Cycling week 4 in review (Vol II)
Not a lot of cycling this week due to my trip to the Cyclocross World Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but there was some.
An ez 38 min spin on Monday. Was also a test ride of my new Zwift setup in the basement. I had bought a Apple TV to watch movies / Dutch TV while on the trainer. A nice benefit is that it can also run the Zwift app. Now I don't have to schlep my laptop to the basement anymore to ride on Zwift.
Tuesday did the NCC Time trial. The time trial consisted of 2 loops around the Champs Elysees course. I rode the 2 laps in 20:07 with an average of 296 watts. This also meant I had an FTP of 281 watts an improvement from the beginning of January where the measured FTP was 276 watts an improvement of 5 watts. I had a negative split on the two loops. The first lap was 10:10 with an average of 285 watts and the last lap in 9:56 with 307 watts.
There was some skiing on Wednesday again. Early in the afternoon Dusty and I went to Berkshire East for some runs. This time I had brought my snow shoes, to try out one run by hiking up the mountain and then ski down. I had gotten a ski bag for my birthday to carry my ski shoes, helmet and skis up the hill. I went up the most left trail of Berkshire East. It was partially ungroomed. It took me about 30 mins to hike up. On the last section I definitely started to feel the effort and actually got quite warm. At the top I found a little seat to change into my ski gear. It took me about 10 minutes before I was ready to ski down.
After that Dusty and I skied together for a bunch of runs. Around 4pm Melissa joint us for more runs. We went to the lift on the right which is close to our favorite trail Exhibition. They were making snow on the trail, which created some interesting conditions: ice patches, sleet covered goggles and some deepish snow. Just after sunset it got really cold and despite my 6 layers of clothing had to call it quits and decided to had home. Dusty, who had been car pooling with me, want to ski some more and fortunately found another ride home.
On my way to Arlington I visited my friend Neil in Princeton to do some Fat biking in Leominster State Park. Neil brought his dog Lucie Someone had made a whole bunch of beautiful, flowy trails in the park. We rode about 9 miles of trails before we headed back to Neil's place.
Friday morning early 5:40am!!! was our flight to Arkansas with a stopover in Charlotte North Carolina. We left the the house at 3:30am, Mike had driven up and Paula brought us to the airport. The advantage of being so early that we arrived in Bentonville at 11am.
And after we picked up our rental car drove to the the event to see the relay race which started at 12:30. Since you could not drive to the event at Centennial park we parked at one of the parking lots with a shuttle service.
In the relay race were 7 teams, including 2 US teams. Clara Honsinger rode in one of US teams. This relay race was a good way for us to walk around and get to know the course and find good spots to watch the races later in the weekend. We walked about 2.1 miles.
On Saturday we saw the junior women race, the U23 men race and the Elite women race. We walked a lot around the course 5.5 miles on the course and then an additional 2 miles to the parking lot. There was a long wait for the shuttle busses and after a 10 min wait (and not seeing any shuttle bus) we decided to skip the bus and walk to the car.
Sunday we parked the car on a parking lot of a closed Sherman Williams store at the bottom of the Centennial park hill and walked up the bike trail. We saw the Junior Men, the U23 Women and the Elite men race. My watch recorded only 2.5 miles as it stopped at some point. But we must have walked at least 5 miles.
A more detailed post of the CX Worlds in Fayetteville will follow.