It's been a while since I reported on a race, but honestly there hasn't been much to report. The VA Cycling calendar has been a disaster of cancellations, and, well, I broke my face. But that happened later, so let's dial back to June...
My wife and I decided to try Whole30 for the month of June. We figured it would give us a great opportunity to dial out the junk grazing and focus on lean proteins. And it did, but it very quickly became evident that the diet was not appropriate for endurance athletics. And I mean VERY quickly.
In the first few days, the pooping was insane. I felt like I was pooping half my body weight, which wasn't much to begin with, and really struggling to consume enough calories to keep my base metabolism satisfied. Whole heaping bowls of food, consumed twice, for each meal, with enormous protein-bomb smoothies in the evening. I know you're not supposed to weigh yourself with Whole30, or even really track your intake, but I also knew, from YEARS of monitoring myself, that I had to get at least 200g of protein (yep, not even kidding) daily with my riding to avoid serious challenges with equilibrium. If I'm low on protein, I'm woozy all day. And that's not even addressing carbs, which are the body's fuel during endurance activities. Whole30 does not like carbs.
On just the 3rd day of the month, I was scheduled to do a crit in VA Beach. Alastair and I got a hotel room nearby and figured we'd hit Starbucks in the morning, grab a protein box, and go race. Only the Starbucks on the way to the circuit is apparently the only free-standing Sbux in the world that doesn't serve food. So...no food. I fed Alastair some snacks we'd packed and sent him off to race, then figured we would have enough time between races to track down some grub. He raced, we searched, and we found what we needed. Problem solved, right? Except there was the pooping.
We got back to the venue and my body said it was time for a wholesale cleanse. In a porta-potty, in direct sunshine. Oh and it was already 90 degrees. So I got to sit there, pooping my brains out for 30 minutes, dying in the heat, BEFORE my race.
When the race started, though, I felt pretty good. The course was pretty technical, with a lot of turns at one end and some barriers close to the course. A couple of turns had loose debris, one had a concrete drain-cover, and there was one turn complex that had a narrow entry, 2 holes, a couple of big jolts, then a really tricky sweeper with a very specific entry that would send you off into the grass if you over-cooked it.
And for the first 8 or 9 laps, I was on. I stayed near or at the front, covered moves, and was really in the groove. But then my fingers started to go numb. Then my toes. Then my whole hands and feet, and my shoulders wouldn't make the finesse-y moves necessary to navigate the tricky turns. I went off into the grass, but kept myself in the group. Then my lips went numb, and I was unable to turn the bike. I was spending more time looking at my hands to see if they were actually squeezing the brakes and shifters than at my competitors, and I mis-judged the sweeper turn. Now it was time to decide whether to chase back on or choose the safe option: get dropped. So, hot on the heels of my first ever "quitting a race", I let myself get dropped.
Feeling came back to my hands and feet, and after 5 minutes of pedaling around by myself (others had already been dropped and were still 100m+ behind me), my energy came back. My pace jumped back up, and I spent the whole 2nd half of the race chasing down and passing other riders as they popped off the lead group. It was a VERY weird experience, and one I wasn't eager to repeat.
The next day was a TT, and the first on my fancy new TT bike. I hadn't pre-scouted the course, but it was supposed to be pretty flat. The poop gods smiled slightly more favorably upon me, and I was able to actually get food in my belly. I rolled off the line hard and put my heart-rate just about where I wanted it, but at about exactly the same time as in the crit, I just went flat again. My heart rate fell, my concentration fell, and my hands started to get numb. And just like the day before, about 5 minutes later I came back on.
It took a few days before I realized what had happened: without CARBS, my body ran on the morning's protein, which is not a good fuel source, until it was exhausted. Then it tried to switch to fat-burning, but there's not a whole lot of that on my 140-lb frame. I might actually have done better to skip breakfast entirely for the TT and started on a fat burn, but at only 4 days into Whole30, I hadn't yet figured out how to fuel my body for a day's exertion.
I ended up 5th of 7 in my first TT on proper equipment, and promptly ordered a speedsuit. I've since also removed the front mech and inner ring, and hope to find a few other little optimizations on the bike before campaigning it again next month. Can't wait to see how that will go, especially now that I'm eating proper foods again.
But with the numbness and mental fatigue, I decided to lay off the racing for a bit and just focus on keeping my mileage up.
I tried a metric on a business trip 3 days after the TT. I knew to keep my heart-rate out of the red, so I figured I'd do it Z2/3 and just have fun. I carried about 1200 calories of Whole30 approved snacks, and ended up running out of food by mile 50, with no good dining options available. The bonk hit hard a few miles later, and it was all I could do to get back to the hotel at ~15mph. By the time I got there, all the local restaurants were closed, and I was operating on a calorie deficit of about 2800 on the day. Whole30 can suck it: I ordered a supreme pizza, which is my usual post-ride go-to. Only this time I was shaking so hard I was almost convulsing. By the time the pizza came I had all the symptoms of severe shock. I gobbled down as much as I could stomach, and it tasted awful. If Whole30 had done one thing good by that point, it was to have rid me of the desire to eat cheap cheese and salty meats.
I got back on the program and set my sights on July. I would race, and I would race hard. I kept up steady training, and while my sprint went away over the month, my ability to hold power came up. My rides became more like consistent high-Z3 TT efforts, and I logged miles on the TT bike just to get more familiar with it.
And then I wrecked.
Coming home from work on June 25, I figured I'd be the polite cyclist and use park roads instead of public roads, where possible. As I was entering the park, though, there was a semi-solid pipe (the kind they use for fire-hydrant flushing) laid out across the road. I lifted my front wheel over it, but didn't clear the back wheel, and flipped right over onto my face. I credit the Giro Air Attack Shield helmet with saving my right eye and preventing a concussion, but I had to get stitches in my chin, and I suffered a boxer's fracture in my right hand. I apparently did exactly as I'd trained myself and rode the bike to the ground, keeping my hands on the bars the whole time. I spent most of the evening in the ER, and I've been in a removable hand brace ever since.
It should come off one week from today, but my racing season is officially over. I've lost a lot of strength in my right hand, and while I can still ride (and have logged ~150 miles / week since), I can't do much with the rear brake, and I'm slow to shift. I can ride the TT bike, though, so I'm going to do one last TT to finish the year.
I may try to hit some fondos, too. Just 4 days off Whole30 (and 9 days after the wreck), I did another metric charity ride in North Carolina. I missed the start by 10 minutes and had to chase the whole time, but ended up catching most of the riders, and finished at 21.4 mph, feeling pretty great.
I'm hopeful to be fully capable again by the time cyclocross season starts, but honestly I'm not very optimistic. This may be a regrouping year, and a chance to focus on maximizing Alastair's opportunities to compete. That should, in turn, help keep costs down, because you don't break what you don't race.
