With the 2014 season over, it's a good time for a look back at the season:
The Overall Results
In the end, out of 12 races, I had:
- 2 wins
- 3 second places
- 2 third places
My goal for the year was to finish Top 2 in the NJ Time Trial Cup. I intentionally made it "top 2" because there was a major variable I could not control: the fitness of other riders. I knew there was always the possibility that someone could beat me. I just didn't expect it to be someone I already knew.
The Competition:
Probably the greatest thing about this season was my competition with Anthony. He and his fiance, Cary, were at every race. We saw them more than pretty much anyone else we know, even going out to brunch and dinner with them on a couple of the trips.
It's hard to say we were "in competition" when Anthony beat me in 10 out of 12 races. The only times I beat him were days that I won, but I'd say the year was really defined by us racing against each other.
At our last race, it hit me that if either one of us had not been there, it would have been a really boring year for the other. We had a significant lead over the other riders in the series: Anthony finished 10 points ahead of me and I finished 22 points ahead of the next rider. I spent every week worrying about how to beat him. He spent every week worrying that I might.
This is the kind of duel that really makes the year more fun.
The Highlight:
This year I won the Long Beach Island time trial. It was the highlight of the year for me because of my experience there last year, summed up nicely in a previous post:
http://fat2fast.blogspot.com/2013/04/two-in-one.html
" I finished in 5th place, about 30 seconds behind the next rider and a full 2 minutes behind the winner. I'm thrilled with another strong result... and starting to think about what it will take to climb to the top next year."Apparently I managed to climb to the top for that event! It was a great result, doing 10 miles at 26.3 mph and 283 watts.
The Logistics:
One of the hardest things this year was the travel and planning. The closest race was a 50-minute drive. Almost every trip included major traffic in at least one direction. Most of the drives were in the 2 to 2 1/2 hour range. The worst was the 5 1/2 hour drive back from Silvermine.
The opening sequence of 7 races in 8 weeks was really rough (it would have been 8 in a row but one was canceled... and there was great rejoicing. Yay!). It felt like we never had a weekend to ourselves, which is really draining.
With the races so far away, we got hotels for most of them. It was nice to get away a little and not to worry about racing after driving for 2 hours, but it also made for an expensive summer.
The Training:
For the 2012-2013 season, I structured my training differently than I ever had before. It worked spectacularly. Like any tinkerer, I tried something different from that for the 2013-2014 season and it did not work nearly as well. I hit the start of racing season about 20 watts lower than I was at the same time last year. It was not a good start and I was playing catch-up all year.
I was really proud of the fact that I planned out the 2012-2013 season myself and I'd really wanted to do the same this year, but I just didn't know how to do 8 straight weeks of racing, when I needed to be well rested for each race but also needed to keep the fitness I had. Since I started the season behind in my training, I needed outside help even more.
I started working with Hunter Allen, cycling coach and author of multiple books on training for cycling using power data. He helped me enormously, analyzing my past training and helping me plan how to keep my fitness through that opening series and how to build fitness throughout the summer. I made huge gains under his guidance. I will definitely be working with him in the future.
The Training 2:
One of my great successes this year (under Hunter's guidance) was my increase in fitness during the month break between end of the beginning group of races and the Blueberry race. I trained myself completely into the ground until 8 days before the race, then spent the last days resting and sharpening my fitness. I did amazingly well in that race, exceeding all my expectations, matching my best 60-minute power from last year.
My Weight
I never really got my weight as low as I wanted, so I was a bit annoyed by that.
On the plus side, my weight stayed in a tight band this year, ranging from 168 pounds to 175 pounds. While I would have liked to have been lighter, I was really happy to be so consistent.
I also made a not-so-great discovery this week: my body fat percentage. Right now I'm 170 pounds at 17%. I found in my old training records that 10 years ago I was at also 170 pounds but at 12%. That basically means that in the last 10 years, I've lost 10 pounds of muscle and replaced it with 10 pounds of fat. That definitely gives me something to work on this winter.
The Weather:
The first race was very cold and raining. It was a miserable start. The second race was freezing cold to the point I could not feel my hands and feet by the finish.
The rest of them were great. None of them were burning hot like last year and there were not monster winds at any of them.
My Equipment:
I almost can't believe I'm typing these words: I used the same equipment all year long. The same bike, same wheels, same bike computer, same helmet, same skinsuit, same shoes, same shoe covers, even the same gear bag. I spent the 2013 season changing things constantly and I think I finally got it right.
None of my gear was bugging me this year and nothing new stood out to me as a worthwhile replacement for what I'm already using.
Looking ahead at 2015:
I'm already thinking about next year.
As I already mentioned, I've got some body composition issues to work on. It takes a lot of work to gain muscle and it grows slowly, requiring highly intense weight lifting and enough excess calories to fuel growth but not so many that I gain fat. That's one goal I'll be aiming for before the end of the calendar year... which means getting back into the gym for the first time in a few years.
I know that I don't want to do the TT Cup as a goal again. The requirement to be both fast and rested for most of the summer just didn't work for me. By the end, I just didn't care. I do better with a few specific targets than I do with one large, prolonged one.
I don't know how many events I'll be doing. I did 11 last year and it didn't feel too bad. I did 12 this year and I was ready for the end after about 10. I think the difference is that last year I picked the events myself and I always had the option to say "I'm not in the mood this week." Compare that to this year when I had to do the ones prescribed in the series (letting someone else's decisions impact my goals). The events were also more spaced out last year, so I got a break once in a while.
I also think the singular goal of "win" was a little too much. It depended largely on who else was there and what their fitness was like. Even if I had been fitter than last year, there was no guarantee that it would lead to a win.
Instead I'll be looking for two to three races in which I want to hit a certain goal. I think last year's goal of "do a 40K race in under an hour" worked really well for me because it gave me a very specific goal which was dependent on my own performance, not on other people's. It also gave me something that I could measure progress towards. Maybe the next goal will be to get an even lower time or a higher power. My best was 57:45 at 260 watts, so maybe I could look to improve upon those.
Of course, now that I've gotten the taste of winning, I'll certainly be looking for something to win. I've always wanted to win a PA State Championship but the Lake Nockamixon course used this year would never work for me. With so many climbs, it favors a much smaller rider than I could ever be. I can only hope that next year will be a different course that suits me better.... or I'll have to find some other race to aim to win.
In Closing:
Overall, I am not satisfied with the season. I had some great results and, if not for last year, it would have been my best year ever. Still, it was a step down from the year before and that's not something I'm ready to accept just yet (maybe when I'm older).
One last assessment for the year:
What I did right:
Got some great results
Achieved the single major goal for the year
Got outside help when I needed it
Made changes in my training when I needed to
Didn't panic when things were not going as well as I wanted
What could have been better:
My off-season training did not yield the fitness I needed to improve upon 2013
My weight and body composition
My motivation fell apart at the end, probably due to my performance being lower and not getting the results I wanted. Yes, it got to me.
My confidence and bike handling skills in high-speed descents
