I felt that I was well prepared for RAIN this year, and I think my time bears that out. It is no easy task to average 21 mph over 165 miles. True, I did get help from drafting, but so did everyone else out there. The event was tough, but I was trained for it. What follows is a list of the high points of my training and an evaluation of what I did.
Total Amount of Miles
I had 3250 miles before leaving for Indiana for the year. A big part of the preparation for these sorts of events is that you need a large bulk of miles, and I had that. In these 3200 miles, I had a well established endurance base. When I got up around 1800 miles for the year, I could feel my speed increase, telling me that my legs had accumulated enough miles so I could work on strength and power, and not just endurance. One of the things about these rides is that there is no substitute for time in the saddle, and I had this. It is hard for me to say I could have done more miles, as 3200 in half a year is a significant amount.
Long Rides
To do an event that is a long ride you need to train by doing long rides. It would seem natural that if you have 3200 miles in half a year, this is the case. In my case, it was. Before RAIN, I had completed 6 rides of 100 or more miles. And I wasn't just hitting the century mark and calling it quits. 4 of those rides were over 127 miles and another was 109 miles. Further, I had two rides that just missed the century mark, a 97.5 and 95 miler. So I didn't just have a lot of time on the bike, I was accustomed to being on the bike for a full day at a time. If I had only been doing 75 or even 100 mile rides, doing 165 in a day is quite a jump. But I had been used to doing 130+, so RAIN wasn't a big jump for me.
Finally, on these long rides, I varied my routes quite a bit. I rode to Madison. I was in the Navarino area a lot, but all of these routes were different in some way. One went to Waupaca. One went to Tigerton. One of the rides was the GLR 200 km brevet. So I got accustomed to doing long rides on different routes, which is also important.
Weather
When an event is your main goal for a season, you have to be prepared to ride no matter what the weather. Normally we associate this to getting some riding in while it is rainy (no pun intended), and I did that. Not many, but enough that I still knew all my equipment worked and I kept my familiarity up with wet conditions.
As it turned out, it was a blistering hot and humid day. But I had done similar training rides. The ride to Madison was a hot humid day. So was the ride on July 4th. And both of those were rides over 100 miles. So yes, the heat and humidity was hard during RAIN, but I'd been there before. On those training rides, I had probably not hydrated enough, so I was prepared to hydrate adequately on the day of my event. This is always important. On event day, I had no problem because I had seen similar conditions in training. And any mistakes I had made in training, I had corrected by event day.
Taper
Two weeks before RAIN, I started to taper so I could peak for the event. The first week of tapering, I still did 174 miles (down from 266 the previous week). I was still feeling a little tired though. Part of this was due to all the miles from previous weeks and still a lot in the taper week. Part was probably due to the heat and humidity we had that week. The week directly in front of RAIN I did just 62 miles before heading down to Terre Haute. As it turned out, this was perfect. I was rested and ready to go the day of the event. So a two week taper realy seemed to work out well.
Other
I have done only a couple group rides this year. Part of it is my schedule, part of it is lack of interest in riding with a group, part of it is a hard time finding others with similar goals. The downside of this is that riding in the pack at RAIN, I didn't have a lot of recent experience riding in the peleton. But I've done enough of this before to get by. The upside though, was I was used to being out front all by myself. So getting into a pack, things were much easier because now I had people to draft off of. I didn't have any cheap miles in my training where I sucked wheels all day. Just the reverse. I was used to doing all the work, so getting some help in the pack was a refreshing change.
A lot of the roads I train on in Wisconsin are very rural roads. These have what one would call slow pavement. It is rough, hard to go fast on and takes a lot of energy. Much of RAIN is on US Highway 40, a road with a smooth asphalt surface. So once again, my training on bad roads helped me, because in this way, my training conditions were harder than the event conditions.
What Could I Have Done Better?
It is hard to improve on a 21+ mph average, but one can always improve. First, a little more speed work in terms of intervals would have been nice when riding with the pack. The pack tends to accelerate and decelerate quite a bit. Not supposed to be this way, but it happens. I could always close gaps down, but I was more like a diesel engine doing it. Some speed work would have helped my be a little more nimble for those quick burst of acceleration one needs.
The other area I could improve on is core strength. This is always a weakness of mine that I never seem to get motivated to work on. There were a couple times my back was a little sore. That happens on a long ride. But some better core strength would help this.
Overall though, I have to say I am pleased. I trained a lot, and that training paid off. I think my time proves that what I did in training was effective. Could you do RAIN by riding less miles. Sure. You wouldn't go as fast, but you could. But part of training is to make sure you are prepared for whatever comes at you on the day of the event, and in this way, I felt like my training had prepared me in every way.
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