Reston Town Center Grand Prix, Cat 4. I had my worst race result of the season today — a voluntary DNF. The first few laps were a crash fest and though I avoided all the crashes, I missed the key break, even though one of the riders I knew I should have been watching was in it. After the break got away, the group continued to hammer, but the with all the big teams represented, there was little chance it was coming back. I suffered at the back, moving up a few spots here and there but never getting near the front. With 12 laps to go, I pulled the plug.
So, what happened? It was a hard race, but it certainly wasn’t beyond my current abilities. The NP for the 40′ I was in was nearly right at my ftp. It did have over 20 bursts of at least 15" over 150% of ftp as opposed to the Amphibious Assault which had only 5, but had a similar NP. But I believe the reason I dnf’d was not mainly physical. Yes, I probably wasn’t going to be tearing up the course on this particular day, but I should have finished the race and been sprinting for a top 10. No the reason, I believe, is psychological. I was never into the race mentally, and the rain and the string of crashes early in the race certainly didn’t help.
One way to deal with with a bad race is to examine the experience for lessons (and not get sulky and snippy as I initially did, just ask my wife). In this case the lesson is fairly simple — I clearly wasn’t on a good day, either physically or psychologically, so I needed to look for other ways to succeed. One answer that became obvious as soon as my brain came out of oxygen debt was the corners — after the field thinned down and the rain lessened, I found I could corner as fast if not faster than the other guys in my group, and even I as would get gapped off on the finishing straight I could make the space up in the corners. Of course, doing so also meant having my rear wheel slide quite a bit, but I held it up every time. If I had been able to look beyond the fear the slides engendered and the pain of the efforts, I would have seen that I could hang in, and because the field was so much reduced, I would have had a good shot at a top 10, 15 at worst. I suppose I need to "reframe" the situation, seeing what was worrying me — the wet corners — as an opportunity and redefine success on that day not as a top 5 finish, but as simply completing a very tough race on a technical, tough course.
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