Shenandoah 100 Part 1: Planning, Riding, Eating

A big race is a funny thing - it's not the race that is everything, it's the experience of setting the goal, developing the training plan, executing, and finally preparing and completing the event itself. You have to utilize planning, tactics, psychology, nutrition, talent, and finally pure guts. The whole experience from beginning to end is what makes a big event special. The past two years I've gone to the Masters National Championships and walked away with a podium place and top 10 last year. With the arrival of my son, Ethan, this year a 2 week trip to Europe a week before Nationals, and the likelihood of my preparation being as seamless as last year, I decided to focus on the State TT Championships (which I won for my age group), cyclocross and some mountain bike events. After discussing options with my coach, Andy Applegate, I decided to race the Shenandoah 100 outside of Harrisonburg, VA. I like events that are close to my family so that I can spend time with them and still quench my competitive desire.

So with the above in mind I set my plan in place to begin after our trip to Europe in July. I came home and began doing blocks of 3-6 hour rides on the road and mountain bike (highly unusual for a guy that typical trains a maximum of 10 hours a week)! I steadily built up to a century on the road while interspersing the volume with steady state and threshold intervals to prepare me for an estimated 9 hours on the bike and 13,000' of climbing. This would also give me a solid base before turning to the intensity of cross training. All of this lead me to the Blue Ridge Breakaway 2 weeks ago. Since then it's been a combination of tapering and some racing to sharpen the glad so to speak.

This past week was lots of rest, the Ring of Fire Wednesday night, and finally Carb Loading. As most that are familiar with me know, I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates (relatively speaking), so this is a big deal for me! Over the course of the last three days I've been striving to eat somewhere on the order of 700g of carbohydrates. Do a little math - you'll see that this is quite an uncomfortable endeavor! So since Wednesday night my diet has been: recovery shake, burrito, brownie w/ ice cream, granola w/ soy milk and dried cranberries, orange juice, bagel w/ jam, sports drink, flatbread pizza, Fanta soda!, smoothie, graham crackers, rice/chicken/veggies, rice pudding, oatmeal, orange juice, recovery shake, apple/quinoa wrap, chocolate covered pretzels, sweet potato chips, coconut juice, frappacino, trout, rice, bread, grilled veggies, peach/cranberry cobbler, ice cream, cobbler, yogurt, sport drink, recovery shake, wrap, sweet potato chips, bread w/ honey, banana chips, chocolate covered raisins, coconut milk, fig/raspberry bars, then to top it off, pork, rice, zucchini, onions, and succatash that my grandmother made, topped off by homemade oatmeal raisin cookies from Chris Eatough's wife! Seriously I'm very happy that I don't eat like this all the time. I'm looking forward to getting back to my normal diet!

So, it's been a solid two months of training, and I'm sitting in the hotel getting ready to watch a movie and chill after a great dinner and day spent with my grandparents. So good luck to everyone out there tomorrow and a special batch for Andy Applegate, Kris Kjellquist, Jon Seibold, Doug Milliken, and anyone else out there that I know, but don't know is here!