The suntour kicked off today with a snazy little 2.5km prologue. Normally I am pretty excited about stages like today but my excitement quickly evaporated when I saw the technical corners throughout the short course. The course was definately designed perfectly for spectators and to limit road closures as it quite literally was along the foot path. All bar a few hundred meters of the race track literally could not have fitted more than 2 bikes side by side so the crowd were able to get as close as possible. There was never a point on the course that you were more than a stones through from the rowing sheds beside the yarra so I felt right at home. Through in the final 500m or so along the popular southbank boardwalk and it was a great showcase of melbourne and southbank.
So for such a short prologue you do so much preparation and then its over in a blink of an eye. Its a day like today I always revert to my tried and trusted rowing routines as the level of intensity and time of effort is so similar. Although today was only 3min it resembled a 1000m effort in the rowing boat which I have done millions of in my time. Today we raced at 7pm at night so I made sure I did a solid 2hr hit out this morning. My second race of the day always was my best when rowing so with the late start I adopted the same approach. Then its of to the start for some recon of the course and then around 1hr before the start you can finally start your warmup. By days end I had ridden 4hrs 10min and 3minute race so its a lot of rolling around for such a short blast.
I knew I was feeling quite good today as I couldn't wait to get on the ergo to start warming up. When you are delaying your warmup you know its going to be a tuff day but today I was champing at the bit to board my machine. So 1hr before I finally got aboard and all felt good. My warm up intervals felt easy so I rolled to the start full of optimism, well optimistic I could go fast in a straight line atleast. The corners were always going to knock me around but I just hoped I could go fast enough on the straights to not be embarrassed. I had pulled out all stops to improve this by inviting my mate dave daffy reynolds along to pass on his V8 super car cornering knowledge and I am certain his presence turned horrible to pretty average cornera!
My race plan was simple. Start as hard as possible for 10 seconds, I hit 980watts, then gradually get into my race rhythm over the next 30 seconds of 500-550 watts. Then hit the first corner where I knew I would go around it like a grandma and sprint full gas out off it to get back up to speed. Settle back into my rhythm until I hit the next technical corner which I made an absolute barry crocker out off with around 1.5km to go and then have to sprint full gas to get back up to speed. Settle back into my race rhythm again which by now felt like all out effort until I hit 1km to go then build up for the as much as I could for the finish. In the end I did 3:08 which was 8 seconds off the winner and good enough for 21th place and 3rd in the tassie cup. Just where I left of from in TDU. I am pretty happy with that as I am always terrible on such technical course so was a nice feeling to not loose to much time and be amongst action. All in all I think 3:08 is a good oman as my birthday is the 3rd of august so 3:08 so fingers crossed in some way this is a good sign for the days ahead!
Race Data
Time 3:08
Ave Power 505watts
Heart rate average 176.5
Speed ave 47.5kmph
cadence ave 90.3
CJW
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