BVC Fall Friday Race Season Opener

Last night was the season BVC Friday night racing opener,  short and fast...

There where 12 B racers and only 3 A's, so they joined us...

Started out with a 4 lap heats. Three sets of five, no neutral lap, first across the line in 4 laps wins... I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be in the top three at the end... and ended up at the end of the bunch in the first lap..  with everyone going high up to the blue line... So jumped down and sprinted out for two laps..  About 30 seconds peak speed of 54.2 km/h. Peak watts about 816, Pavg 547... Then pulled up and let the field take the last two laps... Bruce Denis (A rider) took first I think...

I was on 51x14 for the above. Which I have been finding quite comfortable for training on. But I found I was still "spinning out" up around 54/55 km/h. So I switched up to 52x14 for the rest of the evening.

Next was a 30 lap scratch race. The three A riders kept the pace up nicely.. We did the first 25 or so laps at an average speed of 45 km/h (peak 56!)... I just stayed at the back and out of trouble. With about 5 to go I started moving up the field and managed to get into a nice position for the last lap and a half. Unfortunately I just didn't have the leg speed/power to crack it up past 57 km/h. The front of the field moved away to the finish with about another two or three going over me, at about 60 km/h (John Perkins said he finished at 62, Bruce Denis 61.)

The last race was an Elimination. My only strategy in these is to get to the front or I'm toast... And with the 3 A riders controlling the front I just couldn't get up there.. They actually where not going that fast, but they kept control of the pace and made it difficult to get up there. So after about 3-4 eliminations I had no place to go and was out.

The slightly higher gearing was comfortable at these speeds. But I'll need to work on either leg speed or power so I can work a final sprint up to 60km/h...

I finished the night with a half hour of points race drill (8 laps slow, 2 laps sprint, 4 times) and then a cool down.

Today my legs feel very tired... full of lactic acid.. While the TSS points for last night was low.. only 72, there was a lot of intensity. 

As you can see in the power distribution chart, a significant amount of time spent in anaerobic capacity...