My Sunday started early, getting up at 4 AM to get ready for the Dis-Chem Ride For Sight, a 116km cycle race around the Boksburg / Heidelberg area. This is the second last race before the Cape Argus (with the Carnival City MacSteel 100km race next week being the final preparation-race prior to the big one)
I had an A-bunch seeding, but really didn’t feel up for the pain and suffering which those guys dish out! So I started with the B-bunch, a strategy which really worked out well, since the pace was just right!
I have never done this 116km race before, so didn’t know what to expect, but after having a look at the race profile – and judging by previous results – I thought that a time around 3h15 – 3h20 would be quite decent.
Things turned out really well, since I succeeded in nearly doing a sub-3 with a final time of 3h02! At an average of 38.2km/h, this was way better than I expected. My pacing worked well also, with an average heart rate of 160bpm and average cadence of 88 rpm, pretty much spot-on in terms of what I normally try to keep these parameters at.
The last few months I focused my training a lot on building endurance, in preparation for the Vasbyt, a 151km race in late-March. This also seemed to be very successful, since I felt very strong at the end of today’s race, with a lot left in the legs.
Next weekend is the Carnival City race, a fast and fairly flat 100km route. My previous best on this race was 2h45, so I’ll try to beat that next week.
The coming week’s training will focus mainly on keeping the intensity up, cutting back slightly on volume, since it’s also a “taper week” in preparation for the Carnival City Race.
Let’s hope next week also goes this well!
Tags: cycle race, Dis-Chem, Ride For Sight
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