#1
|
|||
|
|||
Sanya Race
At 11:15 am Friday morning Mr. Wang said I could leave the office.
I'd promised to stay until noon but I wanted to leave as soon as he'd let me. Especially since Mr. Ye (head of our department) had said that Mr. Q (UCI commissaire) could not go to the race because there was too much race stuff to do and he is too important in our department. I'd been hoping that Mr.Ye would change his mind because, if he did, Mr.Q is important enough that he'd get a government car sending him down to Sanya and even if he can't believe I'm crazy enough to enter a race when I haven't trained in six weeks he'd already said that if that happened I could ride with him. No such luck. With my own freedom secured, albeit no free ride in a government vehicle I immediately went home and packed before grabbing a quick lunch at the Sports Academy cafeteria and a taxi to the bus station.. When I arrived in Sanya I had to go to a hotel way out on the beach road for registration. This took a while because I also had to gab with everyone else I knew who was at registration. The more races I go to the longer it takes to complete registration. Finally I headed towards the bike shop "The Ride Place" intended to get a bit of work done on it by Hainan's second best mechanic but, on the way, I was waylaid by four cyclists from Yunnan, kidnapped, and forcibly treated to dinner. No harm came to me and I was eventually taken to the bike shop with my only ransom being detailed instructions to the guy who likes titanium on how to do home-anodizing. Hung out at the shop for a while, got my front derailleur and left brake tweaked ... talked shop with the others, looked over the rules and came to the mutual conclusion that I could not enter the lower level women's category but had to enter the advanced 60km race. It was simple. As things stood there were four women in each race. If there were five or more the first three got prize money. If there were less than five only first place got money. Since the prize money in advanced was higher it was decided that someone from the lower category needed to go up and, in turn, if she did not win any money herself, that second and third places would chip in and give her something in return for making sure that _they_ got prize money. Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei both refused to be the someone. Not capable of doing 60km. I wasn't feeling especially capable of doing 60km of racing what with not having trained in the last 6 weeks and barely having ridden in the last 3 but, well, someone had to do it. And it looked like that someone was going to be me. After I got home I prepared four water bottles. One coca-cola red bull mix, two electrolyte tablet, orange juice, sprite mix, and one red bull water mix. Then I went to sleep. So early that I woke up on my own at 6:30am. Out the door on a quest for safety pins for my bib-numbers. Found them at the third shop I tried. Stopped by Wu's Bike Shop to gab and show off my new frame. Then to the starting line and sign-on. Didn't have to fight nearly as hard as I thought I would to get moved up. Didn't let them know my real reason. Only said that the lower category was me + Ah Ling + Xing Chunlei + some girl from Hangzhou and I _always_ train with Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei and always race with them and that it would be boring. Which is true. It just wasn't the reason. Mass start. Advanced women and advanced men together. Circuit race, 15km and change per lap. We've got 4 laps. They've got 5. Plus a kilometer or so at each end to the start and finish. Common women and common men also start together. Nathan, the retired real pro I met at the Guangzhou Bikers' Festival, and Jan from Holland who is perhaps 60 and who is also retired real pro and their friends from Shenzhen are dismissive of the size of the field. Lots of people signed up. Not so many people showed up. "Okay guys," Dahlberg says at the line-up, "I want you to take it easy, just like a training ride. Not enough people here to be trying too hard." Of course most of the people he's not with don't speak English so he can get away with giving out instructions to his buddies. I've never been in a pack like this before. Wow doesn't even begin to describe this being in a pack feeling. I mean I've been in a group of cyclists riding together but I've never been in a big group (more than twenty) riding together at around 40kph. And even if our hand signals aren't all the same everyone gets the idea about moving over for space and it feels safe, safer than 20kph I've been in. Home stretch of the first lap we've got a headwind. Nathan is leading the paceline at 45kph and I just can't keep up. My heartrate is up over 180bpm and I'm wheezing and things hurt. Suddenly I've been dropped. