The Race To The Top

With legs now absolutely in bits after 5 days training I decided not to go on a big epic island loop that would see me racing the sunset for home.

Some of you may have watched the Wiggins documentary that shows him training in Tenerife. To recap... there is some great footage of Shane Sutton, head coach pacing him up the climb on a scooter. Wiggins narrating "it feels like your head is under water and all you want to do is pull the plug, but you can't ". He is making the analogy of the suffocating feeling of trying to peddle hard at such a high altitude.

I set off to have a run at the same accent this morning.

It's a good steady two hour ride to reach the starting point of Vilaflor a small town the last of which you go through on your way to the top of the south face and the highest village on the island.

The legs were well warmed up as I was riding into Vilaflor some 1400m or so above sea level. I lit up going through the start of the town to make sure I would get the longest of the strava segments and not some half assed one that people create cause they didn't start at the bottom.

In mind I was thinking it would take about 40 minutes. 5 minutes in my legs were struggling sore from the compounded stress of the previous days, I knocked it back a bit from 350 to 330 Watts. Sreaming down one after the other the British cycling squad, they shot past on the other side of the road, would have been fun to turn round and join them for a few hours.

About half way I'm fighting to maintain the effort, unsure if it's the legs just not feeling good or the lack of oxygen at 1800m. I knock it down a gear thinking that will help but it was akin to giving a gambling addict more money in a casino to help him win his way back to even! Getting out of the saddle didn't offer much to the cause either a few sprightly turns of the cranks, then left chasing lactic acid  for the next few minutes.

A rider in the distance acted like a target and coming up from the last switch back turn I was out of the saddle sprinting to catch him, I passed him just over the top at 2100m, "wanker" he probably said to himself.

I pulled into the right and slumped over the bars gasping for air,  a friendly voice asked the wanker  "are you okay?"