Last Crit Practice

AAVC crit practice continues until the end of the month for most but not for me. I leave on a long trip Thursday that will take me away from the "D" until after Labor Day. It seems like my season has come to an end. God willing, I'll make a descent showing at the PH races but it will be tough considering the interruption in my training and the field composition at that event.

The last crit practice is always a solemn thing for me as it marks not only the end of the road season but the end of summer. My season was marked by training interruptions and didn't flower liked I hoped it would. That's okay though. My team had a good year and it has been crash free so far.

We raced the usual short races with one long 20K race. Some of the usual suspects were absent making the field a little more tame this night. Regardless, my power file shows I raced hard. I noticed that my right handlebar drop felt like it was flexing some. I didn't think much about it until the last race when I mentioned to anyone who wanted to hear that I thought my handle bar was broken. It wasn't obviously broken just more flex than I was used to. The end of that race saw me laying down a 1200 + watt sprint. On the warm down lap I commented again and James Knight said, " Oh yeah, that's broken." I unwrapped the bar tape and found a crack at about two inches below the shifter. It wasn't until today that I contemplated my fate had that bar come apart at 33 mph on the final sprint!

On another note, I broke down Ada's performance a little more after Saris sent me a new downloader, (I sheared the top off the old one). I produced 292 watts for 50 minutes in M45+ race at 174 bpm average. After recovering for a couple of hours, I was only able to produce 250 watts with the same average HR. Let me tell you, a cat 3 race looks a whole lot different at 250 watts than it does at my usual 280-290! I was working hard to not get dropped.