was alright, but endurance wasn't up to snuff, at some point my power waned going out of corners and I was at the back of the peloton. So while @baribari fought for a chance to contest the win, I was mostly concerned with re-attaching myself to the peloton at times. I definitely need to learn to become more efficient, a lesson @baribari has already learnt. :)

We got quite lucky, one fellow athlete crashed quite badly, and people were able to evade the poor fellow who had just struck the pavement. (He was still unconscious a lap later, but at least one of the guys we met claimed he had regained consciousness. The race was well-organized, they had ambulances on standby and all. Kudos to the organizers.) If this had cascaded to a mass crash, I would have been caught up in the middle of it. Someone also bumped into me during a corner, but fortunately, he just hit my pedal with his front wheel. The guy apologized during and after the race, great sportsmanship. I have to say, I really liked the attitude of the field, they took the speech of the official to heart (“Remember y'all have jobs to go back to on Monday! Have fun!”) and they were competitive, but not suicidal. I really liked that.

What a fun day! I hope I'll find racing like that in Austria. And that by that time I'll have regained a bit of fitness. My son's illnesses really played a trick on me, I couldn't train for about 4 weeks.
 
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It had been a while since I went out for a century, Sunday's break in the rain seemed like a good day for it. 25 miles of new roads & a good bit of that was climbing. Lots of fun to do a little exploration although now I know why some of those roads don't get ridden often, probably a few years away from no longer being passable.

It wasn't my fastest ride, but accounting for some slow descending and the elevation it wasn't bad.
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My next JPT race might not be until October! Yikes. I'm working a couple of weekends & travelling back to the US for a wedding in September, all of which coincide with the next races.

So I'm in a bit of limbo when it comes to races and what I'm training for at the moment. My longest ride ever is only 287km, and I keep having this nagging thought about cracking 500km in one go. So that may be my next big goal. Watching the Tour has me a bit fired up for riding.
 
Although I don't have any races lined up, my wife signed up for the Shimano Bikers Festival "gravel" event this past weekend. Kind of a goofy event. I think there was maybe ~200m of gravel in the entire course. The rest was grass / singletrack. It was more reminiscient of a collegiate MTB STXC course with a little CX thrown in. There were only two women entered. My wife brough home the "31th" winner's jersey, and would have finished ~15th in the men's race out of 55 or so.

We stayed near Shirakaba Lake and on Saturday morning I rode 150km to watch the event. I climbed Tateshina, a really nice one! The summit is 2127m. Really nice roads for training in that whole area, dipping down to Yamanashi and back up into Nagano. I'd like to go back sometime. It made me miss tthe mountains I first started riding in back in the US.

On Sunday I had convinced my life I had another fun route planned and she joined me. It ended up being a 115km journey with 2880m (my wife's wahoo said 3,400, but I think it's exagerating) of climbing... only 300m or so less than my Saturday ride. Whoops. A bit more than either of us bargained for. We rode lots of the "Venus Line" and crossed the Utsukushigahara Highlands which was a fun experience. Even got some free misc. pickled goods and a pocket full of plum snacks from a kind road side shop owner.

Ended up with just under 20 hours last week, so legs are looking good. I've started taking some low hanging KOM fruit for fun. We also have a 7 day bike trip planned for August 11th - 18th, including a rest day. I'm expecting that to be a ~30 hour block of riding. Hopefully the weather remains nice!
 
Yeah, I noticed the temps, too: a former team mate of mine posted pictures of an epic ride and he included the temperature, almost 37 degrees. Nuts.
 
baribari said:
It's too hot and humid for riding... It was pretty bad even at 5:30 a.m. I think I'll swim and weight train this month instead.
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It's definitely gross out. As often as I can on rides I stop at fountains not just for drinking water but to rinse off my handlebars. I hate the slimey feeling of sweaty tape. I'm also not usually a salty person, but I've been returning home on many rides looking like a salt lick.

In Ishikawa we've been around 34-37 most days as a high, but it hasn't deterred me yet. Forecast for the next bit is highs in the upper 30s and we may hit our first 40 day of the year that I've seen.

But, overall, it's manageable. I'm only really bothered by the heat when I stop moving. I just increase the rest between my efforts, and overall do less of them. But long endurance rides are still fine as long as you keep drinking. I do wish I had a sunscreen sponsorship... we go through so much of it and have been testing all kinds and types.
 
Summer is tough out here. Some hacks for the serious cyclist are to get a lightweight ruck sack/pocket from Amazon that holds most of one of those 100-yen boxes of ice sold at any conbini, or a small Tupperware-sized block of ice frozen overnight in the freezer. Worn under a jersey, the ice cools the back directly, then as the ice melts, cooling water soaks your jersey and shorts just long enough for a hard interval sesh. Or, there is the traditional method of soaking fully clothed in the nearest shaded stream/river for about 10 minutes until your core temp drops or you discover your phone still in your jersey pocket. Scarfing down a "ガリガリくん" ice bar for instant cooling (cheap and available at all conbinis) is another great option.

This year I've been limiting the damage by getting out and back early wherever possible and only going hard on flat or rolling terrain. But then the mountains are a distance away from where I live and the temps a few degrees hotter compared to Ishikawa.
 
