More from Mt Evans

The official results just got posted... I guess I didn't do too bad. 18th out of 129 in my category. I guess there is always next year...

Mt Evans!

Mt Evans! On a bike. Check it out. Always exciting, always a suffer fest. I was really bumming about this year's race because I have been training so hard, but then there was 10 days at sea level in Maine and a week of being sick and antibiotics. So I set my goals a little lower and went for it.

Good news and bad news. I beat last years time by 7 minutes+ (2:31:51 [unofficial] vs 2:39:11 last year). The bad news is that I think I didn't go out hard enough. Once I got over 12,000 ft in elevation, I just couldn't ride as hard as I wanted. I sure got my heart rate up, but the power wasn't there. I even finished thinking I could do it again - I wasn't wiped out like I was last year.

The problem was that I started kind of slow worrying too much about my condition and trying to be smarter about my pacing. I am sure I could have done better than 2:30 if I had paced better today. Maybe even 5 minutes faster than that before the 10 days in Maine.

My training was way too focused on endurance lately and not enough on speed. Largely that is from being in Maine, since it is so hard to ride long intervals with all the small rolling hills. Next year (I can't believe I am saying that already) I am going to try to focus on speed and take those next 7 minutes off. I still have a lot of room for improvement.

On a side note - Tom Danielson won the pro race in 1:42 or so. I had a 30 minute head start on him. I couldn't believe how soon he passed me and how fast he was going. I thought about jumping on his wheel, but I am sure I would have been on the side of the road puking within a few minutes. There were no other pro's with him, he had dropped everyone. Maybe he should be over in France right now.

For the geeks: Ave Power - 241. Ave HR - 164. Ave Speed - 10.8mph.