re: tOfficial Cycling Thread

Just bought a Kickr Core. I know I need to get a cassette but is there anything else I should be clued in about?

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Big race for my son this weekend. Big Mountain Enduro in Ironton, MO. Should be a good judge of where he stacks up nationally against some really solid riders.

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Pretty cool. My son starts training with an Enduro team this summer. They have a Jr team with half a dozen 10-13yos that will train and practice and learn together. He currently races XC with NICA but prefers the more technical riding v. the pretty tame courses NICA sets up for the kids.

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Note to those that ride the Trace. St Tammany is shutting the Lacombe stretch for paving on Wednesday. They say that it should be done by the end of the summer

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Good thing I started running again. No trace through Lacombe and the closure at I-12 leaves like 6 miles of uninterrupted riding through Mandeville? Great

To be fair to them, asphalt paving has to be done in the heat. You can't lay it in the cold, it'll never set up right. But it doesn't take an entire summer to do a stretch of that length. There are contractors that can do it in a couple of weeks. And as you said, that's not even a bad stretch. Boneheaded moves from the parish gov here

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Pretty cool. My son starts training with an Enduro team this summer. They have a Jr team with half a dozen 10-13yos that will train and practice and learn together. He currently races XC with NICA but prefers the more technical riding v. the pretty tame courses NICA sets up for the kids.

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Nice. What area of the country are you in, out of curiosity? Enduro is a ton of fun. Don't let him neglect the NICA and XC, though, as legs (and ability to pedal a long day without getting too fatigued) are huge in enduro. The legs are especially important in southern enduros, as stages can be pretty pedally. My so is having to get back to doing more long training days and working on his leg power. He nails the technical, steep, and scary stuff, but he tends to lose time on the longer pedal-heavy stages. The top 2 kids at this BME were both heavy XC and Cyclocross racers on top of racing Enduro, and it definitely showed on the longer, pedal-heavy stages where you can really separate yourself from other riders (you can pick up more time on a 6 minute stage than a 1 minute stage, and a 6-minute stage likely had a lot of peadling whereas a 1-minute stage is probably purely technical and steep).

At BME last weekend, he dropped his chain on the first stage, but he still finished 5th on the stage, despite having to dismount and put chain back on. On the second stage, he finished 1st, which was awesome. We made the mistake of telling him he finished 1st and was on pace with the fastest riders. He then had a disastrous stage 3, dropping his chain multiple times, then stressing and wrecking trying to push to get back on pace. That sort of continued for the rest of day 1, with mechanicals and wrecks putting him way back in the pack behind a ton of kids who he knew he was faster than. We told him to just finish out the day without getting injured or damaging his bike anymore, and we would regroup for day 2.

We got chainring, chain, rear brake master cylinder replaced and rear wheel trued overnight. Started day 2, but he just wasn't feeling the pace anymore for those 4 stages. Finished like 8th, 3rd, 4th, and 6th on those stages (if he'd even ridden at that pace on Day 1 and played it safe without mechanicals, he probably would have had top 5 finish). He knew he was out of podium contention and just wanted to have fun and not get hurt.

He nearly climbed back into the top 10 despite leaving 3-4 minutes on the course from day 1. Overall, it was a great learning experience. He's 14 and racing against kids who can be as old as 16. He's excited to know that he has the pace to compete with some of the best in the nation in his class in Enduro.

Oh: and he went out on a 25 mile recovery ride of mixed singletrack and greenway yesterday after school, trying to work on getting his legs/base fitness ready for next race in a couple of weeks. Going to have to get him to taper next week before the race, as he's hungry and wanting to hammer.

Quick Instagram clip from his "good" race run on Day 1:

LINK

I did the shorter FTP test (45 minutes)

I didn't do anything after but I was spent. I'm doing a ride tonight so I'll see how it feels.

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FTP tests can be weird. If you don't pace them properly you can end up with skewed results. See how the workout with that FTP feels but I have a feeling it may not be quite high enough.

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I definitely kicked it up a notch the last 5 minutes that were tested so not sure if that made a difference or not.

The first 25 minutes were rough, particularly the inclines, but I don't believe those go towards your results. More like just a warmup.

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how did it go?

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kids were a pain in the arse so I wasn't able to ride...planning on hoping on tonight but it will depend on how the little frick trophies are acting

It is getting hot/humid out there. It’s going to be 94 here Saturday and i’ve got to race in a long sleeve skinsuit and a hot arse aerohelmet