The Workout Of The Day for Monday, 9.5.10 “Laborious”

Howdy folks,

Well, it’s Labor Day. I hope ya’all are lucky enough to have the day off (I’m not 😦 )

If you live in the Seattle area, there’s a race today, and it’s worth doing if you haven’t got anything else going on. In fact, for many of you, you can pretty much change channels right now, because your workout today is…

Go Race!

Pretty self explanatory, right? Go hard, kick some “A” if you can. Have fun.

If you haven’t done a bunch of races in the past, use this (and other…) early season races as a way to figure out what your pre-race routine is going to be.

Here are some hints to help you figure things out…

– Pack things up the night before.

It’s better to miss some sleep trying to find something than it is to miss the race. I’ve done both, and there is nothing worse than trying to figure out where the hell you left your damn helmet, as you watch the clock tick inexorably down towards race time.

– Get up early enough so that you can eat your pre-race meal about 3 hours before race time.

Oddly enough, this can be even harder if you have a late race. What do you do when your race is at 2pm? Eat breakfast at 11? Wake up super early, so that you can have breakfast and then lunch at 11? Blech. You need to figure this stuff out for yourself. Good luck.

– Always pre-ride the course.

Find out when the course will be available for preview, and get there much earlier than that.

One of the promoter’s main jobs is to lie to the racers. Assume that whatever time they tell you the course will be open for preview is wrong, and that you will be left scrambling around trying to figure out how and when you can get on the damn course.

– Don’t rely on the course preview for your warm-up unless you have done the race before.

See above. Even if you’ve done the race 100 times before, have a plan B for your warm-up. Bring a Trainer.

– Don’t over do it in your warm up.

I can’t tell you how often I see people leave their best legs on their trainer on race day. There is absolutely no reason to do 2 hours of warm up for a race. More on warming up in a later post. I promise.

– When you get to the race…

First, drive around enough to find a good parking space.

It’s usually worth the time spent, and don’t forget, you aren’t just looking for a spot that’s close to the race, you’re looking for a spot that’s secure.

At least once a season some poor soul at the local races gets their car cleaned out, or stolen in it’s entirety.

Don’t let this happen to you. Be conscious of where you park, who is around the area, and if anybody will sound the alarm if they see your car getting f-ed with.

A couple of hundred people with cars full of expensive gear that they are going to leave unattended for hours at a time sounds like a description of a shopping spree to some folks. Forget this at your peril…

– After you park, grab your spare bike or wheels, walk to the sign in area, sign in, and ASK where the pits are, and what side your number goes on.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people wandering aimlessly searching for the pits when all they had to do was ask. Get directions, and get your stuff down there before you do anything else.

Sometimes getting to the pits is a giant pain in the ass, and it can take forever to get there.

You don’t want to discover the pits are 10 minutes away 15 minutes before race time.

– You’re signed in, spare is in the pit, now you go back to your car and pin your number on.

you know what side it goes on, ’cause you asked. Don’t be that jackass that is too f-ing lazy to pin their own number on, and needs to hit somebody else up for some help just before race time.

Do it your own damn self, everybody else managed to, ok?

– Give your bike a once-over, make sure it’s ready to go.

– Make sure you have your pre-race food and drink ready to go, set aside and easy to find.

– NOW get on the course. after all that other stuff is taken care of.

(I’m not going to talk about pre-riding now. Yeah, yet another future post…)

– Pre-ride until you’ve got things wired, then go back to the car and get on the trainer to warm up if you need to.

– Finish your warm up with enough time to change clothing if you need to, and then get to the start/staging area with more time than you think is necessary.

Race. Have fun.

Done a million races?

OK.

Make sure you’ve got things wired, so that when the “important” race come up further down the road, you aren’t screwing things up by showing up too early or too late, missing your warm up, or doing stupid things like forgetting your socks.