Last week of training for 2024. Recovery is getting longer and my plan is to try a real taper with far less and fewer impacting workouts/ volume and see what happens. Don't think I've ever really done this intentionally as I've always raced well with a high training load, but the sceince does not align with my perception. My thoughts at the moment are I'm getting tired and think my second peak was probably late August, am not sure mtb as much as I did in relation to riding gravel all summer was as good for my CX fitness and, now that I'm not going to be skiing in the winter, think getting a good base in will really help next season. So far, I really don't think I reached a level of fitness close to what I had last November. Might be age, might be preparation or I might just be a pussy. Fun to think about nevertheless.
My first CX race was at Spanish Lake in 2007. Chris Harre beat me but I was hooked. I didn't know anything about CX but had crazy endurance after a season of 6 and 12 hour racing. The last two years have been muddy. This was a big, wide open, fast track. I pre-rode almost two laps and nothing really stuck out. The gravel ride up needed to be taken straight on and there were a few off camber and greasy/acorny turns. Warming up the leaves were thick so I didn't really see that until the race and learned the hard way.
There were 4 of us but with Brandon and Carter in the SS class, I was looking forward to the overall as well. I got a good jump and a few turns in went down and racked my knee and calf on the greasy 180, but recovered quickly and didn't loose any spots. By lap 2 I caught Brandon and Carter but made a few more mistakes and lost a few seconds which turned into 5-10. Carter took the lead over Brandon and with 3 to go I caught Brandon and was keeping the same gap on Carter, which I'm sure was him riding conservatively for the next race. I was able to extend my lead pretty quickly over Brandon and rode a clean second half of the race. I finished about a minute in front of him and a few minutes in front of Jon.
Overall, a strong race. Focus was really good. My left quad was feeling a little locked up but not the normal IT thing, which I think was just from going deep on the intervals on Thursday. Aside from Day 2 at Faust my AVG/NP has been lower than last year. I changed my PM at some point towards the end of last season, but not sure when. My speed and cadence has been relatively high this year, and mountain biking has definitively improved my cornering, but the lower power makes me wonder.
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