It’s extraordinarily difficult to race without expectations. The best I’ve found is something close to converting expectations to hypotheticals — what if? The trick is finding the right questions and asking them of yourself in a way that motivates you, rather than setting up a case for failure. It wasn’t a day to push big watts. The course had a few climbs and it would be all too easy to smash them to pieces, but the suffering would be certain later on if I pushed those kind of watts. What if I rode by heart rate instead, keeping myself under that tenuous line dividing what is and what almost was? I knew all the numbers I needed. The first 20 miles were flat and fast and were gone in a blink, 55 minutes of dodging bikes. If you strung 1500 bikes end to end over 56 miles, would there be room enough for a draft zone between them all? It’s the only way I could conceive of the rules ever being realistic. But people…at least ride to the right. smh. Anyway, the climbs were moderate and so were my efforts to scale them — not my usual approach but today I had the run in mind. 150 bpm was my number: below it was sustainability, above it was ruin. I allowed myself to exceed it only when the gradient gave me no other choice, but otherwise kept it well in hand. All seemed swell until the rains. Torrents of water found me in the second half of the loop, pounding me from above and, with the aid of a biting wind, from the side. By 40 I was chilled and looking to run, if only to generate some heat. Necessarily slowed on the corners due to the suddenly dangerous conditions, I became frustrated and impatient. I focused my mind on fueling, deciding that’s negative thoughts probably meant I was hungry. It certainly didn’t hurt. The primary goal of any bike leg is to survive it intact and riding, and that goal was met. In the end it wasn’t a bad pace, either. But most importantly, I was ready to run. I had a pretty full matchbook and was eager to light some fires. What if I rode smarter than I did hard? Turns out, it goes pretty well.
