On to Stage 3 we move – but crucially (and rather confusingly) not for races. At least, not yet.
I quite like that the breaks between Tour of Makuri Islands stages for racing is longer than that for the group rides. The truth of it is that this morning I didn’t feel ready / rested enough to give a race my best shot. It wouldn’t have stopped me, had it been available, but a few extra days ‘recovery’ can only be a good thing.
Only today was not a recovery ride. Far from it.
If anything it was a stand in race.
The route for today was a new one on me. Temples and Towers.
In some pre-ride recon I found out that Temples and Towers is (or maybe was) Makuri Islands biggest route for both elevation and distance.
That’s 3 KOMs for a total of 280m, and 32.6km of riding.
The KOMs are:
- Rooftop KOM
- Castle KOM
- Temple KOM Reverse / From the fishing village side
You can find out the KOM stats here.
Being the longest route on Makuri Islands (err, I think it is… it might not be with the new expansion), this one takes in all the sights.
There’s the neon down town up first (and last), and then off out into the Japanese countryside for a little climbing.
Or more accurately, a little more climbing, as the first KOM of the day does come inside Neokyo. Hard word to spell is that.
I’d planned to take this ride as a group ride. And ideally I had in mind I’d do this one around 2.8-3.0w/kg.
Yeah… that’s basically not at all what ended up happening.
From the pens I decided to go hard to get with one of the faster groups. This one being ~33km I didn’t want to be there beyond an hour – I have other stuff needed to be done on a Saturday afternoon – so if I could box this one off fairly quickly I’d have time to get a hair shave done whilst in the post-ride shower. Priorities.
I was fine with the second group up to the Rooftop KOM. Of course there was splittage at this point. That was to be expected. But I made it up to the top of the Rooftop KOM still hovering around 35th so was happy enough with this.
Knowing from there we had the descent to the Yumezi tunnel, then out into the countryside I was aiming to do a bit of recovery along the way – with the intention of then putting in a second shift on the longer, and hard Castle KOM into Temple KOM Reverse.
Unfortunately for me that’s not how this one played out. A decent sized group formed up after the first climb and the pace was kept high. The gap between tunnel exit to the bottom of the Castle KOM is about 5km and it’s mainly flat.
But flat means fast. And fast means zero recovery. I was at a high tempo pace and was all too aware my heart rate was around 180bpm and not dropping. Hitting the bottom of a ~5km climbing stint with an already high heart rate would mean only one thing.
Yet again I misused my feather power up on the Castle KOM, dropping it too early.
It’s pretty telling that over the climb today I was ~20 seconds slower overall than on Wednesday.
Fatigue is real.
But I actually felt alright coming out of the top of the Castle KOM. Not great, you understand, but alright.
I’d managed to jump from ~35th at the bottom of the climb to 28th as I crossed the line. But that wasn’t to last.
The gap between the top of the Castle KOM and the bottom of the Temple KOM Reverse is ~2km.
I’d managed to stick with a pack in the transition, but had nearly fallen off the back of the bunch once. Knowing if I lost the draft I’d be done for, I made sure to get back on.
At 2.5km and with an average of 3.6% the Temple KOM was the third, final, and hardest climb of the day. It doesn’t sound too savage but it is a Category 4 climb and with two previous efforts in the legs I was struggling within the first 500m. Not a great omen for the remaining 2km.
If I had to summarise the Temple KOM today I could do so quite easily: a disaster.
I blew up.
Over 40 seconds down on Wednesday’s effort, and this time around I’d had the help of a feather. Wow. Demoralised and dropped, I crossed the KOM marker alone and exhausted.
There’d been three riders ahead of me towards the end of the Temple KOM climb and as I crossed the arch they were 6 seconds in front of me. I contemplated a sprint to catch them, but I didn’t have it in me to stand much chance of catching them.
Naively I figured I’d wait 30 seconds or so and catch my breath, then try a push on the descent to get back on with them.
Yeah… no.
I didn’t have the legs nor the lungs for that.
In the end I saw a small group ~30 seconds behind me, and so I stayed around 2.8-3.0w/kg just waiting for them to catch me up.
On the plus side I knew it was all down hill for a while, then flat to the line. Every cloud.
As best I remember, 4 riders caught me up towards the very bottom of the decent. They were a little pack and passed me so quickly I needed to stamp on the pedals to keep with them.
Fortunately with 10 minutes recovery in the legs I was back to something nearing freshness, albeit a very wet and sweaty form of fresh.
As we meandered along the country lanes back towards Yumezi tunnel and the downtown Neokyo finish line I spotted another small pack behind us going at a decent speed. Personally I wanted to keep them off us, so upped the tempo of our pack to – hopefully – keep a gap.
Yeah… it’s not a race. But it was. At least to me.
Unfortunately they caught us.
And so it was that we rolled towards home as a group of ~10 riders.
Within the final 500m or so it was obvious these lot had a sprint finish in mind.
I tried, but the honest truth of it is I was the last of the ones who sprinted, and the front of the ones who clearly were there for the group ride.
Ahh well. I tried.
Tried, but failed. This was not a strong performance.
It all feels like it went wrong for me today on the Temple KOM. I just didn’t have the legs to see it through. Compared with Wednesday’s race I lost over 1.5 minutes combined over the two climbs. Shabby.
But I can’t fault the workout. I’m still knackered now 6 hours later. Hopefully I’ll feel better after my tea.
Tomorrow’s an easy day. I might even opt for a true FTP Builder 1 hour’s Zone 2 just to keep myself in check. Mentally I’m alright, but physically I’m shot.
Let’s hope that by the time the Stage 3 races roll round this week I’m in better shape.
