It’s already been a hectic start to the summer, and by the time you read this, I will be preparing for the USA Cycling Elite National Championships in Roanoke, Virginia. My confidence was built at the beginning of the season when I won 3 races out of 4.
First up was the La Crosse Omnium, one of my favorite races of all time, consisting of a Friday evening uphill TT, Saturday road race, and Sunday crit. Virtual training and racing were the perfect prep for Friday’s TT, which required no real steering, braking, or bike handling skills. I used Coach Alex Coh’s pre-race warm-up routine which I had been using since February to go full gas off the start line.
I won the TT and set the course record, which was previously held by Matteo Jorgenson who recently finished in the Top 10 at the Criterium du Dauphine. (He’s a lot better now and would destroy my record.)
Next up was Saturday’s road race which was short but hilly, had plenty of crosswinds, and a super-fast descent with a few miles to go. I rode well, especially for not having done a road race in three years, and let my teammates drift off the front in the latter stages of the race. I finished 7th while my teammates took 1st and 3rd, and we were all set up for the final day of the Omnium.
That is until I started thinking about crits – and then overthinking crits – until I decided not to race. It was a big mental blow, and I was just trying to protect myself at that moment. With less pressure on IRL racing this year, I convinced myself that watching my teammate win would be more fun than sitting in the pack.
From La Crosse, I headed to Stoddard, Wisconsin for a three-day block of solo training and meditating. The trip was everything that I was hoping for: quiet and peaceful, with amazing roads and great weather. There was even a lightning storm that I watched come in over the Mississippi River.
After two days of recovery, I raced and won again, two times over the next weekend. The first win came at Muskego Park, another hilly crit in Wisconsin that I used to watch my dad race as a kid. And the second win was on an even hillier crit in Fox River Grove, Illinois. At Muskego Park, I initiated the winning break after a few laps of attacking and then backed my sprint for the first time in my life. Coach Alex had me doing some 15-second and 20-second sprints a few weeks before, and those efforts truly paid off. I won the sprint comfortably, with an average power of over 1000w for 15 seconds (by the way, I’m not a sprinter 🙂
A last-minute decision saw me lining up for the Fox River Grove crit the following day, with no warm-up and rain drops beginning to fall. This day was a huge mental battle (and win) for me, as I faced my fears and won a rainy crit. Having skipped Coach Alex’s warm-up, I literally got dropped on the first lap, and it wasn’t until 10 minutes in that I finally felt good. I eventually soloed to the finish with a Normalized Power of 411w for 39 minutes.
Fox River Grove came at the end of my biggest-ever training week: 24hrs 42min, 33,000 ft of climbing, and 1207 TSS.
Up next was a rest week, of course, where I did a little more than 8hrs of training with only two high-intensity days. My legs were good heading into the next week when I started riding my TT bike outside in preparation for Nationals. It has definitely been last-minute, training on my TT bike for ~4 weeks in the lead-up to Nationals, but we’ll see how the results pan out.
The highlights from that week were a four-stage Zwift race on Tuesday, which began with an opening TT that took me a little more than 7min. I smashed my power record for that duration, with an average of 470w and a strong negative split that put me at 494w for the last 3min of the TT.
Zwift stage races are super hard, especially when the stages are back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Just 15min after the Stage 1 TT, I was racing full gas up Alpe du Zwift, but thankfully it was only the first few kilometers. I ended up doing 450w for eight and a half minutes, which I was very happy with considering the fatigue.
The other highlight of the week was the Prize Money race on MyWhoosh, which takes place on the final Sunday of each month. Prize Money only goes to the Top 5 individual riders, and my previous best was 9th. However, the June race was one of the hardest virtual races I’ve ever done. And for some context, I was also racing in a different location, as we were en route to a vacation in Arkansas.
At 5:00 am that Sunday, I did 480w for the first three minutes of the June MyWhoosh race, and 390w for the first 15 minutes. Normally, that would’ve been my best effort, but we still had 30km to go including a summit finish. And by the time we got to the final climb, I was running close to empty – mentally more than physically. My legs were still good, but I was missing those mental matches that I needed to dig deep in the final few kilometers.
When the winning attacks came from Jason Osborne and Ollie Jones, I just didn’t have it. I regretted not going deeper, or at least trying, and this is something that Coach Alex has been helping me with. Tis better to try and explode than it is to not try at all.
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I will save the end-of-May Arkansas trip for the June recap, but what I’ll say for now is that it was awesome. I’m aiming to peak at the end of June when I have the MyWhoosh Prize Money race and the Elite Nationals Time Trial and Road Race within a five-day span.