GrantT said:
Summer is tough out here. Some hacks for the serious cyclist are to get a lightweight ruck sack/pocket from Amazon that holds most of one of those 100-yen boxes of ice sold at any conbini, or a small Tupperware-sized block of ice frozen overnight in the freezer. Worn under a jersey, the ice cools the back directly, then as the ice melts, cooling water soaks your jersey and shorts just long enough for a hard interval sesh. Or, there is the traditional method of soaking fully clothed in the nearest shaded stream/river for about 10 minutes until your core temp drops or you discover your phone still in your jersey pocket. Scarfing down a "ガリガリくん" ice bar for instant cooling (cheap and available at all conbinis) is another great option.

This year I've been limiting the damage by getting out and back early wherever possible and only going hard on flat or rolling terrain. But then the mountains are a distance away from where I live and the temps a few degrees hotter compared to Ishikawa.
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At the Shimano Biker's Festival my wife and I along with another foreigner were actually talking about this. My wife & the other foreigner were the only ones to race with the oldschool Pantyhose & Ice down the back method. We were wondering why no one else was doing it. We have also frozen bento boxes & tupperware for post ride ice baths at home.

I bought one of Rapha's Pro Flyweight jerseys last year in anticipation of hot temps and it has proven to be a really nice investment. Thin to the point I feel a little scandalous hopping into the convenience store, but it wicks moisture so well.

I'm not a big fan of the heat, but I get cold easily. I have so many memories of being miserably cold on rides, unable to feel my hands, shivering on descents wearing a Patagonia puffy, racing MTB nationals in the snow, etc. By comparison I only have one stand out extreme heat memory, in an XCO race. So by comparison, I'd rather be hot. But, 35 degrees is the probably the hottest sustained temp I have had to deal with out on a 3 hour endurance ride. Maybe nice and cool by Tokyo's standards.
 
Tsuga said:
At the Shimano Biker's Festival my wife and I along with another foreigner were actually talking about this. My wife & the other foreigner were the only ones to race with the oldschool Pantyhose & Ice down the back method. We were wondering why no one else was doing it. We have also frozen bento boxes & tupperware for post ride ice baths at home.

I bought one of Rapha's Pro Flyweight jerseys last year in anticipation of hot temps and it has proven to be a really nice investment. Thin to the point I feel a little scandalous hopping into the convenience store, but it wicks moisture so well.

I'm not a big fan of the heat, but I get cold easily. I have so many memories of being miserably cold on rides, unable to feel my hands, shivering on descents wearing a Patagonia puffy, racing MTB nationals in the snow, etc. By comparison I only have one stand out extreme heat memory, in an XCO race. So by comparison, I'd rather be hot. But, 35 degrees is the probably the hottest sustained temp I have had to deal with out on a 3 hour endurance ride. Maybe nice and cool by Tokyo's standards.
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Must be the Japanese "gaman" culture of grinning and bearing every inconvenience until eventual work-death. By bringing ice you actually created a disturbance in the "wa" that will probably require a public apology. I hope you are ready for an extra-long bowing sesh.

I know people were using ice at the JBCF Ishikawa Road Race, and they usually have a small pool set up for people to dip into and cool down after the race. Might just depend on the seriousness of the event. I've avoided racing in the mid-summer sun for a few years now though so I have no idea.

Probably hotter in Tokyo, particularly with teh heat island effect and tens of thousands of airconditioning units and cars all pumping heat out into the air. My computer was showing 40 degrees plus on Sunday on the way home from a hill climb race. Worst day this year.
 
GrantT said:
Summer is tough out here. Some hacks for the serious cyclist are to get a lightweight ruck sack/pocket from Amazon that holds most of one of those 100-yen boxes of ice sold at any conbini, or a small Tupperware-sized block of ice frozen overnight in the freezer. Worn under a jersey, the ice cools the back directly, then as the ice melts, cooling water soaks your jersey and shorts just long enough for a hard interval sesh. Or, there is the traditional method of soaking fully clothed in the nearest shaded stream/river for about 10 minutes until your core temp drops or you discover your phone still in your jersey pocket. Scarfing down a "ガリガリくん" ice bar for instant cooling (cheap and available at all conbinis) is another great option.

This year I've been limiting the damage by getting out and back early wherever possible and only going hard on flat or rolling terrain. But then the mountains are a distance away from where I live and the temps a few degrees hotter compared to Ishikawa.
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I have started buying those frozen-solid drinks from the convivence store and stuffing them behind my neck until they're ready to drink. The heat would be unbearable without this sort of external cooling. It's criminal how much they charge for ice here.
 
Tsuga said:
It's definitely gross out. As often as I can on rides I stop at fountains not just for drinking water but to rinse off my handlebars. I hate the slimey feeling of sweaty tape. I'm also not usually a salty person, but I've been returning home on many rides looking like a salt lick.

In Ishikawa we've been around 34-37 most days as a high, but it hasn't deterred me yet. Forecast for the next bit is highs in the upper 30s and we may hit our first 40 day of the year that I've seen.

But, overall, it's manageable. I'm only really bothered by the heat when I stop moving. I just increase the rest between my efforts, and overall do less of them. But long endurance rides are still fine as long as you keep drinking. I do wish I had a sunscreen sponsorship... we go through so much of it and have been testing all kinds and types.
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Just another reason for me to lose weight... hahaha.
Sunscreen prices are ridiculous here. You're probably best off buying American-sized bottles of generic SPF30-50 (ideally mineral-based?) online.
Apparently paying extra for anything over SPF50 is a waste of money, and even the best sunscreen is only designed to last 90 minutes, anyway.
 
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