Race season starts...and so does my panic!

By Pip Read

Hi all. I hope you are cycling heaps and shedding those winter kilos and blues. I have been really struggling to rid myself of the extra weight I accumulated over winter. My competition year is off to a flying start and my coach has just delivered my first program. I must admit I was a little worried when I noticed the lack of rest days in the program, but I guess we will be building on last year's success.

I am a member of the St Kilda Cycling Club which recently awarded me Club Person of the Year at the very swish SKCC annual ball. It is very pleasing to be honoured by your peers and to publicly thank supporters. I'm not confident in front of an audience so I apologise to those who attended the event if I mumbled too much.

Just to give you an idea of my usual week's training this is how 'Madam Lash' (ML = coach Donna) sets my program.

Some of the terminology includes:

Heart rate zones = E1-65-75%hr max, E2-75-85%hr max, E2-85-95%hr max

RE = rest

AM HR = resting heart rate measured while in bed before getting up

Suffice to say it takes some getting used to and remembering. Riding in the dark gets even more interesting when you can't see the computer or heart rate monitor.

• Monday: RE which in ML's speak means commute and shopping ie: me lugging the shopping bike with trailer full of the weekly food up the hill that I live on top off, I also need to transport clothes for the week as I shower and change at work.
• Tuesday: Ergo session which consists of varying ways of inflicting pain and a 15km commute home after work.
• Wednesday: 40km E1 ride with a 10km commute in the afternoon, every third week I slip in a mid week local hill bunch ride. My reward is a coffee with the bunch before work.
• Thursday: 40-45km E1 including E2 efforts and E3 efforts (more pain), these change but all include pain.
• Friday: 30km RE I admit I cheat on Fridays and join another bunch which is usually easy but sometimes gets a bit eager and always ends at the café.
• Saturday: 3hrs E1
• Sunday: 45k E1 with E2 Rev and race every second weekend.

Most of the above sessions change from week to week, but this is a typical week.

This year is the second season that I have been using a structured program and I am sure it is well worth the effort and the expense, especially after having returned from the Victorian Masters TT and Road Race Championships with gold medals. Last year I found these races a bit early in the season and a struggle.

This year I really enjoyed racing under the SheSpoke brand in its first race meeting. The weather was as close to perfect as you could expect, blue sky, no wind and the only problem was a swooping magpie just before the finish/start line of the time trial. I thoroughly enjoyed all the country smells (after all I'm a city girl) and above all the amazing country side of East Gippsland.

Saturday was the time trial. One thing I really dislike is running late especially for a race. I unfortunately did not read the entry form closely enough and went to the starting point that was used last year - wrong starting point! After a few phone calls I found the correct start and only arrived just in time to get changed and line up. I had no chance to warm up at all, apart from trying to out run the above mentioned magpie and I didn't even have time to put the race wheels on the TT bike!

The first rise in the road was around the 4km mark, which provided me with a sharp reminder of the lack of warm up as my legs protested. As is usually the case ups are followed by downs and they were just enough to stop the legs screaming for coffee. The track then took a long slightly down hill run to the magpie and the finish line and with legs still screaming 'we need coffee' I finished first in my age group with a time of 18 minutes 45 seconds. This was a comparable time with the silver W3 category time. I'm W5 so I was quite happy with that. I heard later that the magpie gave up after swooping three quarters of the field. Silly bird!

The road race was the next on the agenda. It was a later start but I still managed to mess up the starting point. At least on this occasion I had plenty of time, and again the weather was close to perfect for racing. With the earlier races taking longer that expected we started 30 minutes late, so 13 women started with nine men for the first of three laps. Five women, myself included, broke away early and were caught almost at the end of the first lap by some of the stronger men. We then proceed to work for the rest of the race actually catching and passing an earlier age group, which confused the officials on the start line! Most of the course was undulating except for a 2km climb, just steep enough to hurt the legs.

On the second run over this climb I had planned to have my energy gel on the downhill section. This was a fine plan until I hit a pot hole and most of the gel finished up all over my fingers making the handle bar and the brake hood quite sticky for the rest of the race. One of the stronger girls went off the front at about 8km to go and lucky for me the rest of the bunch chased her down (with me madly grabbing wheels)! We finished in a bunch sprint and I just grabbed second in the sprint, and being in the break I finished first in my age group.

I took home two gold medals and maintained my two titles from last year. I raced in a very pleasant part of the countryside with locally made cake just to finish off the day. Life doesn't get much better than that! Well, maybe if we had some more women racing and that's a project we are working on. I'm now off to Kangaroo Island for a few days cycle touring with my partner and then on to Adelaide to play in the hills.

Cya!

Pip