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm not going to make it. I don't have a chance. But I rode 12 kilometers in a pack at around 40kph and that was really cool. I do neither and just keep riding. I'm halfway down the backstretch of lap two when the common race catches up to me. I catch on to their pack and get a good rest for a while. Nice thing about a pack, it's both easier and faster than alone at the same time. At the first water zone one guy at the front manages to knock every single bottle of water out of the hands of the people holding them out. I tell him off for being rude. That sort of behavior could be tactical. He pants that it wasn't on purpose and I give him a pull off of my bottle before the motorcycles start pulling up alongside of us and handing out water. I stay with the common race until most of the way through the homestretch of lap two when some guys start attacking and not only manage to form a breakaway but also leave their whole category scattered in little bunches all along the beach road. At least I manage to catch up to and pass Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei before I make the left turn for lap three and they head straight for their finish line. For the next five or six kilometers I ride with two of the last guys in the common race. There is one guy who I spend a fair bit of time drafting. I rest behind him and then I get in front and sprint as hard as I can while he drafts me and we try to catch up with the next closest guy. But I just don't have the energy for it. Coming into the homestretch on lap three I'm alone again. As I make the left turn onto the beach road I'm yelling at the top of my lungs "way way way way way way way" because traffic is being let through and I don't know if I've got the skill to turn and dodge vehicles even at my current fairly reduced speed. I rarely take a turn going faster than 22 or so. I'm coming off of a downhill and a tailwind and even if I am alone I'm going 35. I ride alone. Homestretch lap three. Backstretch lap four. All alone. Really satisfying thunk as I grab a water bottle from an outstretched hand by the side of the road. Never had the opportunity to do that before. Didn't know I could. Feels so good. Feels in control. I do it again. Most of the water is going over my head. My mouth is feeling a bit dry but it's hard to drink from this kind of bottle and ride at the same time and the plain water doesn't really taste right in my mouth. Doesn't want to go down the way the flavored water I've still got just a little of in my bottle does. Homestretch lap four. I catch up and pass the very last man in the common race. He started after me (not sure how long after me) and I've just lapped him. Even if he is kind of old and looks like he had no idea that the race was going to be this level of race it's another thrill of satisfaction. 15km ahead of a guy on a flat course. I'm dragging butt as I cross the finish. My energy level is coming in spurts and bursts and I'll go from suddenly able to spin over 30kph (in a headwind) to finding myself down at 20 and grunting with effort. Average speed 30.2kph. Average heartrate over 2 hours and 9 minutes is 165 beats per minute. And I'm off my bike and I'm chugging water and it feels good. Another water bottle over the head. I'm a little dizzy but it's one of those moments when I just can't figure out how to say it in English let alone Chinese. Suddenly I'm sitting on the curb. That wasn't exactly on purpose. But it wasn't falling down either. Good timing. I get to watch the men's advanced sprinting across the finish line. I go up to Nathan and this time actually remember to exchange contact info because he's interested in Tour of Hainan stuff and I'm interested in some of the other bike stuff he's doing in China. More water. Feng Quan (Hainan cyclist from east side of the island) helps me oh so slowly walk over to the shade. I'm not feeling right and it shows that I'm not feeling right. But I'm not feeling real bad either. Some lady spectator gives up her seat on a wall by the side of a manicured garden bed for me. "Can I get you anything?" "Salt. Get me salt." Have to explain a few times cause salt just isn't one of those words I use too often and what I'm saying is "salty" rather than "salt" He's just gone and I'm drinking the plain water that still feels better going over my head than it does going down my throat when I start shivering. Can't stop shivering. I'm not c-c-c-cold. Just chattering. And shivering. I think it was Liu's wife who took my gloves off and started massaging my hands. I know it was Liu (Sanya, executive of something, insanely wealthy) who gave me the 2-liter bottle of coca cola. He's telling me to drink slowly but I can't drink slowly. It tastes sooooo good. And I'm sucking so hard on the bottle that even with the amount of liquid going down the bottle is compressing cause ain't any air getting in. Feng Quan and the ambulance guy arrive together. I'm given a one liter glass bottle of sterile saline solution for injection. It tastes even better than the coca-cola. I've chugged a third of it before it starts to taste even the slightest bit unpleasant. I'm sitting in the back of the ambulance and sipping it slowly when, at around half the bottle, it suddenly tastes vile. I'm drinking saline solution. YUCK. I spit out the mouthful I've still got and go to water. This time water tastes right in my mouth. But it still feels better being poured over my head. Coca cola has gone back to being disgustingly sweet. Still not feeling right. Even though we're going to lunch nearby I'm in no condition to get back on the bike and I ride to the restaurant with a friend's mom. Walking up the stairs to the second floor is rough. My leg hasn't hurt this bad since I was learning how to walk. And my hip is screaming agony. One of my low blood sugar indicators is raw tomatoes. Under normal circumstances I loathe raw tomatoes. I'm not even especially fond of large chunks of cooked tomato and raw tomatoes are just plain disgusting. If I'm willing to eat tomatoes I'm probably hungry. If I like raw tomatoes it's a good sign that something is wrong. They were really yummy tomatoes. We're having special chicken soup which is very yum. Since it's a classy restaurant I suspect that the food actually is very good and it's not just a case of hunger. A few times during the course of the meal I suddenly feel a lot better. Around halfway through I'm good enough that I can stretch. Another half hour passes and I've actually got to pee. By now when I walk down the stairs I don't have to hang on to the railing and my hip is no longer twanging in agony. By the time the meal is over my hip has stopped hurting completely. Then, like any sensible cyclist, I go for a massage. Regarding bicycle related activities I've now done low blood sugar, elevation sickness and oxygen deprivation, and low salt. What else can I do to my body? And why do I like it so much? -M |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Sanya Race
