TNCWC

I finally made it out to my first TNCWC(Tuesday Night Criterium World Championship) in about 2 months. The TNCWC is a weekly practice race held on a safe 1 mile course in a local business park on the south side of Columbia. My goal for the ride was to get in a lot of hard efforts and ride at race speed. I've done plenty of miles over the summer, but I need some more speed work to get ready for several races I have left.

After a good 20+ minutes warming up, I arrived at the start line, just in time. I attacked a few times, got into some breaks, and was generally very active off the front. Nothing would stick for much more than a lap, which actually is a good thing from a training standpoint. In the middle of the race there was a 22 min segment at 343w NP(109% of FTP), so looking back I can see why I could barely hold on while Karl drove the break I was in towards the end of that 22 minutes. After that break was caught, I relaxed for a while. At about 45+ minutes in I was sitting mid-pack, contemplating a two laps to go attack. Before turn 3 on that lap I noticed that the pace went up a bit and I slipped back a little. Turns out that I missed the memo about the race being shortened. I just assumed that it was 50 + 2 laps, but apparently it was 45 and we were now finishing. Rather than launch into my sprint from 25th wheel, I just rolled through the finish line and continued riding hard for a couple more laps to top of the workout. I have no idea who won the race, since I was so far back at the finish.