Getting down to specifics

Well it's only a month now to my target race, Pursuit qualifying at Masters World Track Championships here in Sydney, so recent weeks have been taken up with track specific work, done either on the Dunc Gray Velodrome or on the trainer or road.

I've been doing mostly L6 work in various formats along with L7 stuff to work on my starts. This has been filled out with moderate volumes of SST and low L4 work.

Have managed to get out to some RAW (Race All Winter) track meets on the last couple of Friday nights. I was rostered on night shift last Friday but arranged 4hrs leave to race, then rushed back to the Fire Station to begin my shift at 10pm.

Everyone gets about 4 races at these meets organised by Paul Craft. Paul always makes things interesting with unusual and "fun" race formats. For example, last week I had two scratch races, a Keiren and a race he called a Miss 'n' Out Points race.

We started the race with 23 riders, and a Derny following the field. Each lap, the last rider over the line was "eliminated" and dropped back to follow the Derny. You were awarded points as you were eliminated.....1 point for the first rider off, 2 for the second, etc, until it came down to the last two riders, with the winner taking 23 points plus a bonus for the win.

Remember, all this time eliminated riders were dropping back to the Derny. So after the final Miss 'n' Out sprint, it became the world's biggest Keiren with the Derny pulling off the track with two and a half laps to go. Points were again awarded for your finishing position with the overall winner being the rider with most accumulated points.

A very intense race with surges from 45-48kph each lap to try to avoid being eliminated, then tracking the Derny at similar speeds until the final sprint. Gee, it was almost fun :P

I had planned to train on the velodrome with the Sunday morning group but got a call to see if I would fill a Rescue Operators spot that came up as a result of another Firefighter calling in sick.
Overtime rates make it hard to pass up these opportunities, so I loaded my bike and trainer into the car hoping to be able to get a workout done during the day if we weren't busy.

As it turned out, I was able to get in a session of 3 sets of 5 x 30sec @ 400-410w with 30sec recovery @ ~100w. Pretty happy with this as in recent times, I've tended to fade just a touch in the last part of the last reps of each set. Not saying it was easy by any stretch, but manageable....just.

On Monday afternoon a session was arranged at the velodrome with a guy to operate the starting gates for us. So over 90min or so, I managed eight starts from the gates, mostly half laps, but included a couple of full laps and one 500m from the standing start.

Backed up on Tuesday with 2 x 1km and 1 x 1500m standing starts efforts on the road.
Didn't take too much notice of the times since they are affected by a little bit of breeze, different rolling resisitance on the road, etc, but power was 472w average for the first 1km rep, 498w for the second, and 382w for the 1500m. Happy enough with that since 380+w is what I'm targeting that level for my pursuit. With a bit of freshness in my legs it might just be within my reach.

Wednesday was my commute to and from the Fire Station, not ridden too hard, averaging 180w Normalised Power.

Thursday is another trainer workout with 2min L6 reps on the menu, backed up with another set of multiple 30sec on 30sec off reps. Can hardly wait :-)

Mike