The 24 Hours in The Old Pueblo Thread

“For what?” It’s called finishing what you started.

That’s not the point of “C” races. If you are committing to finish all your “C” races come what may, maybe they aren’t “C” races?

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I have C races and all mine will be finished. The intensity may change but I will finish.

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That doesn’t necessarily make it the wise decision…

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As Nate said, perhaps redefining the goal of the race is the better approach.

I have had many races where the whole point was to gain experience. Learn about the race in all aspects. If they were very long ones like the 24hr, then when the lessons are learned, stopping would be a viable option.

I think one thing the TR team may have learned is to correctly identify the goals of a race. Individually and as a team.

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Finishing a race at a lower intensity, and finishing a 24 hour race are 2 completely different things though…

The intensity required to finish this race once brandon went out really ratcheted up, and it wasn’t worth it to them to finish. To finish it would have pushed it outside their reasons for doing it in the first place.

Ok, well at least they got a podcast out of it. I am sure some future 24 HOP riders will benefit.

If I am on a team for an event then I would want the team to finish the event. Even if that means riding solo the rest of the way I would want to finish it. I get all of the injury and sickness arguments but those were there when the event started and there wasn’t any conversation about stopping early.

All the messages on the bottom of the workouts about physical and mental toughness and stamina, I get it, the messenging is to promote toughness and improving training attitude. There is a message in quitting a race too. If Team Bob’s Tire quits a bike race no one cares. When a company that sells bike training advice and services quits a bike race, that’s quite a bit different.

Love the podcast and the guys and honestly I couldn’t care less about where they finished, but absolutely am surprised that they made a voluntary choice to quit.

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they go over their lack of covering ‘what happens if someone gets injured’, and how they’ll plan for that next time, but not covering a potential outcome isn’t a free pass to say ‘welp I guess we just keep going and see what happens!’

Why would you solo through 6 hours of riding, for a C race, that could potentially derail your A race? Even if you make it through you have to recover for so long, and lose so much fitness and progress.
That just doesn’t make sense to me. Knowing when to quit is a valuable skill, and being able to speak up in a team environment like this isn’t easy, so there’s a lot to be learned.

As for the message their sending, in my opinion they’re living their message, they looked at what they had to do when brandon went out, and decided it wasn’t in line with their long term goals, and called it quits.

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I so agree, I am glad I am not the only one that feels this way.

I think this is the mentality that derails good training. Aside from an event, even in a workout, circumstances may change were your are doing more harm than good. Finishing just to say you finished is not the absolute best answer. Sure, you don’t want to get in the habit of quitting, but there are times when you must look what your long term fitness goals are. How important is this event or workout overall in my season?

If you slept poorly for two nights in a row, were on your feet all day and weren’t able to fuel right due to work obligations, but you had a hard over/under scheduled, should you push through it? If you manage to even start the workout but are struggling early on, barely hitting power numbers and taking a bunch of backpedals, does is make sense to crush yourself just to say you finished? How will that affect your next workout or the rest of your week? Can’t be so short sighted.

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Yeah, there is a time to quit, maybe if you continue and you will be injured for the rest of the season then that would be a valid reason to quit.

You all need to give up this argument that their entire season of training would be ruined if they kept going, it’s a BS argument.

@Nate_Pearson clearly didn’t want to quit, as evidenced by his comments on the podcast. Brandon - the guy who took the most risk, participating as an unskilled mountain biker - even banged out another lap in the morning after his crash! I’m sure that Pete would have kept riding too. To me, Jonathan made a bad decision and forced his hand to make the team quit because he was cold and tired… Nate said multiple times on the podcast that he was comfortable.

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“It’s difficult for me and also for my team. We prepared for this Tour, all season we were focused on the Tour. Sometimes this happens, and this time, I think it’s the best decision for me to recover and to recover well.”

Team sports director Charly Wegelius said that it had been Uran’s decision to withdraw from the race and that it was important for him to recover from his injuries to prepare for later in the season.

“The most important thing is the rider’s health,” Wegelius said. “Rigo hasn’t recovered from his crash on the cobbled stage, and his position on the bike is compromised and could create further issues down the line.

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This isn’t even remotely comparable. Uran would have had to race for 9 DAYS more, not 9 hours, and he was already injured.

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Probably not his C race, though.

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People abandon races all the time. Sometimes it’s the right decision. Sometimes it’s the wrong one.

I’m appreciative that the TR crew continue to line up and talk about their experiences, even if they disagreed about what the right call was. Even if they later decide it was a “mistake”, there are always learning experiences to be had.

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Not for us to say what they should do. It was cool to listen to.

My take aways are these:

  1. Warm races are more fun
  2. 12 hour races sound more fun

I’ve done 12 hour races twice solo and you get all the experience without the sleep deprivation and challenges of riding at night.

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Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever.

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  • There are races I’ve dropped out of that I’d easily make the same decision again. Races that weren’t fun and weren’t important.
  • There are races that I’ve finished that I wish I didn’t.
  • There are races that I wanted to quit, almost did, and then finished and was really happy I didn’t quit.

If you are always operating on a rigid set of rules, you probably aren’t doing it right.

I’ll also add that I have some professional athlete friends that have permanently damaged their ability to compete by always pushing through, which is difficult to watch. Pain isn’t always temporary.

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