Treadfest and Preparation

It’s time to stray from the usual blog subjects and talk about bikes.

Oh wait, never mind.

But seriously, I feel like this blog needs a bit of sprucing up, so I’m going to attempt to actually put useful information on the internet and talk about my pre-ride and warms up. What they should be and what they are.

First a little background. In all honesty, this is the first year I’ve put real effort into my preparation for races. My racing strategy has evolved from “put in enough effort to have fun, but not too much so that when you have a bad day you can say I wasn’t trying that hard” to “no any stone left unturned”. There are those Brian Matter’s and such who know the courses so well, are just that strong, etc. But I am not one of those. I’ve learned to work hard. Unfortunately I’ve yet to see the fruit of my labor, but that’s another story.

So needless to say it’s been a difficult process dialing in the preparation and figuring out how much effort to put into the pre-ride. You don’t want to make yourself tired for the next day. But the hope is that I have enough base in my legs that I can put in an hour or 2 and not feel it the next day. But the goal is at its core to gain a level of comfort with the course. You want to eliminate those first two laps of making mental notes about that corner there, or that rock here, how hard attack the hill, blah blah blah. You want to walk away from the pre-ride with the that confidence that you could race the next day and make no mistakes. You also want to open the legs up. I find that 1 or 2 laps ‘easy’ followed by 1 or 2 laps hard is perfect, depending on lap length and difficulty.

And I think I’ve a good job here. Take Treadfest for instance. I did 3 laps. My lap times were as follows: 34:57, 34:32, and 30:21. I did 2 laps easy and one almost at race pace. To compare my race laps were about 29 minute averages. That final lap acts are a good set of intensity to open the legs, and sometimes I’ll do some leg drills before that lap to wake the legs up. But again, I think my pre-rides have been good.

So you show up on race day, the course is buzzing around in your head and you feel good. You got a good night’s sleep (probably not) ate well (beer counts right?) and cleaned the bike up (haha, yea right). Regardless of those things, the warm up is something that I increasingly find to be important. The start of a MTB race is very important. Obviously the first few minutes are important, but really the whole first lap could be considered the start if you ask me. You’ve got be your rhythm right away. There is no time to find your legs or get focused. It has to be there at the start. I find that the real key to whatever warm up you follow is to get the heart rate up a few times. Sprints and 1-2 minute efforts are good for me. Get the heart rate up and let it come back down a little then hit it again. Tell your body to get ready. I’ve struggled to really be consistent with these.

Beyond that there are a million other little things you can do to make sure you’re ready when Don yells go. But I find the most significant one to be food. Eat the ride things at the right time and you will feel focused and lean. Still figuring this out, but for me, I stop eating real food 3 hours before the race, then start reaching for clif bars and shot blocks to fill the gaps before the race.

So in the end hopefully you learned something here, I know I did. In retrospect, I think I avoided writing about the actual race this weekend because I was disappointed. My usual impatient nature is starting to be annoyed with my racing as of late. I told tim on the way down that I only have one more ok performance before I start getting angry. Well the opening salvo went off when my chain slipped a few times and I threw my bike down. But really I need to thank those who encouraged me to get back on. Fellow racers Bill Street and Mike both told me to get back on the bike after that. Then the WORS super fans were going nuts like always at the top of the start climb, and I hate to disappoint them.  On top of all that, my mom was there making the most noise of all. At the end of the day, that race belonged to these people, because without them it would have been a DNF. So thanks.