Sebring Practice.

Its been awhile since my last race and I want to have a good Sebring 12 hour ride so this weekend I decided to simiulate the race, from friday evening throught the race finish. The practice mimmick the times I would do things the food and beverages I would drinking the night before, wake up time, what I have for breakfast, what meds I would take and what I would eat and drink on the ride. Most importantly the actually Computrainer ride was designed to try and simulate what I believed the race would be like.

Prerace prep consisted of making up bottles of spiz and cytomax in the concentrations that I would use during the ride, making sure I had the right foods to go along with the drinks - 4 packs of shot blocks and making sure the bike, computrainer and computer were ready for in the morning.

Next we have feeding and care of the Animal. The animal loves pizza and beer and they make up my prerace meal. I sometimes add a submarine sandwich if I'm really hungry. I'll will also drink a bottle of pedialyte the night before and event so not only do I carb load, fat load and protien load, I also electrolyte load.

When working on my timing for an event I usually work backward from the start time to get my schedule down.

T-12 - Dinner
T-11 - Ibuprofen PM
T-10 - Sleep
T- 2 - Wake and do Yoga.
T-1.5 - Breakfast
T-0.5 - Prerace Drink.

Getting a good 8 hour sleep in the night before an event is key. If you can do 8-10 per night for 2-3 nights before longer events you will bank up sleep which will allow you continue functioning long past 24 hours. I also always try to get my breakfast in at least 1 1/2 hours before the start of an event so that its mostly digested by the time I start.

Since today was below 30 degrees, race simulation took place on the computrainer. That is the best way to do it unless you have a group of crazy friends that wants to ride 9 to 12 hours. My plan for the race simulation was to do back to back Ironmen on the computrainer and work with the silverman as a riding partner to maximize the speed and total output of the event to simulate how I beleived the race would go.

The first race I did was IM Louisville - I ended up finishing IM Louisville in 4:46 and 264 watt average. The second race I did was IM Florida - I rode it in 4:43 and average 255 watts output. I was extremly please with the my day in the saddle (averaging 23.5 mph), my drink and food choices (8 Spiz, 4 Cyto, 4 shot blocks) and the overall experiment.

I had done a very similar ride to this last year before Sebring and the good news is this year I beat my times for both events by over 15 minutes and put out over 5% more power and could still stand after the 9:30 in saddle. Pretty sure I could have knock out around 280 if I had gone for 12 hours. I believe have a couple elements of successful sebring in hand, now I need good drafting partners, good weather, and no mechanicals and I could have a shot at the 12 hour record.