Another Thursday arrives, and so a new race for the week begins.
This week we were in for two laps of the Loch Loop, a new route on me. Each lap was 8km with 71m of climb.
An initial mistake today was getting on too late. No warm up. However, it didn’t seem to negatively impact me as by the end of lap 1 I was sufficiently warm(ed up), and still with the front bunch.
Speaking of being warm, today is a rather spicy 27c. Considering the average temperature over the last month hasn’t really been up above 20c, this one seems to have come out of nowhere. Although that said, the weather forecast did predict it, and it is here, for one day only.
Given that I knew today was going to be hot – even more so indoors – I had thought I might swap a few things around this week and ride my race yesterday, then go out today. However, the last two days have been back to back meetings, so that plan went out of the window. And last time I raced on a weekend it was a real fail, so I figured to heck with it, just race today.
Anyway, it was ridiculously hot. Of all days to not be able to find a headband before my ride, this was a bad one for that to happen. My towel was nothing more than a sopping wet rag by the end of it.
The lap itself has a few small challenges.
There’s the typical blast out of the pens, although that wasn’t so bad today. I wasn’t even above threshold, for once.
Then around 3km in there’s a little roller. That’s the first spike as the bunch accelerated, catching me off guard. From there the pace quickened as we went into a series of small bursts of acceleration for the next couple of kilometers, culminating in the first stab at the Breakaway Brae, a 0.6km KOM segment at 2%.
It sure doesn’t sound like much, but that’s going to test your ~1 minute power, remembering that you’re sustaining race pace both before and after.
I struggled after that attack, and found myself in the second split as we went up the snaking S bend up to the Castle. This is another ~10m of climbing that comes fast and will require an out of the saddle effort, especially if like me, you find yourself off the back.
Somehow I did manage to get back on – which I suspect is because the front group slowed and because I had a draft van power up to help pull me up faster than I might otherwise have ascended.
From the top of the castle, down the corkscrew and then back on to the final uphill part of the lap back to the finish line. All of that comes in the space of 1.5km, and that covers the last ~20m of climb for the lap.
Then it’s repeated.
Broken By The Breakaway (Brae)
I’d done no recon for this race, beyond seeing the route map on the companion app last night.
As such I thought the hard part would be the Castle corkscrew.
Not so.
Where I got dropped today was the Breakaway Brae.
As above, this will see you needing to put in a solid 1 minute effort. I did not do this on my second lap.
Without even noticing the KOM start marker, the KOM arch, nor the big leaderboard that flashes up on the left of the HUD, I completely underestimated the intensity that would go into that second lap KOM and was very abruptly dropped.
It’s absolutely my own fault.
I put in an out of the saddle dig – my hardest push of the race – but I was dropped just shy of the KOM banner, and had nothing left to get back on.
What annoyed me was, during the race itself, I had no idea how or why I had been dropped. It’s only in the aftermath, looking at the screenshots that yes, face palm, now I realise. It was a KOM. Whoops.
Anyway, don’t make my mistake. Be ready for that attack each lap, because that’s one of the hardest parts of the race for sure.
From there it was a solo bash back to the finish line. I was working at a higher, harder pace for the last 4-5 minutes than I had been doing for the rest of the race, and by the time I crossed the line I was dead.
Often, pre-ride, I think I’ll stay on after my race and see out the hour. And almost always after the race is done, I cannot wait to unclip and get off. Even more so today as I was dripping wet.
Another fine race result for me.
