On Friday I drove in a two car caravan to join the rest of the group out in the desert in Borrego Springs for Sergio's winter cycling camp. The group had ridden Palomar Mtn. that day, but I wasn't able to go up because of a midterm exam I had that morning.
I was driving my friend's truck, which we fit six bikes and three people in, and of course managed to take a wrong turn. We spent too many miles looking for a street that was not going to be there. We arrived late, which mean't eating late...Mexican food, always hard to guess:
Pre dinner: 71
post dinner:241
Post correction:240
I always have higher blood sugars when I'm away for the weekend, regardless of whether it is a race or not. I do increase my basal rate, but am usually too conservative, fearful of going very low in a strange place. It is also hard to set an alarm for 3am to wake up and test when you have three other people in the room.
Saturday AM:
Fasting: 230
Post Breakfast/Pre Ride:393
1.5 unit correction
At the top of Montezuma: 138, ate 2/3 of Clif Bar and drank more accelerade
mid ride: 130
post ride pre T Run: 130
Pre dinner: 136
post dinner: 151
did eat some trail mix at 10:30 and covered it
The beginning of Montezuma has a lot of climbing, about 3500 fit in 11 miles with grades of 6-8%. I had had a lot of trouble last year with a different ride at the camp. I tend to go anaerobic very quickly without a very good warm up. This has been the case since I ran youth track and has been most apparent the last 6 years. Knowing this and trying to learn from last year...I tried to get out a little earlier than the group and rode for about 15-20 minutes around the hotel complex. There were only about 5 flat miles after that before we started climbing; I would have liked 25...
I definitely would have wanted to start the ride at 150 NOT 393...however my attempt to make the best of the poor situation worked ok. The 1.5 unit correction was enough on top of the breakfast coverage to bring it down, but not too far. The rest of the ride proved easy to control. I covered the bars I ate with 0.3-0.8 units (25% of coverage not during or near exercise) and sipped Accelerade and it was all enough. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn't too anaerobic climbing Montezuma.
Sunday AM:
Fasting: 222
Post breakfast/ pre TT: 254
Post TT: 110
Again too high a fasting; I wish I hadn't eaten the trail mix before bed. Then I would have been able to isolate whether it was purely a need to increase basal over night...but as far as I know it was a combination of both eating late (even though I covered it 100% of normal coverage) and the stress of being at camp.
The time trial went pretty poorly. It was a 40k. The first half is slightly uphill almost the whole way, and it is an out and back. I definitely didn't warm up until at least the half way mark. I rode a couple minutes faster than camp last year, but don't think/hope it wasn't an accurate measure of my cycling fitness. I needed to make myself get out the door earlier and do a better warm up. It is just hard when the continental breakfast at the hotel restaurant is part of the social aspect of the camp!
The corrections of the high fastings and breakfast coverage were enough, so if I can just get it down from the beginning it may make all the difference.
Photos by Tyler Carle
No comments:
Post a Comment