Good Friday and training camp

And so it begins another race season with the Hamilton Cycling Club Good Friday Road race this coming Friday.  I truly cannot believe it’s already here.  This winter has been an unusual winter for training.  I have been able to get outside most weekends for my long rides and only having to train indoors during the week after work because of the light factor.  Since I have been able to put in the time outside and I won’t have to go through the normal get to know my bike again outside aka balance and placement on the road.  To help my balance on the bike this winter I added rollers to my training.  At first it was a shear battle of wits of saying to myself that they were not going to beat me that I have to figure this out and I did.  I can drink out of my water bottle, take a jersey off if I need too, stand and ride no hands.  It’s the best feeling of conquering a fear of the rollers.  It just clicked one day and I was fine from there on in.

My outdoor season usually starts with a little bit of riding outside and then head down south for some warmer weather riding but this year I was able to go down south with a lot more mileage in my legs which was great.  I headed off to training camp down in my home away from home Rome Georgia.  I was there for only 10 days this year but put in some amazing time in the saddle.  The weather was cool to start with but much better than the previous weekend at home where the temps was only -5C and in GA the temp was about 10 or so C.  The camp spanned over 2 weekends with the first having a road race in Dalton, GA.  It was a great race to get my first race pre-race jitters out of the way.  The rest of the time was spent riding with different groups of people that I have ridden with before and then other days were spent riding with my husband and our friend, Stephan, who we stay with every year that we have been down well with him and his family.  This year the three of us went to Lookout Mtn and rode over it a couple of times now that was a fun warm day in the saddle.  Took in a nice total of 25hrs in the saddle in the south this year thankfully when we came back home we came home to warmer than normal weather thankfully to ride in.

So enough about the weather and lets get on with the race season.

Can't wait to see all my fellow racer friends this week.

Shell :-)

back to reality

Back to reality and cold weather at home.

Training camp in Georgia is done with the second last ride going up Fort Mountain and then the last ride in town was with some good friends for a nice relaxing recovery ride.  11 days in Georgia and 33 hours in saddle with 2 +5hr rides.  Had a great time as always in our home away from home thanks to the LaPointe family. Always feel so welcome in their home.  Now as for the weather couldn't have asked for better weather a steady warm up as the end of the camp came with the last day of riding being our warmest day.  I think we managed to climb all the climbs in the Rome area and even some a few times.  Amazing.  The only thing I won't miss about Georgia this year is the amount of dogs off their leashes and not being fenced in. HOLY CRAP.  Dog sprints even on recovery days.

Out for a recovery ride tonight to try to get my tsb back out of the very low negatives and get ready for my first race in Ontario.  Calabogie is the first race for me and I am thinking that it will be the last time I head to this race to race it cause of how far away it is. damn should have figure this out before I signed up for this one.

Let's see how ready I am for the season.  Oh I hope the weather is a little better than they are predicting.

Georgia racing and training

Had an amazing race weekend here in Rome Georgia.  I was very happy with my performance in all of the races.  Did a time trial in the morning and a crit in the afternoon on Saturday and then a road race on Sunday.

The course for the time trial was prefect for me.  Not too flat not too rolly but lots of turn around points though.  The course was 7 miles long which equals out to approximately 11km.  I felt pretty strong throughout the race.  I was happy with my time for this early in the season but I got to the time trial race a little later than what I wanted but nonetheless everything turned out ok for that race.

The crit was in downtown Rome was very cool and even better to be able to race with the cat 5 guys.  Lots of challenging parts of the race and lots of learning experience gained from this race.  The course was a rectangle with a steep little raiser on the back straight away.  My legs in the end didn't like that little raiser with a miss shift on the second or third last lap so the field got away from me which I was sad to see but I tried my best to get back up to them no quitting for me.  The announcer was doing a good job in encouraging me in those final laps also with a call out on pretty much every lap "Shelly you have 5 more laps to go get back on there".  Thanks Bruce

Now for the road race on Sunday.  Once again all of the women were racing with the cat 5 guys.  The course was 55 miles long or 88.5kms and 2 climbs up Horn mountain which is a 4km long climb.  First time around the loop the pace was pretty moderate which was good for me because I was not feeling the best and on my "A" game.  The group hit the first time up Horn pretty hard but I was able to get into my own rhythm and was able to pass a lot of people on the climb which I was pretty surprised about.  Now I was at the top of Horn and was able to descend with nobody around which I was very happy about because of the technical quality of the descent.  I saw a guy in front me on the descent and I figured I needed to make it up to him to give myself any chance to stay in the game.  On the second lap I was starting to feel much better and took in some gels to help me a long which boosted my energy.  I was able to get in with 6 other people and we all started working together to get ourselves back to the bottom of the main climb.  On our way to the mountain we were able to pick up a couple more guys into the group which helped our battle with the headwind on 136 gradual up hill and down hill.  The group stayed together until the bottom of Horn.  The last climb of the race.  I made sure and thanked everybody and congratulated everybody on a good job getting us all to last climb.  I was able to climb to a first place finish in this race because of this group of guys.  I was so thankful for their hard work and I was also happy that I was able to contribute to helping the guys get to the bottom of the climb.

All though the women fields were not very big here in GA, I was thank for the racing experience here in Rome.  For myself I was very happy to race with the cat 5 guys for the extra competition.

Now onto the training portion of the training camp.

Recovery ride on monday after the race weekend ending with a great lunch at a local bakery in town.

Just over three hours in the saddle with 2 great climbs today.

More of flatish ride tomorrow and lots of climbing on Thursday...I can't wait. :-)

Until next time.

Shell :-)