Cyclocross November 2024

You can consider the now 3 year old Treehouse Cyclocross race my home race, only ten minutes from Conway. The course was open Friday afternoon, hence I was there to do a bunch of reconnaissance laps. The fun huge flyover they introduced last year, was back and created some comic situations in some races. Colin Reuter, the course designer, also introduced a new sand pit, with some very loose sand and an awkward sharp left entry turn. In the race I ran it everytime, as it turned out to be the fastest for me. Saturday morning at the race itself, I had a holeshot position for 2s, then my left foot unclipped, and I lost a few places. After three meh laps, my power came back for the last 3 solid laps and I ended up battling with Kevin Callahan and Paul Curley for 9th place. I had a lot of fans cheering me on along the course, which was very motivating, bummer I was not able to give it real good battle like before at Really RAD.

Next week was another local race, now at Look Park in Northampton. I had signed up for races on both days, also I registered for volunteering on Friday with taping the course. In the afternoon I participated in the Cycle Smart course clinic with Stephen Hyde. In two hours he walked / rode a large group through the course and he explained various line options.

As my coach, he did another lap with just me which was very helpful. The Saturday race ended in one big disappointment, where after a lap with heartrates in the 190s, I ended up completely flat for the rest of the race. I just had no power, and my heartrate did not want to go up. It was just unexplainable. Almost the whole field passed me and I ended up 41st. I tried to come up with a number of explanations:

• Too tired.
• Overtrained.
• Cold legs; it was in the low 40s and I had bare legs.
• No enough sugar.
• Eating too much black licorice, it deprives your body of potassium which can cause heart arrythmia.
• Not eating enough in general (This was my coach Stephen Hyde's suggestion).
• Bad gel before the race.

I think in the end it was a combination of bare legs, black licorice and not eating enough. After discussing with the coach decided not to race on Sunday and take a break. I also needed to eat more including 150g of protein a day. I ended up installing the Visma Food App. It required me to eat between 3000-4000 calories a day, where I normally eat between 2200-3000 calories.

Two week later I was at Secret Squirrel. It had rained a lot and made for a muddy course, so a good time to test out the new wheels with mud tires I had just purchased. I had set to tire pressure to 22(front)/24(back). Turned out that was still a little to high on one of the hills, where it was hard to keep traction. Unfortunately here again I had no power in my legs, and had a mediocre race despite a good start. The only reasons (I came after NoHo) that could now still apply were: bad gel, cold legs, too tired, overtrained. I finished 10th, but had to let a number of riders, I normally beat, pass me.

I stayed overnight at Mike's in Lexington as the next day I had signed up for a race in Lowell at Shed park. Despite being pretty depressed with a 2nd mediocre race, decided to race anyway even if just for fun. So I did not expect too much of the race. Again a really good start, was even in 2nd place for awhile, after the leader missed a turn. With the tired legs from the day before, was not at my best, but at least was able to get my power out and my heartrate up over the whole race. I ended finishing 7th, a much better result.

Almost the end of the season with 2 more races to go in December: Ice Weasels and the National Championship.