Heads up: I know these races do not come under the Tour of Makuri Islands. These are from the Race Makuri series. I covered this here. Whoops!
Moving into the final week of the Race Makuri series and that means Stages 5 and 6… or, Stages 5a and 5b. An unusual one from my point of view, but then I’ve never done a race series before so maybe this is normal?
The gist of this is that the two stages are to be taken back to back. You do one, then immediately do the next.
For me, Stage 5a (this one) was scheduled in for 12:10. I think as the B Group we actually set off at 12:11, but let’s not split hairs.
The event wasn’t given a maximum duration, but the quirk today was that in order to do the next event – Stage 5b – as a back-to-back effort, we needed to be done and dusted in less than 20 minutes. That’s because Stage 5b would begin at 12:30… or 12:31, but again, we aren’t splitting hairs.
At 7.1km and only 36m of climbing, this route promised to be fast.
Fast fast.
And promises were kept, as this one was intense from the off.
I figured this one would take approximately 10 minutes. I’d guessed at this yesterday and that’s why the Critical Power graph from yesterday’s ride summary was hovered over the 10 minute marker – so I could refer back to it.
If you can’t be bothered clicking, and I don’t blame you if you can’t, then my best 10 minute power hovers around 266w.
Going into this one I reckoned I’d be around that figure for the duration.
However, once underway, any thoughts of sustaining a steady power output were forgotten. The key thing was to stick to the bunch like the glue.
My suspicion was that due to the short distance, the front runners would nail it from the line and I’d risk my race being over before the first kilometre was done.
Fortunately with ~40 riders in the race there were enough up front to find a wheel even if I wasn’t close to the front. And whilst the intensity out of the gate was high, it did ease off after the first minute / kilometre.
Surprising myself, I was still with the front ~30 or so after 4km. The pace was fast but it settled at a clip I was able to sustain. Key things for me were to stay in the draft – not end up on the front, or worse, off the back. And having picked up a feather power up, not using that until things got real towards the end.
Against all the odds I was still hanging on when it came to the final kilometre to go marker.
I was fully expecting the fast boys to leave me eating dirt around this point. But it didn’t happen.
What occured, as best I recall, was that one guy put the hammer down at around the 700m marker and ditched the lot of us. That put the cat amongst the pigeons and whoever was going to go was made to go.
Being overly competitive, and fresh enough, I went for it. I wasn’t sprinting but I was way into anaerobic territory.
As is to be expected, I got passed by several riders. but with judicious use of my second lucky feather power up, and as much mustard as I could muster, I managed to place 14th which I was super pleased with.
I know I’m never going to be competing for the top spots, but to get close to the top 10 is a definite improvement over my usual middle of the road results.
Maybe these shorter rides play to my ‘strengths’.
Interestingly from my point of view I held an average 266w power figure – completely by coincidence – over the 9:52 it took to finish. That was definitely propped up by a strong finish as I’d eased off in several places during the lap.
And with the event taking only 10 minutes (10 hard minutes, mind), I then had another 10 minutes to recover before we got to do it all over again in Stage 5b. Lucky us.
