Ahh! 200 Postings!

According to my Blogger Dashboard, this is my 200th post in this blog...wild!

Got out for two rides on the weekend, first up:

OBB Redux

Nothing crazy, rode out to Sidney, and back the quicker way, didn't want more than a couple hours in the legs before a race day.

Garmin file here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/27672219

WKO Data: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgdbj3nx_31c64nj8fm

Oh yeah, totally wild ride. ;)

A Caleb Pike Ride

Sorry sports fans...no race, although it would have been a pretty good field for me and i would have done no worse than 7th...haha..

As i was gearing up around 9am, the rains started.. Roads were very lightly dampened from earlier sprinkles, but this was wet.

Headed out along Richardson, and it was a pretty solid precipitation.

As i rounded the hospital, my MP3 player ran outta juice, but so did the clouds...caught Casey Rider on that back hill to the highway, and we rode out together, i gave him a nice draft on the way out. =)

Got out there, but the roads were pretty wet... My personal rule is no wet races unless i'm on knobs (ie, CX or MTB.) It's really just not worth it to me.

I did a lap to collect the profile data (see Lap #2 here).

At Caleb Pike, each lap is about 2.5km, and features around 48m of elevation..yum. This day, the B's had 20 laps, and were i to race: 25 laps for the A's. Blarg! It worked out to nearly 1hr40min for the B's, and closer to 2hrs for the A's.

I figured i'd watch for a bit, and then go and ride Finlayson Arm or the Malahat since i was out this way.

There was a small pack of A's (7 started) and quite a few B's (~25). Unfortunately only 3 women started.

The A's started, the B's followed a minute later. A bunch of us waited at the bottom of 'the corner', it's where crashes will occur (and surprisingly for the first race of the year, and wet roads, there were no crashes!)

The A's, predictably come rolling through.

Then, barely a minute behind, comes Peter and Bill (henceforth known as P&B. ;)

Okay, they have a little break. They round the corner. We keep looking back up the hill...waiting......waiting......wtf??

Another minute later the B group passes through! HA! Reading some comments after, the TS folks all filled up the front of the pack, causing a distraction, and NO ONE saw P&B make away from the pack....hilarious!!

So they peeled off the front, and it took a couple laps before anyone really clued in and realized what happened...and then they were in trouble. While the pack was close to 20 strong, about five of the stronger riders were Tripleshot...so they weren't going to do any work! I believe the work was left up to about six other guys..

While the success of the team tactic deserves applause, it all ends there when reality kicks in: P&B ended up working in front of the pack 1.5hrs. Bill would cover the 'flats', and Peter would set the pace up and over the hill. (It's funny because if you were watching at the top of the hill, it looked like Peter was doing all the work since he was ALWAYS in the front. ;)

About halfway through the race i was getting a bit cold, but the roads were dry, so i got permission to tag along the race for a bit, and jumped on the P&B train. A lap later they had caught two of the A's who were dropped..they ended up sitting in until they were caught/lapped by the other A's (sandbaggers!).

P&B were holding a solid pace tho, check my WKO file below, i marked out the time i was riding for an idea of the effort. Pretty solid!

Not the sort of thing i'd want to do for 1.5hrs tho. Bleh.

They held off the pack, who had a few surges, but couldn't really pull it together. With two laps to go, TS Josh attacked on the hill, and made away. I presume other TS riders also started to attack on the final lap, as it was totally strung out.

Peter took the win, with Bill cruising up the hill behind. I suspect Bill could have made away with the win if he wanted.

Surprisingly, Josh came in about 20 seconds off Peter - he really closed the gap in a couple laps! (Perhaps he should have made that move halfway through the race!)

The rest of the B's came through, one at a time, as they must have all busted up in a big way on the final lap. Successful application of the tactic, but i don't really know what the point was...haha..

As reward for their efforts, Peter, Bill and Josh will be joining me in the A races. =)

The A race was a bit more animated. They stuck together for a few laps, then there must have been an attack as Marcel Arden(Total Restoration), Matt Dilay(IRC) and Steve Bachop(IRC) were suddenly on their own.. Raphael(Russ Hays) surprisingly faded...i expected him to be up at the front!

The results don't reflect this, but i believe Marcel lapped all the A's. When he caught Matt and Steve, they stuck together again, and Matt put in a big effort to win the sprint...but again, i believe Marcel was a lap up (he didn't look like he even tried.)

For the women, Rita Wania, who rode for OA Vic last year (and TS this year) won her first race, and raced her first race! Nicely done, not so scary, eh? =)

Results posted here, and also a bunch of pics from Duane. ISN story here, any guesses who wrote it? ;)

Motored home, checked out the new West Shore Oak Bay Bikes shop on the way - looking great guys!

Here's the Garmin data, some neat stuff in there: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/27672169 - check out the 'splits' page, lap #2 was a loop of the course.

And here's the WKO+ data: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgdbj3nx_32fw47t7fq

Broke down some of the data, including ride out, and the portion i jumped in, and the ride home. Pretty solid 1hr effort there too. ;)

Total rest day today, no climbing. Gonna focus on the bike this week, with Operation Overkill. Planning to thrash myself with more O/U's Tue & Thu, and then go hard on Sat. Sunday - will see how i feel, maybe launch into another longer ride...been itching to do Shawnigan. There's a Newton Heights race, but i don't really ever want to bother doing that course again..haha..

Just for fun posting my Performance Management Chart from WKO:

This is one of the best and most useful features in WKO. It gives you an indication of how much training you've done, and can handle in the immediate future and/or how 'fresh' you are (besides perceived fatigue of course).

It's balanced out now, but a few weeks ago i was over-cooking it, and the pink and yellow were getting REALLY far apart. A good performance (either for training or racing purposes) depends on freshness, and that happens when the yellow gets up around zero (you can tell the week i backed-off, and the MTB ride on Tuesday wasn't too stressful), and the pink is very close...so according to this, i'm more fried than i've been in the last month (yellow WAY down.) It's only gonna get lower, as i go into a rest week. =)

At least, that's the theory!

And now, a poll:




Thanks for playing!

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