Hell of the South

11th week in: 127 hours and 965 miles of training. This week turned out pretty awesome with the Hell of the South bike race. Ended up raining all day Sunday, so training got cut short 5 hours (no long bike and run). That was cool though since the race effort Saturday was on the 13th day in a row of doing two-a-day workouts (with a couple 3-a-days in there too).

Swim: Back in the pool. 4 workouts, one of which was long course, and I hit a mile (which unfortunately was nothing last year). Swimming still sucks… and so do I… so nothing else new to report here.

Bike: Got two good workouts and a race in this week. Tuesday was about a 22 miler at 20+mph on the trace. Thank god for Jeff and Matthew to drag me in the last few miles as I was struggling. Wednesday was hill repeats in Cool Springs (not a great idea a few days out from a race). I saw more of Lynnwood and Hollytree Gap than I have over the past 6 years of living here. Saturday marked the first bike race I’d ever done. Sure I’d raced my bike in triathlons and done some group century rides, but never a pure bike race. WOW was this fun.

Hell of the South: This race was put on by Swiftwick, SVMIC, and several other sponsors and volunteers. Jeff, Matt, and I went to race for Trace Bikes. It turned out to be an incredible event for its first year. The course was meant to be rough and mimic the old world style European type of racing; it even had about a mile stretch of dirt road. The course felt fast. I spent about the first 8 miles in the front half of the group. Jeff and Matthew held tight the very front and did a lot of work. About 8 miles in, Rachel pulled past me and said, “let’s go”. We sprinted to the front then she pulled off behind me and we kept going up the road. Unfortunately, this was a false flat, but the good thing was, it broke the pack in two. About 20 riders went with us and 30+ were in the second group. Rachel, and especially I, paid dearly for this move. It took 5 miles to bring my HR back down in the 160s. We sat on the back of the lead group and recovered as the course entered a moderate rolling section. At around 20 miles in, the pace picked up a little and Rachel and I moved forward in the group (keep in mind, Jeff was still on the front). We road along there making sure nobody really got away from us, but weren’t in any rush to move to the very front. Nobody seemed to worried with a get away (surprisingly). Anyway, we came up to the last turn, Jeff had sprinted off the front and Rachel and I took off after him. We had intensions on giving him a draft for recovery and keeping that break; however, Jeff had done way to much work on the front and was about done for the day… so Rachel and I moved ahead only to find out it was NOT the last turn… there was about a mile left. We were then swallowed up by the lead pack (but stayed with them). The pace continued to grow as we hit the 1k to go mark and then again at the 200M. Next thing I knew, Matt crossed the line in third and the rest of us crossed with the lead group. The second group crossed a few minutes behind us. It was SOOO much fun to race like that. The distance ended up being 25.65 miles, total ascent was 1,212 per my Garmin, my average HR was 170 (max hit 184), average speed was 22.1mph (max hit 39.1mph). I would like to have helped Jeff and Matt more, but I'm happy with how I performed considering I'd race a 1:29 half marathon the weekend before.

Lift: This will probably be the last time I mention lifting as I have really scaled back. I'm currently only going one day a week and a second day here and there when rain causes me to miss key outside workouts. I will say that the last 3 months has built a great foundation. It has put about 4-5 pounds on me though that I hope to lose as my workouts get longer. The goal is to keep the power and lose the bulk.

Race Schedule is in full swing now. Second race weekend in a row. Next weekend off for training (hopefully ride my bike to my mom’s house in KY) and then 5 race weekends in a row to follow. It’s exciting!