My son and I formed a 2-man team for the Six Hours Of MT Hood Race. Jimmie is 15, and rides a bit, but has recently picked up his interest and has been joining me at several events, both MTB and Road Racing. He loves the Road Bike! But he is really good at MTB, just needs to keep working on the fitness, and I guess nothing beats a good ol' Long Hard Ride to improve the fitness! Our plan for the 6hr relay was 1-lap Jimmie, 2-laps dad, and I was hoping to do around 4hrs and 3200 kilojoules. I figured at a robust pace, 3200kj would be about right for me, and that's a good days work. So we set out on our adventure!
The course was tough! Technical, but flowing and featured countless short climbs that really dug deep into the legs in short order. These short, hard bursts are high powered, with power outputs falling squarely in the Anaerobic Capacity (AC) power zone (zone 6). This effort level drains the legs quick, and can make for a long day if fitness is lacking and the duration is long. And once you exhaust that Anaerobic Capacity, short bursts of power become brutally tough! Well, that's the way this race played, and Jimmie had exhausted his AC after the first lap (45min)! He agreed to do a second lap, and he slogged it out, but dad was left with the task of accumulating more laps.
My goal was to get in a good ride, have fun and not go to deep. Been doing a lot of racing, so no need to bury myself. But with the "Test Of Endurance 50" the next Sunday, a good hard ride would be excellent prep, and 3200kj of work is good hard ride. I took my rim brake Power Tap bike to record the ride data, so it was EZ to watch the work accumulate, and when I hit 4hrs, I had 3400+kj.. that's enough for me! Shut her down, ate some good food, and looked forward to the file download later that eve.
The file was startling, I haven't recorded a ton of races, but generally the amount of time spent in Zone 6 (AC) seems to be limited (for me) to around 25min. On this ride I logged almost an hour of Zone 6 time! Zones 2,3,4,5 were all equal (at about 25min each), and Zone 1 was the largest at 1hr30min. So I was either going real hard or going real EZ, not much in between. This seems pretty obvious for an MTB race, but I certainly expected much more time in the Threshold/VO2Max zones (zones 4&5). Whatever the case, it seems that my capacity to continue to take on those short efforts was real good this day, and although power did fade, I was still hitting it hard after 3hrs at a very high (for me) Normalized average power.
How did the Powertap do? Well, there was a water/mud hole that completely submerged the hub on 7-laps. The course was rocky, had running water in places (from melting snow), and a fair amount of mud. It was the kinda course that tests your bike build, and the Powertap Bike performed excellent, with no issues whatsoever!
I guess in retrospect I should try and see what I can learn from this and maybe address it in training. But the reality is, I think I wouldn't change a thing. Train a big base, work on threshold and then let racing build the capacity for high powered efforts. That's what I've done this year, and I have felt great! Lots of racing, pretty much every weekend for the last 2 months. I've done several Mid week time trials and been to numerous Mid week group rides. I really did a solid base this year, and the dividends are paying off. I am recovering well, my performance is holding, and I continue to feel motivated for another race. I contribute this to a great base. Also, my volume of intensity during training was at a level that exceeds the volume of intensity I am accumulating during racing. So the body is well adapted to the weekly workload while racing and riding. Its a great time of year.. race, have fun, let the racing sharpen the fitness, and enjoy the ride!
