TnT #4 - Paceline Practice and Other Fun Stuff

Team,

I'm a sprinter at heart, this hill climbing stuff is for lightweights!

As there is large team contingent busy packing to head to Penticton, some of us have a race to get ready for this weekend. Lets do some fun stuff tomorrow night on Retreat Road.

We can take our usual route through Church Ranches and head to Woodland Road with the focus to be pacelining, proper drafting, feeling the space required to maximize draft and minimize cross wheeling. We can head to 1A, turn on Lochend Road to Retreat Road and back to Walmart.

The group has separated a few times with the mix of riders and hopefully we can all work together to see this is a practicing opportunity and mentor our new riders.

What I do think can be lots of fun for us to try with the group, depending on the numbers, is a few lead outs at predetermined stretches of road.

If we have a good size group, we can assemble the stronger riders for some good lactic acid threshold work. The newer riders, if they want to take part, can start the train moving, pull off and let the next rider up the pace until the last rider takes the sprint. After the sprint, we can all reassemble, have some laughs, taunt about the next sprint and continue back. I am thinking that Woodland Road might be okay to try it, Retreat Road would be good, we can even try it in that new subdivision that we raced in last year for the NW C4 crit. If we can get recovery in, we might be able to get 2 or 3 of these in the night and still be able to have good practice time.

We also have to see the conditions for wind, if its crazy windy, we will pass.

There might be issues with finding a good long piece of road for Rob to get up to his 76mph sprint on.

This extra practice will benefit the guys racing this weekend and hopefully add some fun to the ride. I would hope that the Cat 4 guys that are racing in Velocity this weekend would see this is an excellent opportunity to see/meet the other riders that are going, talk some strategy for Velocity and guage their fitness levels. As you can see the attached photo of yours truly, I really need the lactic acid training race prep.

Post a comment if you have any suggestions about the ride,

Slayer Dan