smackdown with a twist

The demise of the BikeWorksMA TT, or maybe just a hiatus, has sort of left a few of us who've counted on it as a fun summer weekly race to prep for CX kind of lost.

Not having that 20 min effort every week is part of why I'm feeling slower and more out of it this year. Sure you can do your own intervals and TTs and all that but the extrinsic motivation that came with rolling up to the TT start, handing Bob $5-6, lining up and going as hard as you can week in and week out for 4-6 weeks is really hard to replicate for me on my own.

I found a bit of a motivation by trying out a new TT course. Calling it the Medalist TT course. Way more challenging than the BW one, hilly. Starts with a broken pavement downhill, over into the second half of Hillside, carrying speed through a right hand turn up to the top of Pine and then slightly downhill all the way to Rocky Hill from the North. Finishing with a steady hard but not steep climb.

We tried it out the first time with Andrew and Steve and Jason, was good, hard and I died well before the finish. Barely climbed to the top. That day we ran into GR on the ride home. We tried a second loop but there was a lot of chip and seal and it finished climbing Rocky Hill the steep way, downside for me was I managed to turn off the strava ap so i don't have that run recorded.

Went out a week ago on sunday, underfueled and tried it again. Wasn't terrible. I was definitely feeling a bit of the fuel issue but at least I got the course set.

Tuesday last week Myles Burke and Fox and a kid headed to try the Smackdown with a twist. The kid got a flat on the Henderson and hopefully he had stuff to change one with him because we were way gone before we realized it. Myles rolled up to let us know as he had only a tube and no inflation device.

With Jason we headed up the fastest way. Tuesday we headed up the normal way and for the first time ever Fox pulled for the length of Pine and it was all I could do to stay on his wheel. It hurt. And we really weren't taking it easy but instead of heading around the normal smackdown loop we turned over down Hillside to the start point for the Medalist TT.

We went off in a loose 15 second or so interval spacing, I got caught at the turn onto Pine by three cars in succesion, had to basically stop and Burke more or less rolled up on me as I was waiting, so that kind of made it interesting. I was dropping him on the hills and he was going past me on the flats. Maybe me on the CX bike had something to do with it. That was the other change for me. The other two times I'd done the course I was on the Paramount. Heavy, but aero and nice road gears with clip ons. The CX bike has CX gearing. I probably messed up the strava segment creating it because the time was way off.

SO yeah the twist was we did the medalist TT, then finished the Smackdown loop, aka we rode over to Hillside and climbed it completely then raced back on Read/walker over to 152. I got shelled on Hillside. Stomach was cramping from eating too late. Why eat too late? well it was that or not eat at all, figured usually it is okay. But I pushed so hard on that final climb in the TT section that I created a bit of distress i think. Oh well. It was a good day on the bike. Didn't sleep at all that night, it was hot and muggy and my legs were feeling the effort and i was wired from too much coffee too late in the day. A hole I'm still in that finally caught up to me yesterday on the way home.

Yeah worked both days this weekend on top of a long and somewhat stressful week. A fire at work, lots of unexpected challenges.

Going to try and find a day to get the TT effort in this week. Talking with Steve I think maybe we'll just hit the old course anyway. Do it bandit style, and strava timed or something. We'll see.

heddwch
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