You're never too old to learn. As the senior citizen racer on our team, that's a bit of tough pill for me to swallow. After winning six national championships and three world championships, I thought there wasn't much more to do to improve my racing. Errrr, Wrong!
Let's look at the numbers. Prior to my hip surgery in November, I had been off the bike a total of 3 days in the prior 12 years and that's because my bikes didn't make it on my flights to a few championship races. In 2011 my average weekly hours on the bike were 34. In 2012 I went back to work full time and my average weekly hours dropped to 24. That's the average for the 52 weeks in each year. I never ever felt tired on my bike. I had no interest in taking a day off. I always wanted to ride my bike. I thought I knew everything.
But a seed was planted three years ago when a friend of mine, a seasoned racer and coach, John Hunt, after years of trying to convince me that my TT position was wrong, twisted my arm enough to get me into his lab and worked on my position. I had been to the wind tunnel and spent thousands of dollars trying to find the perfect position and thought I had and no one could convince me otherwise. He changed me radically simply by using his very trained eye.
I had raced the Satley TT many times and thought my PR was behind me but the first time I did it in the John Hunt position I set a new PR by a full 2 minutes. Then I won 2 national championships and a world championship. I guess I didn't know everything.
Now I didn't go to school to simply carry my lunch bag but some say I am a bit of a stubborn man. John was familiar with my riding habits and always just shook his head and told me I was leaving some significant performance on the table because he thought I was chronically fatigued. What did he know!
As I was lying in my bed recovering from having my hip joint replaced, I thought 'hmmm, he's done it once, maybe I should let him try again'. So I signed up to have John coach me and see what would happen.
Well, we're a month into the program and the effect has been dramatic. I go easy most days and hard a few. I take one day a week off (my wife loves that), something completely unheard of for 12 years.
I did a performance test in his lab at the end of last racing season to get a checkpoint on my physiology. We did the identical test two days ago. Somehow, ner magically, my heart rates are 15 beats per minute higher for each training zone from where they were when I was in peak condition having just won a World road racing championship in October. That's a 10% increase.
It looks like I have been chronically fatigued for the last 12 years and never felt it and didn't know it. My best races were when I could get my heart rates the highest. I think we're onto something cool here.
As I slumped over my bike at the end of the National Championship road race in Bend in September, I was fried. I sucked in the race and didn't really know why. I had just returned from winning the World Championships in South Africa a few days before and chalked it up to jet lag. My old friend and most feared competitor, Dave Zimbelman, was packing up his bike in the car beside me and I told him how I felt. He said "you know Rob, it's really important for us old guys to get proper rest, it's the most important thing for me when it comes to being good in races".
Maybe those two seeds, one from John and one from Dave, have germinated in my mind and because of that I'm going to get faster. Perhaps I've finally learned that rest is underrated and I don't know as much as I thought I did. Stay tuned!
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