six day recap
After the first night of the Burnaby Velodrome SixDay race, I downloaded my heart-rate data from my Polar 720 and saw that I had spent some 35 minutes in Zone 5, roughly defined as the heart rate Zone between 178 and 195 beats per minute (my max). This "red zone" is where I spent the majority of my evening racing and as I came home at 12:30 AM in the morning to wash my skinsuit, I knew the rest of the week was going to be hard. Up at 8:00 AM, off to work, back to the track and by 6:00 PM back on the boards trying to coax the legs and lungs to cooperate... Repeat x 5.
A rare moment where I was in front of Christian Meier of Symmetrics.
photo by Peter Ross, more to be found on Flickr.
I managed to make 5/6 of the total nights, missing the finale due to an annual family Christmas party that took priority, and just as well. I was pretty cooked by Friday night and I could feel my immune system giving me the finger.
You certainly learn something about your conditioning when you try racing 5 nights at the track in late December. And all things considered, I'm pretty pleased with mine, building on the fitness gained during the fall's cyclocross season. Some random facts about the SixDay stick out:
Marsh and Christian are fast. These 20 year old Symmetrics kids (former Jr Points Race champ and JR Worlds Track racer, current National Espoir TT Champ and National Espoir Cyclocross Champ) are freaking monsters. Pity the fool that tries to race against them and work full-time. These kids are simply riding at another level (quantitative definition: riding at 55kmh consistently instead of 50kmh on the boards at Burnaby).
"Christ" and "Maash" in the Miss n Out to Scratch combo race.
The Albertans were pretty fast too. Ryan Mackenzie (former National Scratch Race champion) and Phil Abbott (recent Tour of Okinawa National Team rider) did well, given there's no indoor track where they live.... That Ryan guy has a wicked turn of speed when he hits the jets.
Never go to slow on the track. How many flipping times have I told this to new riders. First night, first event, what do I do? Go too slow on the track and slide down on my ass, putting yet another hole in a pair of shorts (my skinsuit, WTF!?!) and adding to my collection of cycling scars.
Never ride into your madison partner at speed. Another hard lesson learned when on Night #2, I cranked into Jeff Ain in the middle of a high-speed exchange. I hit the boards, slid down track head first, had a hissy fit in the infield, before getting back into the race with 35 laps remaining. Some more skin lost. This time on my left side. Nice to balance things out every now and again. Sigh.
Short Madison exchanges are the ticket. Jeff and I learned this the hard way. While Marsh and Christian exchanged like clockwork every 30 seconds, our 45 second average pulls meant that we didn't have a fresh guy in the mix for at least a lap. Typically when someone attacked. And we were dropped. We figured this out by the last night, when we finished a respectable 3rd, having gone on the attack early and exchanged frequently. I'm looking forward to doing more madisons as a result.
Crashing sucks. You know that. I didn't even need to write that. But haven't I had enough of this stinging-shower-polysporin-non-stick-gauze-bullshit this year? I've made up for all the non-crashing in the last 5 years in the last 5 months. Honestly.
New bar tap kicks ass. Jeff hooked me up with some new white bar tape on the Fuji for the last night and I swear it was worth 3kmh more speed. Thanks Jiffy.
Jeff and I trying to look casual before another painful Madison
Record for consecutive nights eating Mountain Shadow Burgers: 5. Yes, that's right, 5 nights in a row. You get hungry after riding track all night long.
Total distance raced in 5 days: roughly 350km on the track. Or approximately 1800 laps of the velodrome. How's that for getting dizzy?
Nightly time spent in Zone 5 of my HR: 35 min, 22 min, 30 min, 27 min, 10 min. That's 2 hrs and 4 minutes of max effort in 5 nights. Oof.
All in all, a great experience. Got some good high-end work, a great test of fitness, learned a ton, had some good laughs, and feel like I put in a good effort. Big congrats to Scott Laliberte, race director, for putting on the event and getting it to happen. Also big congrats to Mark, Keith, Barb, Alex, Sandy, Steve C, Steve F, Peter S, and all of the other volunteers that came out to make it a success. Good to see some new "C" level riders give it a go and a healthy B field racing on most nights as well.
Next race event: January 7-8 2006, BVC #2... registration goes online shortly for that one.
A rare moment where I was in front of Christian Meier of Symmetrics.
photo by Peter Ross, more to be found on Flickr.
