Stage 5
Little late on this one - after the race was pretty busy packing up, traveling home, and being really, really tired (my whoop recovery score is 8% today…)
Sunset is a hard loop. You pre-ride it once, you think “eh, it is no problem”. On the 9th lap in the race, however, it starts to really hurt. The descent is technical, strings out the whole field, and doesn’t provide much rest. The hardest part of the climb is at the very beginning, and at the very top is a long flat-ish section that makes it incredibly hard to chase back on if you get gapped.
Incidentally, this is what happened to me on lap 8 - was too far back after taking a feed, riders blew up in front of me, I spent the whole climb/flat section chasing back onto the group, and subsequently blew up on the next climb. Rolled it in, slightly disappointed as I felt I should have the fitness to make it over with the main group. I think there were around 35 riders in the field when I got dropped.
Honestly, looking at my power file my numbers aren’t that impressive compared to what I’ve been doing in TR workouts (since this is basically 12x10’ efforts). But there’s a couple of takeaways I think I’ve come up with
- Race specific fitness is real. This being essentially my first race of the year, the surges in the efforts up the climbs really caught up to me. And spending 5’ at 105% of threshold really took everything that was left in my legs.
- Racing on the 5th day in a row is hard.
- Mechanicals, crashes, and breakaways do catch up with you in a stage race. I like to think I’m invincible to fatigue, but it definitely caught up with me Sunday.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/2221323149
The team capped off a great week with one of our riders (Ben) getting in 5th place on this stage, and Steve solidifying his 9th overall. A great way to start the season, and looking forward to the next big one of the year, Joe Martin Stage Race in a couple weeks!