Endurance Update After The Keweenaw Chain Drive Festival

I entered the Keweenaw Chain Drive Festival 30 mile mountain bike race this past weekend and got my tail kicked. I have 2 major things I need to work on. First, I need to learn how to train much better. Second, I need to learn to pace myself. The Lutsen is less than 2 weeks away, so there is not much more I can do to improve my endurance before then. I need to recover from blowing myself up on the 30 mile Chain Drive race and make sure I start the Lutsen off at a nice easy pace, or I’ll never finish it.

This is really the reason I started this blog. I know there are other people out there that share my ambitions and I’d like to share my experience. I want to compete in long distance endurance races, but I know I have a lot of work to. I need to figure out how to train and then how to race. I really want to be competitive and I believe I can be. I am a long ways away from the end goal, but I know what I want. I just need to put the work in and stop beating myself at my own chess game. I’ve done the same thing in 3 events now. First not really being completely ready for it, and then going out of the gate way to strong.

I believe if I were to have backed my pace off at the beginning, that I would have finished 20 minutes faster at the end of the race. I’ve been looking at my heart rate profile over the race, and I was purely just pushing it a little to far and depleting my muscles of oxygen. I only needed to back off a slight bit and I would have been fine.

My plan for the Lutsen at this point is to set myself a pace and not go over that pace for the first 50 miles unless I’m coasting on a downhill. Mile 50 to 75, I will pick it up a mile or 2 depending on how I’m feeling and then try to carry that on for the last 24 miles.

Have you done the Lutsen or any long distance races that you can offer some advice to somebody that is recently getting into racing?

Here is a picture from the race: