Training Log Archive: Mr Wonderful

Beautiful morning, perfect temp, and Hines wasn't closed for rain (I believe I'll go through anyway if it is?).

I still have a lot of cycling etiquette to learn - for example, it must be okay to silently creep into someone's draft for five miles. Upside is I hustled to drop him (and may have run through extra puddles), which was unsuccessful but a good push.

I believe sub 55 is possible with training and lights.

Speaking of lights, Haggerty is 35 mississippis. I should try to learn them all.

C • It's never ok 2

So that's what Igor meant about muggy.

Passed twice by much faster guys. No slow folks to earn points back. -2

I beat the thunderstorms, maybe not by much!

General club promotion ad seems to be dying, down about 30% right now (30 likes per week instead of ~40). Not sure if it's too tired (same ad for a year) or we are saturating, since we are now approaching top US club like levels. Something to keep an eye on anyway.

Route analysis posts continue to blow up. And I think I have a faster, easier way to do them, so I'll try that next. Maybe one per week during the off season is something to consider.

We are still not fully converting the fanbase into attendees, but I'm not sure how seriously to take that this spring since three meets were plagued with rain or cold, and one had mother's day (still pushed high 60s). The two fair weathers had robust turnout.

Plus, if we do get more to turn out, we'll need a more efficient starting scheme.

C • Do you think 2

Event: SMOC Island Lake Recreation Area Regular Meet
 

Hung up some white and yellow while Tizoc finished up orange and other outliers.

You can asterisk my performance today as I didn't realize I was setting the GO (and getting brief exposure to a small segment of 8-9). Given its prominent location in a high visibility area, that was probably less a factor than having course set here previously.

I'm feeling more spry. HR was not as insane for a given pace, which was nice to see.

The course reminded me a bit of some A meets I've been to - move physically on a large feature, but then really have to seal the deal in the circle, unlike our normal glacial technique where circle or circle + is not always so tricky or precise or without as much reference.

With Voit out of the official picture and rumors of no Igor, I made one dumb error that luckily broke in my favor:

2-3, I should have gone around. Trying to bang it from a potentially fight-y top was probably too bold, conservative was the order of the day I think.

Screwed up 8-9. I think my route was okay if the features were easier, but they weren't, so going through the parking lot a la Steve Simpson was better, since then you could key off the Cooper hill (the tall sandy hill with the double knoll) and bear straight at it, rather than the "eventually hang a right" that I did.

Then I screwed up #10, thinking straight would be okay, but progress was slow on the line and I thought maybe I overshot, so I dropped down, confirmed and popped up but too slowly, good for a couple minutes.

Also bobbled #13, choose wrong isthmus, then didn't get off it right, then the one I chose was slow going - I think a longer route was faster.

Swamp 15-16 aw yeah.

Good equipment choices:

I was going to run in shorts and gaiters for heat, saw Tizoc's legs, and switched to a pants.

Pre-gamed with (2) endurolyte extremes.

Carried a 190 calorie smoothie pouch thing, took a big hit before the water stop (took one cup) and then a little more later when I needed a pick me up.

ILRA is a runner's course, so I wore running shoes to minimize pounding.

Afterwards, while milling about, I knocked back a gallon of gatorade. no lie.

C • good job :) 2

Topped off water stop (used by several courses, warm day), staged game camera), and staged video camera, then restaged video camera shorter when I saw it blew over.

Pickup four from the early loop.