TDD - Ponca City - 28th April 2019

The latest round of the TDD series round 4 was held at Ponca City. By an amazing set of coincidences Amanda was able to join Fiona and I as we took a trip out in Baby Groot. 

The races were based out of the Wentz Camp and pool area though due to it being to early in the season the pool is currently not open. 

The trails at Ponca City are a great mixture of flow and rocky sections. The trails are numbered 1-8 and each trail section has its own character, they all join back up to a gravel access road which would make repeating them easy. It is a super fun trail to ride and with the variety of sections it will improve all of your riding, go ride there! 

We arrived a little later than planned but we still managed to get some riding in.
Amanda and Fiona rode the Kids Kup course and practised their skills over the wooden features. Fiona was not happy that we were forcing her to practice these but, reluctantly did with Amanda's encouragement. Whilst they practiced, I nipped off to ride part of the course. 

Here we are relaxing post ride.

Enjoying the evening

Fiona taking the photo for a change

Fiona's Race

After a relaxing night in Baby Groot we got Fiona registered for her race which started at 9am. 

Here is Fiona's first lap of the race. 

As can be seen she was the only one to ride the wooden features on the first 1/2 of lap one which put her squarely at the back of the group. :( I am stoked that she did, but if I had known that the rest of the group would have missed them, I wouldn't have insisted that she rode them. For the remaining four laps Fiona didn't ride the wooden features on the first 1/2 of the lap and clawed her way back up into second place overall. 

Here she is crossing the line.

Go Fiona Go!

Podium again go Fiona!

I am hopeful one day she will make the top spot of the podium. This day she rode with some real grit which as we will find out later I lacked for my race, see below.

My Race

After seeing Fiona on the podium I went off to scope out segment 3 of the course as advised to do by Corey White. I was glad I did as the section was definitely the most technical of the course. I did manage to clean ride everything though so wasn't to worried about that part of the lap but I was glad I checked it out.

After riding this section, I headed back to Baby Groot for some food then a little warmup before heading over to the start.

At 12pm we set off in the usual fashion of rocket speed, the only difference being this time I was able to hang with some of the guys ahead of me. The first section of singletrack was a little bit of a mess and someone stumbled and I almost had to put a foot down. Next thing the guy in front of me (Victor) crashed. I passed him and was rolling really well. Section 3 rolled up quickly and I let Victor pass me where he then put a little time into me. As we headed to the technical part I caught Victor again and passed him. I cleaned the sections and Victor followed me back onto the access road I grabbed some hydration and let Victor lead into section 4 where we were soon passed by the 4 leaders of the next category back. I managed to stay on this groups wheel as they caught Victor (I stopped to let them pass me) I watched my pacing on the access road and Victor was in sight as I finished the first lap.
Rolling into the first singletrack I managed to hit a rock pretty hard and flat my tyre. I stopped and added some air and carried on, no big deal. Further around the course in section 3 of singletrack I felt my tyre going soft again, damnit then thunk I rim striked. I'm now pretty frustrated but add some more air and continue on my way. Into the next technical section and thunk again. I stop and put more air into my tyre but now mentally I'm spent. I can honestly say this I don't know why. I have had to add air in races before but this time I hit the road and added yet more air and I was done. I DNF'd my first race ever I think. Not a great example to set for Fiona but sometimes things happen.

Looking at the results now, if I had stopped and taken the time to remove the thorns from my tyre and put a tube in I would have probably finished DFL which is not an unusual for me, oh well.

What did I learn this weekend?

It was nice to get away as a family even if only for one night, though I really ought not to forget the bacon next time. 

I felt terrible for quitting however I got a lot of nice comments from friends. I don't think I will quit that easily again but never say never. 

I did buy a new tyre for the rear as I now have no confidence in my rear tyre that I was running after two races with flats.

New rubber

I am feeling strong right now so lets hope that carries forward into the Marathon Nationals in TX on the 11th May. 

Finally, Amanda is way better at coaching Fiona for MTB (really giving her confidence) than I am and Fiona is better at coaching Amanda in the same way Amanda does for her. I need to work on that and getting them both riding more. They are really great when they get going just lacking a little confidence. 

The Strava

TDD - Fools Dozen - 7th April 2019

Round three of the 2019 Tour De Dirt series took us to Medicine Park in Southern Oklahoma. The trails there are pretty rocky and technical which lead to some hard and tiring racing for me.

Fiona's race

Fiona had a tough one today, she is currently lacking a little confidence on singletrack and it showed today during her race. She worked super hard though and brought up the back of the field to take 4th place which is most definitely one place better than me.
We are hoping to try and get out to ride more trails over the next few weeks (weather permitting) before her next race. We also got to ride more post race and she definitely gained more confidence which is what it's all about. 

Frustrated Fiona

Post race almost smiling again

Nick's race

The Cat 1/2 loop took us over some rocky and technical trails. Although the course was short in both distance and time (normally we race for 2+ hours today it was more like 1.5hours) I was not alone in being thankful I only had to race 3 laps, It wore me out.

