Ride Like A Roadie

All spring, Saturday mornings meant pretty much one thing... long brick. I have a group that I ride with... starts near my house... a bunch of strong triathletes riding on a relatively flat windy road... lots of aero bar time... steady state stuff. It's a fast ride, but not like 100% all out sprinting fast, but it's never easy. Done riding? Go for your run.

Those rides served me very well for the triathlon racing I did all spring. But now, looking at my calendar, my triathlon races are pretty much over for 2010. Well, I'll likely do the Rev3 at Cedar Point in Sept, but that's pretty much it.

Looking at my calendar, it's clear that it's time for me to switch gears a bit. Literally. I'm going to be doing some bike racing on the road in the next few months! Fun stuff. But if you've ever done bike racing, you know that most races are decided by who can get up the hills the fastest. BIke racing is not about steady state riding and conserving energy for the run. It's about sprinting and attacking and climbing as hard as you can and trying to crack your competitors. Yeah, a little different training is going to be required this summer...

With that in mind, I put my road bike in my car this morning and drove into town to join another local cycling team for their Saturday ride. I knew some of the guys there but it has been probably 3-4 years since I've ridden with them, so there were lots of new faces too. None of them were triathletes. All roadies.

Roadies ride differently than triathletes do. It's all about slow/very fast rather than steady consistent speeds. It's really a completely different type of training. And these guys actively seek out hills. Big ones. Steep ones. And they ride up them as hard as they can. Perfect. Exactly what I wanted today. Except for the wind and the rain. It was ugly out today. But of course I stuck with my belief that you train in whatever conditions are presented to you... because when we race... well you know how that goes. Anyway...

Since my goal was to just crush myself today, I rode the first hill quite hard. It was the longest one of the day was about a 15 minute effort. I hung with a little group of 4... then we were a little group of 3... then I cracked and watched the other 2 ride away. I knew we would regroup at the top so all was ok. Good solid effort that left me physically shaking at the top. Down the other side of the mountain, through a tunnel that was literally a wind tunnel... flying down, unable to see because I was being pelted by the driving rain and my glasses were all fogged up... my least favorite part of the day by far but we made it to the bottom safely and then continued the hammerfest. I swear, up every little incline these guys would just HAMMER and I would grit my teeth and do everything I could to hang on. I could not hang with the fastest guys but I found a few in the chase group that were more my level so I hung in there with them and worked my tail off. So it went. For like 75 miles. I did what I could to recover recover recover between climbing efforts... took myself to my 'crampy place' and almost succumbed to full on leg cramps but managed to back off the effort in time to save myself from literally being forced to just lay down on the side of the road.

This was clearly the hardest ride I have done all year. Maybe in 2 years. It's just so different than how we normally train, but in a good fun way! I like being tactical. I like pushing it all out and testing myself truly to the limit. I don't think I could train like that every weekend or I'd be completely burnt out, but every once in a while, it's fun to go ride like a roadie. Unfortunately, my legs set themselves on fire every time I climb the stairs... and just watching the Tour prologue this afternoon made them burn...