Lack of Endurance

To help make up for my shortened ride at Tynong on Saturday, I decided to joined the Club's Wednesday morning ride for the first time. The start time was 5:55am about 40 mins ride from my house, so I decided to leave home about 5:30am and join up when I saw them heading towards me. Since daylight savings, it is now still dark early in the morning and it was only Peter's Canadian accent that identified the group as it approached.

My previous Wednesday morning rides have been with the North Rd Road, and I'd noticed the group splits at Mordialloc with some heading back down Beach Rd and others continuing along Nepean Hwy towards Mt Eliza. I'd never done the Mt Eliza version of the ride before and always wondered what it was like (the Beach Rd version is a very fast ride back to St Kilda with speeds averaging between 45 to 50). I was cruising along at the back of our Club ride along Nepean Hwy (past Mordialloc) when the North Rd Ride caught us with us. I noticed the faster riders in the Club ride were jumping onto the North Rd peleton, so I jumped on too.

Unlike Beach Rd, Nepean Hwy has lots of traffic lights. Not wanting to be cut off from the peleton by red lights, I moved up towards the front and ended up in the rotation doing the work at the front. It didn't take long to work out that there were only 7 of us doing all the work for a peleton of about 50 riders. Clint later told me that most riders were saving themselves for the Epic Melbourne to Warnambool ride that Saturday, but this didn't make the effort any easier.

The peleton was travelling at roughly 48kph. We had a tailwind, but this was still a lot of effort. As part of the rotation you held the front spot between 5 and 10 seconds. But this also meant that as the outside rider (before taking the front), you had to ride faster than 48kph for 5 or 10 seconds to take your place at the front. Once taking the lead you could slow back down to 48kph. But I found I always had to surge as the next rider took over the lead as they were always travelling faster and I didn't want to create a gap. With only 7 riders doing the work, I was only getting 10 to 20 seconds rest before having to move to the outside lane and ride faster as I lined up to take over the lead once again.

After 30 minutes of participating in the rotation I could feel my legs starting to feel the effects. I managed to slip back two rows behind the rotation and suddenly everything felt so much easier. Unfortunately I made this move too late and only got a few minutes of respite before went hit the Kars St climb as we left Frankston and entered Mt Eliza. Being near the front allowed me to take the climb a little easier and slowly move backwards through the pack, but I quickly found myself at the very back. We turned off into Baden Powell Drive and I started to struggle. I could have turned myself inside out to keep up, but decided to head home once we reached Humphries Rd.

The puncture during the Tynong ride hid my lack of endurance. But the North Rd Ride definitely exposed it. So in summary, I can currently produce good power for 30 minutes which is fine for a Sprint Distance Triathlon (like London), but I need to greatly expand upon this to do well in Olympic Distance and Half Ironman Triathlons.