Dear Mrs. C,
The worst thing you can do in here is post detailed accounts of your training rides or races. We all ride so much and have been for so many years, we could care less about what gears or how much pain anyone else experiences on a bike. Not even the pros. If Paolo Bettini came in here and wrote a 4,000 word post about his final laps at worlds, we'd be like "Dude, shut the **** up and tell us which podium girls you did." The only person who could really get away with detailed ride posts was this guy from Oklahoma - Jason, I think his name was - he use to post concise stuff about riding with Lance in a break one time. We gave him a free pass and he kept it to a minimum. But to answer your question...your equipment and training doesn't matter. Your equipment is probably better than anything Hinault had when he won 5 Tours and definitely better than what Eddy Merckx rode with his entire career. So never discuss equipment in here. Never. Just ride 3-5 hours a day and you will eventually learn all you need to know by trial and error. Don't spend money on a coach...put that money into better equipment. If you read Bicycling Magazine, don't tell other riders you do - (tell them you read cyclingnews or Velonews only). There's nothing worse than a newbie who rides 17.31 miles a day and then wants to here a detailed 3,000 word answer that explains why he or she can't ride as fast as the pros. The answer to all your questions is: ride 3-5 hours a day on the hardest courses you can find. As for your equipment and training questions, thhe anser is the same: just clip in and deal with it. Top pros like Greg Lemond, Bernard Hinault, and Laurent Fignon hated training. They wanted to go fishing, golfing, or dancing in Paris discos. If you want to talk about cycling off the bike, it means you're not training hard enough. Magilla Marian wrote: At 11:15 am Friday morning Mr. Wang said I could leave the office. I'd promised to stay until noon but I wanted to leave as soon as he'd let me. Especially since Mr. Ye (head of our department) had said that Mr. Q (UCI commissaire) could not go to the race because there was too much race stuff to do and he is too important in our department. I'd been hoping that Mr.Ye would change his mind because, if he did, Mr.Q is important enough that he'd get a government car sending him down to Sanya and even if he can't believe I'm crazy enough to enter a race when I haven't trained in six weeks he'd already said that if that happened I could ride with him. No such luck. With my own freedom secured, albeit no free ride in a government vehicle I immediately went home and packed before grabbing a quick lunch at the Sports Academy cafeteria and a taxi to the bus station.. When I arrived in Sanya I had to go to a hotel way out on the beach road for registration. This took a while because I also had to gab with everyone else I knew who was at registration. The more races I go to the longer it takes to complete registration. Finally I headed towards the bike shop "The Ride Place" intended to get a bit of work done on it by Hainan's second best mechanic but, on the way, I was waylaid by four cyclists from Yunnan, kidnapped, and forcibly treated to dinner. No harm came to me and I was eventually taken to the bike shop with my only ransom being detailed instructions to the guy who likes titanium on how to do home-anodizing. Hung out at the shop for a while, got my front derailleur and left brake tweaked ... talked shop with the others, looked over the rules and came to the mutual conclusion that I could not enter the lower level women's category but had to enter the advanced 60km race. It was simple. As things stood there were four women in each race. If there were five or more the first three got prize money. If there were less than five only first place got money. Since the prize money in advanced was higher it was decided that someone from the lower category needed to go up and, in turn, if she did not win any money herself, that second and third places would chip in and give her something in return for making sure that _they_ got prize money. Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei both refused to be the someone. Not capable of doing 60km. I wasn't feeling especially capable of doing 60km of racing what with not having trained in the last 6 weeks and barely having ridden in the last 3 but, well, someone had to do it. And it looked like that someone was going to be me. After I got home I prepared four water bottles. One coca-cola red bull mix, two electrolyte tablet, orange juice, sprite mix, and one red bull water mix. Then I went to sleep. So early that I woke up on my own at 6:30am. Out the door on a quest for safety pins for my bib-numbers. Found them at the third shop I tried. Stopped by Wu's Bike Shop to gab and show off my new frame. Then to the starting line and sign-on. Didn't have to fight nearly as hard as I thought I would to get moved up. Didn't let them know my real reason. Only said that the lower category was me + Ah Ling + Xing Chunlei + some girl from Hangzhou and I _always_ train with Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei and always race with them and that it would be boring. Which is true. It just wasn't the reason. Mass start. Advanced women and advanced men together. Circuit race, 15km and change per lap. We've got 4 laps. They've got 5. Plus a kilometer or so at each end to the start and finish. Common women and common men also start together. Nathan, the retired real pro I met at the Guangzhou Bikers' Festival, and Jan from Holland who is perhaps 60 and who is also retired real pro and their friends from Shenzhen are dismissive of the size of the field. Lots of people signed up. Not so many people showed up. "Okay guys," Dahlberg says at the line-up, "I want you to take it easy, just like a training ride. Not enough people here to be trying too hard." Of course most of the people he's not with don't speak English so he can get away with giving out instructions to his buddies. I've never been in a pack like this before. Wow doesn't even begin to describe this being in a pack feeling. I mean I've been in a group of cyclists riding together but I've never been in a big group (more than twenty) riding together at around 40kph. And even if our hand signals aren't all the same everyone gets the idea about moving over for space and it feels safe, safer than 20kph I've been in. Home stretch of the first lap we've got a headwind. Nathan is leading the paceline at 45kph and I just can't keep up. My heartrate is up over 180bpm and I'm wheezing and things hurt. Suddenly I've been dropped. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm not going to make it. I don't have a chance. But I rode 12 kilometers in a pack at around 40kph and that was really cool. I do neither and just keep riding. I'm halfway down the backstretch of lap two when the common race catches up to me. I catch on to their pack and get a good rest for a while. Nice thing about a pack, it's both easier and faster than alone at the same time. At the first water zone one guy at the front manages to knock every single bottle of water out of the hands of the people holding them out. I tell him off for being rude. That sort of behavior could be tactical. He pants that it wasn't on purpose and I give him a pull off of my bottle before the motorcycles start pulling up alongside of us and handing out water. I stay with the common race until most of the way through the homestretch of lap two when some guys start attacking and not only manage to form a breakaway but also leave their whole category scattered in little bunches all along the beach road. At least I manage to catch up to and pass Ah Ling and Xing Chunlei before I make the left turn for lap three and they head straight for their finish line. For the next five or six kilometers I ride with two of the last guys in the common race. There is one guy who I spend a fair bit of time drafting. I rest behind him and then I get in front and sprint as hard as I can while he drafts me and we try to catch up with the next closest guy. But I just don't have the energy for it. Coming into the homestretch on lap three I'm alone again. As I make the left turn onto the beach road I'm yelling at the top of my lungs "way way way way way way way" because traffic is being let through and I don't know if I've got the skill to turn and dodge vehicles even at my current fairly reduced speed. I rarely take a turn going faster than 22 or so. I'm coming off of a downhill and a tailwind and even if I am alone I'm going 35. I ride alone. Homestretch lap three. Backstretch lap four. All alone. Really satisfying thunk as I grab a water bottle from an outstretched hand by the side of the road. Never had the opportunity to do that before. Didn't know I could. Feels so good. Feels in control. I do it again. Most of the water is going over my head. My mouth is feeling a bit dry but it's hard to drink from this kind of bottle and ride at the same time and the plain water doesn't really taste right in my mouth. Doesn't want to go down the way the flavored water I've still got just a little of in my bottle does. Homestretch lap four. I catch up and pass the very last man in the common race. He started after me (not sure how long after me) and I've just lapped him. Even if he is kind of old and looks like he had no idea that the race was going to be this level of race it's another thrill of satisfaction. 