Back at the track! and my poor sack..

Yikes, I can say that I have still not recovered from my hour record (test, but hey still an hour record for me right?). 1 day of endurance did not exactly give me enough rest, though the legs were ok (tired but strong enough) my real issue is my right testical! People always say “the hour record was the hardest thing I have ever done” – yea I get it, it was hard. But, it goes beyond tired legs. My damn nut has a 2 inch wound on it, looks like I took a belt sander to my ball sack.

The full 1 hour effort was a great test. First it established the distance I can cover in 1 hour, thus providing a metric for my coach to base my training on going forward. It also showed that I was able to do a full hour without coming apart (or just plain sitting/giving up), this is a sort of mental proof of concept I think. The hour sounds all romantic when you talk about it, but putting your head down and flogging the hell out of yourself for an hour is a bit different, probably not for everyone (every cyclist even). Maybe the most important thing I learned in the 1 hour test though was about my equipment (no pun intended), I can say that I will be choosing a different skin suit for sure- not sure on the specifics, but my anatomy did not groove with the chamois/seams/fit of the one I was wearing, nuff said. I can add that my helmet was fine, never an issue. I had anticipated my Giro Selector getting a bit to hot and dripping seat in my eyes, but I never even noticed. Pretty much all my other gear was good, of course I have tested all of it in the past, just never for a full 60 minutes. Even 50 minutes would not have cut it, something happens in the last 10 minutes and EVERYTHING HURTS. My forearms had sharp pains in them (my arms have never hurt before), mid body/crotch was numb and hurt all at once (how could it hurt if it was numb?), my eyes even hurt for some reason.

Any way today was really my first day training back at the track and day one of specific hour record training. On the agenda was a warm-up followed by 3 x 30 minutes with 5 minutes recovery between, training equipment/gear with aero bar on the relief line at 42-46 kph (this ended up being 43-44 kph for me). Luckily I had one guy sitting on my wheel that gave me a 1 or 2 lap pull every 8 or so laps, gave me a chance to loosen up my junk!