Saturday, April 12, 2014

Day 12: 30 Days of Biking, NEBC Race Clinic Week 2


Getting race advice for Myles Standish

What a great day for riding! The warm weather is finally here and temps hit 70 today -- it felt so good to be outside in the warm sun!

I spent the day with the some of the girls from NEBC, (plus instructor, Mark) at Fort Devens for my second day of the race clinic. Today's agenda included contact drills and more complex paceline riding -- challenging but fun!

For the contact drills, I learned how to handle contact from other riders during a race and how to avoid a crash if my wheel touches another rider. We spent a lot of time riding on grass, which gave us a softer landing for falls, but it was a tough workout riding skinny tires on a grassy field! I was relieved when we finally went back to the roads for some paceline drills... though at that point I was almost beat.

In the paceline, I was shown how to work as a team to catch a breakaway rider. I did fine until the speed hit 23-24 mph, and then a gap would form between me and the rider in front of me, forcing me to work even harder to catch up. (Thankfully, the second time it happened, Mark dropped into the gap to pull me back up to the paceline.) Those girls are speedy! All are racing at the Myles Standish Road Race tomorrow. Good luck, girls!!

It was a fun day and I loved every minute of it. Next week: Hill work, (OMG. Not my fave), and race starts, stops, and sprint finishes. Can't wait!

#30daysofbiking