Thursday, March 19, 2015

Being slow and getting faster...

I used to think, if I get faster, I'll have more people to ride with. As I improve my riding and overall fitness and power to weight ratio, I am finding that this isn't alway the case.

In the beginning, when I started out, as a beginner I had better fitness and climbing abilities that most of the beginners I raced against. In the "beginner class" for mountain bike racing, you get all kinds of abilities competing together because some of the guys have ridden for a while but never participated in a race, others used to race motorcycles/motocross and others, like me had no previous experience.  So inorder to get a good race result, I had to really rely on my strengths which were not many,  I could not handle a bike very well, so my cornering and my downhill decents were horrible, I had no endurance, but lucky for me the beginner races were not very long.  I realized as a beginner I could climb hills and basically found I could make up for lost time in technical sections by "playing catch-up" on the hills.

Things started to change when I moved up to "Sport Class", there were more experienced racers, many who were in sport class for multiple years by the time I got there, many were not only good bike handlers, they were climbers (some of them anyway) and had more endurance which was needed since these races included at least one extra lap compared the beginners.  So I had to try and get into group rides to try and keep up with my peers, of course many of them were a bit to fast for me.  Even some coaching for a very short time helped by at least showing me why having more than an occassional ride was essential to improving as an athlete.  Within this time frame I started doing a few dirt road / backroad rides with guys that lived near me like Robert Lucia, Jason Melecosky and Paul Bailey.  I could barely keep up if at all so these did not last long for me,  but I did more of these kinds of rides by myself.

Moving up to the "Expert Class", happened after my fitness finally started to improve, but I was still not training with many other riders and my handling skills were still subpar.  I started riding again with guys that lived near me like Jason Melecosky and Paul Bailey, they actually did more than the 2 or 3 laps at the local trails, they would go on what felt like REALLY LONG backroad rides.  WOW,  thats where I felt like I was being drilled like an Army Private in bootcamp.  But this is what it took for me to gain not only the endurance but the sustained efforts that are required for power on the longer climbs.  As a result of doing these, I felt like I could finally keep up with groups of riders who were historically faster riders than I.  It was the TNT rides (mentioned on a previous post), that really started to have an impact on me.  This however took the place of rides I did with others, but I got faster.

Late 2014 to present, I have actually made more improvements.  I am riding with guys who I looked up to (when a ride is organized).  These rides add a certain element of mutual effort/competition, some of this could be due to Strava, or simply racing up a little climbs. I still have to ride to a training schedule so that limits how I ride depending on the day of the week.  Now certain days of the week I am forced to ride alone again, and now with indoor cycling that allows me to use Wattage/Power meter to measure my efforts, I am seeing huge improvements.  I also see improvement on my handling skills as I tested this in Georgia and with the inclusion of a single speed mountain bike I'm learning to be a better rider by being more efficient on the decents as well as be more aggressive on the climbs especially the steeps ones.

Now that I have a structured (still needs some adjustments), I train with a purpose, and sometimes the purpose of a day's ride can result in an exclusion of others, regardless if they are faster, slower or at the same abilities as me.  So getting faster doesn't mean more opportunities for riding parnters, it just means I am getting faster, and if I want to continue with improvements, I have to train for me, and not train for others.  The fun group rides are also important, but they must fit your schedule, not the other way around.

I hope this helps others who are learning like I am.

Thanks,
David