It has been almost two full weeks since my last race and will be another one until I make a final run at the season. Despite having opportunities to race, I decided to pull the plug for a few weeks in order to rebuild my form ahead of the regional and state championship races. I have and will continue to spent nearly all of my time at FTP and SST in order to hopefully generate a few more watts. I’ve discovered over the past several races that what is holding me back is sustainable power and the ability to ride and recover at or slightly below FTP. Will this short rebuild work? I don’t know, but I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut at the moment and had to change things up before the season ended.
I’ve made another change that will hopefully garner some results, changing pedals. For the last three races I’ve had problems clipping in during the later portions of the race because my current pedals (Shimano XTs) keep filling with debris. In fact, during Sienna Lake I went nearly a quarter of a lap over bumpy terrain without being clipped in, which I feel cost me a top 20 finsh. As such, I have purchased a set of Crank Brothers Candy 3 pedals, which, thus far, are really nice. I like the size of the platform and the 4x entry makes them easy to clip in to. I’m still not as solid clipping in quickly as I am with the XTs, but I’m comfortable enough to finish my season on them. The only thing I don’t know yet is how good the mud clearance is. Fundamentally, there is a lot more open space in the pedal body, so I would think the mud clearance would be fantastic. We haven’t had any since my last race, so this isn’t something I have been able to test.
Back to training. I still have a nagging goal of getting a top 20 finish and only two very difficult races left to accomplish it.