Another Day In Louisville

Duty calls. Two straight days on the road flying for the "the Man." He calls and I jump!! So, I find myself in Louisville for the second day in a row. Not too bad really. Yesterday, my bud Josh and I hung out at coffee and bike shops all day oogling at bikes and surfing the net. I am a little tired but hanging in there. I am back at the coffee shop right now chillin' over a cold cup of coffee. I had it poured a while back. Time for a warm up I guess.

My job is strange in that it allows for a massive amount of training but completely blocks it at times. Wake up time yesterday and today is around 4am and I will walk back in the door of my home in Saline around 7pm tonight totally gassed. It is pretty pointless to train that tired. Bottom line is that I didn't train yesterday and I won't train today. I try and plan around this type of thing but yesterday's trip popped up just the day before so there it is. So I try to smile, take a long draw on this excellent Sunergos coffee and plan for the weekend.

Still no great revelations regarding the race this weekend. I figure I'll set up my bike with aerobars and 175mm cranks for the prologue. There is a big hill right after the start so I will try and build as much speed as I can using around 300 watts. Stay low on the bike and just fly down that hill. I seem to go pretty fast downhill so maybe I can snag a few seconds there. Low, low, low...stay out of the wind. Then do the 6 minute power thing which should be around 300-330 watts. In my testing I have done 6 minute tests and they are just super painful. I would much prefer to go longer at a slightly lower power and lay down the ride over a longer length. Make the turn around and head back to that hill to climb back to the finish. This is where sheer courage and mental toughness will take over. It is going to hurt climbing that hill but if I can just go into pain mode and gut it out I think I could do well. The time differences will be close given the length.

The crit and road race will be tough but I think I will be involved at the finish. I hope to get Joey to the line in first. It may mean I have to blow myself up before the sprint but that is my job. Wouldn't it be great if it didn't come down to a sprint? Wouldn't it be great if we could get Joey and maybe Rune into a break? The rest of us would mass at the front and just smother the other teams with efficient blocking.

I will rest tomorrow and carbo-load. After a good sleep tomorrow night, I hope to feel like I did the day of the Willow TT. Like a coiled spring. After all the time off the bike the last two days it is looking a lot like that week did.