My sixth race at Preston Park

Saturday 9:00 pm. Everything ready for my second audax of the year, The Dean 300km. Last look at my twitter before going to bed and I see this twit

My first thought was "What is that crazy guy doing riding The Dean the day before is meant to be?". My second thought was "Because The Dean is happening tomorrow, right?". And I went and checked, and it turned out The Dean was actually on Saturday!!!

Cool! I had blew up all my cycling plans for the following months (it is not that easy to re-schedule a 300km ride in my already tight calendar). What can I do? Lets go racing. A quick look at the races for today gave the a straight answer, if you want to race today Preston Park again will have to be. Instead 300km I'll ride 30km. Not quite the same, but, hey, I didn't have to wake up at 3:30!!!

Number 1 should be reserved to those that have won at least one race. I haven't

I didn't have to wake up at 3:30 but still I had to wake up one hour earlier to change the bike setup (remove lights, e-werk, mudguards, rack, tyre in the rear wheel, change front wheel and remove handle bag), I can't afford to give the other riders that much of an advantage carrying all that stuff.

Nice day today in Brighton which means lots of riders, some of them faces that I could recognize but to be honest I couldn't tell if they were strong riders or not. Anyway I didn't care, my plan was simple. The wind was not that strong so look out for promising breakaways and try to jump on them, otherwise wait for the likely bunch sprint and try to get it better this time.

And so I did. Well positioned and alert but hidden in the fifth to tenth position in the bunch, a few riders tried to when solo, but I thought they had no chance so I waited for others to bring them back. Apart for some spikes in the pace it felt easy to keep up with it. 

There was one effort that brought me well into the red zone when I jumped into a group that were trying to get away with 20 minutes to go. A solo effort wouldn't make it, a two riders effort, being me one of the riders, would have little chance, but a four or five riders breakaway was another history so I didn't want to miss it. 

Sadly it didn't stick; I guess everyone had the same thought I had. So a bunch sprint was going to be; again.

Fifth, again, as you can see in the picture above; but this time very happy with how I sprinted. My wife had sent me a message reminding me not to stop sprinting until I have crossed the line and I took that as an order. 

The graph below is rather surprising. I thought my maximum heart rate was 184, or at least that is the highest I have seen in the last two years, but today I hit 199. Can I go back to being 21 years old?

BTW is there any price for placing 5th most of the times? Four out of five times I have placed (if I include the Kingston Wheelers 4th cat championship) I came 5th.

Now I have an additional objective for the year. To win a race! 

It will have to wait at least until July now that I had to readjust my Audax calendar and my training for the Quebrantahuesos, but there is plenty of time from July to the end of the year.

Take care
Javier Arias González