Northern Combine South Gisborne Loop - C grade

After a week of training, my legs always feel worst on Fridays (my rest day) and heavy for the first few k's. This feeling normally lasts until the first serious attack which raises the heart rate and where you just buckle down in order to not get dropped. The race was held on a 8km loop with included a nice climb which averaged 6% for 1km into a head wind. Fortunately, I felt better on each lap and more comfortable on the climb as my legs loosened up. But today with the pace up and down, there was no real adrenalin pushing me like there was in the Modella handicap the other week. It was almost like interval training looking back over the Garmin data. For photos of the race, click here.

 I am feeling a lot more confident in general and especially in descending, today hitting just over 70km/h with a cross wind. They key is to get in the drops and get sheltered from the wind by other riders where possible. Unfortunately, I hadn't checked my solo drink bottle (I have cut back to one after not using the 2nd one in a few races) which obviously had been sitting in the car for a while and the contents tasted partially fermented, but not in a good way. There were no cramps today or even potential cramps which is great and can be put down to the longer road races and training I have been doing lately.  

Overall, we raced for 2hours and completed the climb 8 times totaling just over 800m of vertical climbing. The bunch was altogether at the base of the final climb but exploded very quickly in the fight for the finish. I had a crack up the last climb making up a lot of places but I couldn't quite catch the leaders finishing in the top 10 still. A great day out and perfect training for the future. Note to self, need to train on more hills and less time on beach road.