It is now only one day before the 1000 Warriors race.  Tomorrow morning Anne will be driving John and I up to Park City for the race start.  We will need to leave here at 5 am.  Anne will be providing support at the feed zones but will not be following us on the course.

Every time I approach a big climbing even, I am always concerned about my weight.  There are two ways to climb faster, reduce the weight (of the rider or the bike) or output more power. Being 61 years old I am not sure I can output much more power. My bike is about as light as it is going to be without spending a lot more money. So I can only work on my body weight. Training has helped and I am now down to 138.5 lbs (63 kg). So there is nothing left to do but pray.

We are close enough that the weather forecast is getting to be accurate.  Rain is no longer in the forecast, which is a good thing.  But instead we are going to have hot weather.  Last year at the start it was 42 degrees, rather cold.  Tomorrow it should be around 58 degrees at the start.  That is nice biking weather, but the climb up Snowbird is going to be a cooker.  I start up Wasatch around 11:00 am, and it should be in the high 80′s.  The climb up Snowbird will be in the mid 90′s.  I hope it cools a bit as we climb to a higher elevation.

Training a few days before a race does not provide any benefit and may cause more harm if you get injured or too tired. So we all try to taper down but that is not much fun.  I really finished my last real training ride on Tuesday, although Anne and I did go out for a 25 mile ride yesterday (Thursday).  She beat me up South Fork by over 4 minutes, because I was determined to take it easy.  Some pains in my Achilles tendon today makes me think maybe I should not even have done that easy ride.

Looking at my training log, I see my mileage over the past 8 to 9 weeks has been quite similar to last year before the same race.

The feet of climbing per week shows a different story.  Part of this was due to traveling to Washington state where it was just flat riding and part was focusing on getting Anne ready for the Ulcer flat century.  My climbing was not at the same pace as last year, except in the last couple of weeks were I nearly caught up.  I am not sure if more climbing toward the end will be better than if it were spaced over several weeks.  We will see tomorrow.  Week 9 is this week and I have included in tomorrow’s ride.

Categories: Warrirors Race TofU
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