The course started on an uphill double track before descending and crossing onto a paved road. 

Photo from the preride

We climbed for around 0.25miles on the paved road before joining singletrack for the remainder of the lap. From preriding the course I had identified a few sections where I was struggling. Here is one such section which I didn't even attempt during the race, I just walked as it was faster.

After this section the remainder of my lap was pretty smooth sailing. I made almost every section I had failed during the preride apart from a babyhead section which eluded me. I even made the loose climb on all but my last lap. The race finished at the top of the double track rather than the bottom of the singletrack where we started. I'm very glad I didn't have to sprint against anyone on that as I was totally empty by this point.

Lap Times

Lap 1 - 31:00

Lap 2 - 33:54

Lap 3 - 36:40 though I did stop and back track to pick up TDD numberplate from a fellow competitor which was on the floor Strava says this cost me around 25 seconds 

Here I am descending Itchy Scratchy
- Photo Credit Jennifer Black

One of the things I did notice on my final lap was, I would end up riding at a similar speed to riders I was catching up with rather than just blasting past them. This probably helped me though as it meant I didn't blow up. 

Heart rate plot

Yer.... it was a hard race, there was very little area to recover as the course contains almost no flow sections, you work hard on both the climbs and descents at Medicine Park. Fun riding for sure but tough when you are not used to riding that sort of trail. 

Holy Heart Rate!

Results 

I finished a little sun burnt, very tired and not in last place! I managed to get 5th place which I am super stoked about. Sure the field was only 6 people but for this race at least I wasn't DFL. 

Not DFL

We now have a couple of weeks break from the TDD Series, there are still plenty of rides and training to do though. 

Strava file

Wind assistance does it really matter?

Now living in Oklahoma I have to get used to riding in the wind. If I didn't ride in the wind, I would never end up riding, alright that is not strictly true but you get the idea. I like to think of winds as mountains, when it is really blowing I get to try the really steep climbs or descents depending on direction of travel.

Since I'm a numbers/data kind of guy I wanted to see how much of a difference a head vs tail wind makes... As I don't have a power meter yet, they are a big investment, power meter or flight back to the UK?  All of this is has no power data and as such I'm going off feel and HR data.

I am also using a really cool program (which is free) I found online which takes all the wind data and applies it to your ride. Head over to mywindsock.com for all your geeking out.

Yesterday during my ride I got the opportunity to test this out. On the way out I had a slight tail wind of around 7 mph. On the return the wind had picked up to 9mph headwind which is still pretty low for this area but definitely noticeable.

The segments I picked are gravel segments which are around 4 miles long. They run North or South, alternative options in this area would run East or West, it is all pedalling in squares in this area. Given the length of the segment, this is a sustaining power test rather than an all out sprint effort.

Segment 1 - Gravel Sara

Segment 2 - Gravel Sara South bound

The fact I am currently top of both of the leader boards (at the time of this post) is less due to my speed and more due to the lack of people who have ridden the segment.

For both runs on Friday I was trying to keep my HR below 175bpm (zone 4 for me) which is where I tend to blow up and I have to drop my speed significantly to recover.

Data from the ride

Segment 1 - 

Time 10:54, 

19.9 mph ave, 

Ave HR 169 BPM, 

Max HR 177 BPM 

6-7mph tail wind

Segment 2 - 

Time 14:01, 

16.6 mph ave, 

Ave HR 167 BPM, 

Max HR 175 BPM 

8-9mph head wind

Conclusion 

Even with slight tailwind the advantage for me is significant, way more than I thought thought it would make. The difference between the runs on Friday was around 3.3mph. 

Chasing KOMs/PRs is obviously best done with a tailwind. And hence if I get a PR on the road here, there is a good chance I had some sort of tail wind or am riding in a group. 

This is not to say I won't put in efforts into a headwind. For me it is a great way to get stronger and improve my fitness.

I currently feel around 9mph is where I really start to feel the headwinds, once the wind gets up to around 18mph it is comparable to a pretty steep gradient, great for my hill training without hills program. 

Above 25mph I will definitely question if I should be riding on the roads as I start to feel pretty unsafe around traffic, especially when riding solo.  

The KOM I have for the southbound direction was achieved with a 9mph NW wind, a cross tail wind on this segment, very similar wind conditions to my KOM on the northbound segment on which I achieved on Friday. 

Finally I am not a KOM chaser normally. I would definitely categorise myself as a, just improve my fitness kind of guy and Strava is a great way to do this as it gives me a way to compare segments to my previous attempts with HR data all easily accessible.

I always try and ride with the attitude "if you are not having fun why are you even out there." So on that note,  here are a couple of photos from my ride on Friday. It WAS FANTASTIC!

Red dirt and empty roads!

Harvesting the wind

Lots of red dirt and the occasional stop sign

Smile like you mean it!

The STRAVA