I managed to make 5/6 of the total nights, missing the finale due to an annual family Christmas party that took priority, and just as well. I was pretty cooked by Friday night and I could feel my immune system giving me the finger.
You certainly learn something about your conditioning when you try racing 5 nights at the track in late December. And all things considered, I'm pretty pleased with mine, building on the fitness gained during the fall's cyclocross season. Some random facts about the SixDay stick out:
Marsh and Christian are fast. These 20 year old Symmetrics kids (former Jr Points Race champ and JR Worlds Track racer, current National Espoir TT Champ and National Espoir Cyclocross Champ) are freaking monsters. Pity the fool that tries to race against them and work full-time. These kids are simply riding at another level (quantitative definition: riding at 55kmh consistently instead of 50kmh on the boards at Burnaby).
"Christ" and "Maash" in the Miss n Out to Scratch combo race.
The Albertans were pretty fast too. Ryan Mackenzie (former National Scratch Race champion) and Phil Abbott (recent Tour of Okinawa National Team rider) did well, given there's no indoor track where they live.... That Ryan guy has a wicked turn of speed when he hits the jets.
Never go to slow on the track. How many flipping times have I told this to new riders. First night, first event, what do I do? Go too slow on the track and slide down on my ass, putting yet another hole in a pair of shorts (my skinsuit, WTF!?!) and adding to my collection of cycling scars.
Never ride into your madison partner at speed. Another hard lesson learned when on Night #2, I cranked into Jeff Ain in the middle of a high-speed exchange. I hit the boards, slid down track head first, had a hissy fit in the infield, before getting back into the race with 35 laps remaining. Some more skin lost. This time on my left side. Nice to balance things out every now and again. Sigh.
Short Madison exchanges are the ticket. Jeff and I learned this the hard way. While Marsh and Christian exchanged like clockwork every 30 seconds, our 45 second average pulls meant that we didn't have a fresh guy in the mix for at least a lap. Typically when someone attacked. And we were dropped. We figured this out by the last night, when we finished a respectable 3rd, having gone on the attack early and exchanged frequently. I'm looking forward to doing more madisons as a result.
Crashing sucks. You know that. I didn't even need to write that. But haven't I had enough of this stinging-shower-polysporin-non-stick-gauze-bullshit this year? I've made up for all the non-crashing in the last 5 years in the last 5 months. Honestly.
New bar tap kicks ass. Jeff hooked me up with some new white bar tape on the Fuji for the last night and I swear it was worth 3kmh more speed. Thanks Jiffy.
Jeff and I trying to look casual before another painful Madison
Record for consecutive nights eating Mountain Shadow Burgers: 5. Yes, that's right, 5 nights in a row. You get hungry after riding track all night long.
Total distance raced in 5 days: roughly 350km on the track. Or approximately 1800 laps of the velodrome. How's that for getting dizzy?
Nightly time spent in Zone 5 of my HR: 35 min, 22 min, 30 min, 27 min, 10 min. That's 2 hrs and 4 minutes of max effort in 5 nights. Oof.
All in all, a great experience. Got some good high-end work, a great test of fitness, learned a ton, had some good laughs, and feel like I put in a good effort. Big congrats to Scott Laliberte, race director, for putting on the event and getting it to happen. Also big congrats to Mark, Keith, Barb, Alex, Sandy, Steve C, Steve F, Peter S, and all of the other volunteers that came out to make it a success. Good to see some new "C" level riders give it a go and a healthy B field racing on most nights as well.
Next race event: January 7-8 2006, BVC #2... registration goes online shortly for that one.
4 Comments:
Regarding the Maier-Cooper wrecking crew, you didn't mention the most astonishing thing about their performance in that Miss-and-Out/Scratch combo race: they rode two abreast at the front of the pack for pretty much the entirety of the miss-and-out portion of the race. Then they repeatedly attacked in the scratch part, until Maier busted loose and rode away from the field, while Cooper simply rolled home for fourth via a sprint.
Their dominance was amazing. Effectively there was an AA class with the Symmetrics riders, and then there was the A group, consisting of everyone else.
By
Ryan, at 10:13 pm
gordo,
i think you could have done better with a faster bike.
you should by mine.
s
By
Anonymous, at 7:52 pm
buy mine. excuse my stupidity.
By
Anonymous, at 7:52 pm
After reading your painful crashes I am quite content that I am not bike racing anymore. I must have been high when I was considering a come back into the sport.
Dave
By
Anonymous, at 3:59 pm
Post a Comment
<< Home