15km ahead of a guy on a flat course. I'm dragging butt as I cross the finish. My energy level is coming in spurts and bursts and I'll go from suddenly able to spin over 30kph (in a headwind) to finding myself down at 20 and grunting with effort. Average speed 30.2kph. Average heartrate over 2 hours and 9 minutes is 165 beats per minute. And I'm off my bike and I'm chugging water and it feels good. Another water bottle over the head. I'm a little dizzy but it's one of those moments when I just can't figure out how to say it in English let alone Chinese. Suddenly I'm sitting on the curb. That wasn't exactly on purpose. But it wasn't falling down either. Good timing. I get to watch the men's advanced sprinting across the finish line. I go up to Nathan and this time actually remember to exchange contact info because he's interested in Tour of Hainan stuff and I'm interested in some of the other bike stuff he's doing in China. More water. Feng Quan (Hainan cyclist from east side of the island) helps me oh so slowly walk over to the shade. I'm not feeling right and it shows that I'm not feeling right. But I'm not feeling real bad either. Some lady spectator gives up her seat on a wall by the side of a manicured garden bed for me. "Can I get you anything?" "Salt. Get me salt." Have to explain a few times cause salt just isn't one of those words I use too often and what I'm saying is "salty" rather than "salt" He's just gone and I'm drinking the plain water that still feels better going over my head than it does going down my throat when I start shivering. Can't stop shivering. I'm not c-c-c-cold. Just chattering. And shivering. I think it was Liu's wife who took my gloves off and started massaging my hands. I know it was Liu (Sanya, executive of something, insanely wealthy) who gave me the 2-liter bottle of coca cola. He's telling me to drink slowly but I can't drink slowly. It tastes sooooo good. And I'm sucking so hard on the bottle that even with the amount of liquid going down the bottle is compressing cause ain't any air getting in. Feng Quan and the ambulance guy arrive together. I'm given a one liter glass bottle of sterile saline solution for injection. It tastes even better than the coca-cola. I've chugged a third of it before it starts to taste even the slightest bit unpleasant. I'm sitting in the back of the ambulance and sipping it slowly when, at around half the bottle, it suddenly tastes vile. I'm drinking saline solution. YUCK. I spit out the mouthful I've still got and go to water. This time water tastes right in my mouth. But it still feels better being poured over my head. Coca cola has gone back to being disgustingly sweet. Still not feeling right. Even though we're going to lunch nearby I'm in no condition to get back on the bike and I ride to the restaurant with a friend's mom. Walking up the stairs to the second floor is rough. My leg hasn't hurt this bad since I was learning how to walk. And my hip is screaming agony. One of my low blood sugar indicators is raw tomatoes. Under normal circumstances I loathe raw tomatoes. I'm not even especially fond of large chunks of cooked tomato and raw tomatoes are just plain disgusting. If I'm willing to eat tomatoes I'm probably hungry. If I like raw tomatoes it's a good sign that something is wrong. They were really yummy tomatoes. We're having special chicken soup which is very yum. Since it's a classy restaurant I suspect that the food actually is very good and it's not just a case of hunger. A few times during the course of the meal I suddenly feel a lot better. Around halfway through I'm good enough that I can stretch. Another half hour passes and I've actually got to pee. By now when I walk down the stairs I don't have to hang on to the railing and my hip is no longer twanging in agony. By the time the meal is over my hip has stopped hurting completely. Then, like any sensible cyclist, I go for a massage. Regarding bicycle related activities I've now done low blood sugar, elevation sickness and oxygen deprivation, and low salt. What else can I do to my body? And why do I like it so much? -M |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Sanya Race
On Oct 13, 10:19 am, MagillaGorilla wrote:
Dear Mrs. C, The worst thing you can do in here is post detailed accounts of your training rides or races. We all ride so much and have been for so many years, we could care less about what gears or how much pain anyone else experiences on a bike. Not even the pros. If Paolo Bettini came in here and wrote a 4,000 word post about his final laps at worlds, we'd be like "Dude, shut the **** up and tell us which podium girls you did." Apey, Do you really ride so much? Or are you retired? Actually, I take it back. You sound like you do ride, but like one of those clenched-jaw Cat 3's that is so serious about training that he's distilled the riding experience to a set of HRM graphs, and can't stand to listen to anyone who actually still finds riding a bicycle interesting. If everyone in here posted the logs of their training rides, it'd be overkill, but Marian's Chinese sagas are usually entertaining. On the other hand, your training advice about riding regularly on hard courses and not worrying about all the other crap is fairly reasonable. I'd guess that an amateur level rider could do less time with more structured intervals, but I was never any good at sticking to intervals, so I can't say. Also most people feel that allowing some recovery days in between hard days is worthwhile. Ben The only person who could really get away with detailed ride posts was this guy from Oklahoma - Jason, I think his name was - he use to post concise stuff about riding with Lance in a break one time. We gave him a free pass and he kept it to a minimum. But to answer your question...your equipment and training doesn't matter. Your equipment is probably better than anything Hinault had when he won 5 Tours and definitely better than what Eddy Merckx rode with his entire career. So never discuss equipment in here. Never. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
SSWC 07 Roller race report and results plus Pics of MAIN RACE TOO | rollapaluza | General | 0 | September 4th 07 03:52 PM |
F/S ** Michelin PRO RACE & PRO2 RACE TIRES ** | CritUSA | Marketplace | 2 | December 8th 04 03:20 PM |