Full blown test, make or break time

Okay, 11 weeks out and time to ask Rog what the next step is. Simple answer, 1 hour test to see where I am at. So I warm-up on my rollers for 30m and get kit up in my full aero setup, time to see if I can put up an effort worthy of an hour record attempt.

JUST A WARNING, THIS POST MAY TAKE YOU AN HOUR TO READ!

This test will answer a lot of questions, and provided it is a basic success, will provide the basis for the training program. Specifically we were hoping the test would answer the following:

-How far can I ride a bike in an hour?

-Am I close enough that I can realistically improve enough in the next 10 weeks to break the record?

-when/if I break/crumble how bad is it and at what point is it?

-Am I going to give up/sit up and call it a day, just walk away from the entire idea?

-How does my gear work, does the helmet get to hot, seat to hard etc.

Now in advance of this Rog presented me with the cost for doing this (his time), for a brief second I contemplated doing this test and THEN paying him (thinking that if the test sucked bad enough I would abort the idea and save the money). But, I did not want to give myself an out, the financial commitment in advance would be one more piece of the commitment to making this happen, better not suck now or you are out months of training AND money!

So to break the record I need to ride a schedule of 19.7 seconds per lap, minus the 5 seconds I loose starting the 1st lap that puts me on course to ride about 45.675k (45 kilometers and 675 meters). That is a tick under 183 laps (366 left hand turns…). The question popped into my head though of what schedule should I run for the test? I did not envision that I would pop of the national record in my test exactly, I mean the furthest I had run at record pace up until this point was 30 minutes, and that HURT. A quick email to Rog and I had the answer, here was the test schedule:

60 laps @ 20 seconds per lap (give up a lap)
60 laps @ 19.7 seconds per lap (on schedule)
63 laps @ 19.4 seconds per lap (make up the lap)

This made me a bit nervous at first glance, but one thing I believe in is this: If you ask for advice then take it, if you are afraid of getting an answer you might not like, then don’t ask. The only part I was concerned about was picking it up to 19.4 for the last 20 minutes, but I figured this was in reality a real safe plan as it would let me most likely get to 40 minutes on our schedule, then I would just go full out for the final 20m and what ever happens is what it is.

Of course it is never this simple. We quickly realized we had a problem, our interval timer only worked in whole numbers, so either 20 or 19 seconds – a problem for sure. What we do is we set an interval timer to beep every XX seconds, you then ride your bike at a pace where your wheel hits the pursuit line every time the alarm beeps, this allows for very precise pacing. After years of using this in training it becomes an invaluable tool, perhaps even becoming to important to a sense. So this obvious issue would get added to my to-do list, we will need a timer for training and the record itself at some point.

So our plan was revised to this:

First 60 laps would be ridden on the beep (20 seconds per lap).
Next 60 laps I would “take a lap” on the beep, taking 1 lap of this middle 60 laps would make me average 19.7s per lap ( I would just ride on feel and use time to pace myself).
Last 63 laps I would “take 2 laps” on the beep.

So how did the test go? let me walk you through it:

First 20 minutes/60 laps: I could hardly hold the 20 second per lap pace and felt like I was going to barf, literally I though I was going to puke and have to sit up. Ah, first lesson learned and a very valuable one: I need to eat earlier and need to warm up more. My brain started going a bit crazy: “dude, you should just sit up now, this is not for you”, “if you are deign after 15 minutes how are you going to make 60, at a faster pace?”, “still not to late, you can just change your focus back to mass start events..”

Middle 20 minutes/61 laps: Amazingly at exactly 20 minutes in my stomach all of a sudden was good (probably got the body warmed up finally), I was still feeling tapped out though, but what the hell, we are hear to learn what my body can do, so I put my head down and started to roll out the pace in search of the lap I needed over the next 60 laps. Damn, the human body is amazing. As soon as I picked up the pace I started to feel better! The slight motivational pickup of “taking a lap” also helped, at the halfway point (30 minutes in) I was nailing my front wheel on the pursuit line on the back straight, exactly half way around. Another 10 minutes and I nailed the front side pursuit line, I had my lap at exactly 40 minutes. Yikes, was I actually going to do this? To be honest I had it in my brain that if I could just pull of 45k then I would be satisfied that I was in reach of being potentially able to gain the extra 650 meters over the next 10 weeks, so my brain was starting to get a bit more confident, what a difference 20 minutes can make!

Last 20 minutes: Okay body, pick this up and let see what we can do. I was feeling solid and under control at 19.7 pace, better than the 20s pace. I tried to roll it out and was hitting about 19.5 per lap for a bit, but it was just not sustainable. I picked up about a quarter lap on the beep and had to back it off and try and hold. At 10 minutes to go is started to really suffer, everything just started to hurt. Crotch was killing me, arms started getting a sharp pain I have never felt before. I went into sustain/just get this done mode, try and hang on.

In the end I completed 45.3 k in the hour, I was satisfied with this, only about 300 meters short. To me that seemed like a gap we could close in 10 weeks. Rog seemed satisfied, so it was a go.

So this is what I learned from this test:

-at 50 minutes my body was going to hurt (not just from the physical exertion, but the contact points of body to bike), but before that it was not-that-bad.
-I have to eat more that an hour in advance.
-I HAVE TO GET A BETTER WARMUP. I always laughed at the old guys that needed a 2 hour warm-up before a group ride that was 1 hour long, come on grand pa just get on with the bike ride. Damn, I must finally be old as I seem to need the huge warm-up of a senior citizen!
-my equipment all worked great, though I have been using all of it for a few years, my current setup has been getting refined for close to 5 years now, so no big surprise.
-my gear (gear inch) seemed pretty good, though I would like to experiment a bit going forward. I averaged 100 rpm, rode in a 51×14 (my standard pursuit gear).
-I was able to basically ride under control and hold close to record pace, this was a good sign.

This is a snap shot of my hour test, you can see the affects of a lame ass warm-up.  Notice how my HR takes almost 3o minutes to settle in to a steady plateau.

In reality I just completed my first Hour, I probably learned more about my own body in this single hour than I have learned in a workout in years, great stuff! Amazingly when I finished 60 minutes I was able to catch my breath pretty quick, the first 3 laps after I was done were completely focused on getting all pressure off my taint, I could do another entire post on that topic alone… After I pulled in I was not as wrecked as I would have though I would been, that is a good sign. Though about 10 minutes later reality set in, trying to lift my bike over the rail to exit the track was all of a sudden a huge effort, my legs & ass were locked up! another 30 minutes of changing clothes and packing up and I was in my car, jesus! I could hardly sit on my seat and drive, my butt was so damn sore it was crazy. I sure hope some regular training in the aero position will get rid of this problem, not looking forward to driving home from the track every night for the next 10 weeks holding my butt an inch over my seat. Just hitting the gas pedal was a challenge. After a night of restless sleep with a sweat attack or two I was feeling pretty happy, project hour record was a go!