CapeEpic Stage 6

Niclas: Welcome to the Afasteryou Podcast, where everything revolves around endurance sports and training. Here Sebastian Schluricke, Björn Kafka and Niclas Ranker share valuable tips and insights to help you take your performance to the next level. Good evening and welcome to a new episode of the Faster U Podcast, Cape Epic Edition. It was Stage 6, day 7. One more day to go. And it rained. 86 kilometers and 2,500 meters of climbing to conquer. The whole thing entirely in this valley of Lawrenceford. So everything in just one, well, they call it a basin here. That's quite interesting, because Lawrenceford is basically just a wine-growing area, so kind of like a farm. And it's so huge that you could easily ride 120 kilometers inside it. They have so many trails, so many climbs, really impressive. Very, very beautiful. But the special thing is that this basin often, when rain clouds get in there, they stay inside. So they basically just hang in there. And so we had rain more or less the whole day, we basically rode around the clouds. It was definitely, I thought, a Cape-Epic-worthy stage. It went uphill pretty much straight from the start. Since it was relatively humid again this morning, I said to my partner, and I have to mention, I don't cope very well with humid conditions, I said to my partner, hey, let's just start out calmly and cleanly at a steady pace. I also had in the back of my mind that he had been struggling toward the end over the last few days, and then at the finish, even though we were racing well, we lost quite a bit of time again. I thought, okay, if we just pace it cleanly and he doesn't have to ride above threshold, he just saves energy, then we can ride a better pace toward the end. That more or less worked out. We went up the first climb and fairly quickly let the group ride away. The first climb was already about eleven kilometers. We took 38 minutes for that. I rode 301 NP with 283 on average. I paced it exactly so that Juri could come up well. Toward the top he also started to... Well, we were riding around 320 the whole time. And then toward the end he did have to let go a little bit. Then we went into the first smaller descent. And then again a bit... winding up over those jeep tracks. And after 16.7 kilometers, one race hour in, we were at the highest point of the race. Up to that point I had ridden 295 NP, 264 on average, with a 144 heart rate on average, and by that time we had already done 670 meters of climbing. Up to that point it was actually going really well. We were with the people who were around us in the Open Man category. We were actually doing well in the race, maybe a touch behind, but everything completely, completely within the frame. Then we went down into the first descent and when for the first time that day, no, we had already had an intermediate descent, sorry, after the first eleven came a descent, then it went up again. And by that point we were already pretty muddied up, and then it went on until about kilometer 20, where the first feed zone was. First a downhill technical trail. And we ride into the trail and my cable for the dropper post snaps. It was then locked at the bottom and it stayed down for now. At that point it was still relatively okay, because of course it was going downhill first. And I knew, okay, a feed zone is coming up. That means at these feed zones you always have the option to do repairs. Basically two bike stands are set up there. There's a toolbox and all the tools you need are in it. They have cables, they theoretically have a brake. But you have to... They provide the stuff. But you have to do the work yourself. So I put my bike there. First I had to clean the... the bolt so I could pull out my seatpost. Pulled the post out and was hoping that when I pulled the post up, the cable would pull from below on the dropper post and the post would extend. That actually worked. Then I just had to tighten the post again and that solved the problem. Of course I didn't install a completely new cable at that pace. I just pushed the post up so we could continue. I probably raised the post 1, 2, 3 millimeters. Unfortunately I couldn't find my marker with the track. So I set it by feel and I'd say by feel I had it a bit too high. Anyway, we continued. The whole thing wasn't a problem at first, because it was going uphill. On that climb Juri was riding really well again. After that came a longer descent and on that one I really struggled, with the post so high, to ride downhill quickly, because I'm used to riding with a dropper post and the post really felt like it was in my way, I have to be honest. So for the rest of the day I really didn't ride downhill well anymore. On the climbs after that, we, I think in total, I don't know if I can pull this out of Training Peaks. I think we stood at the tech zone for two or three minutes in total. So we really solved the problem quickly. Juri filled his bottles in that time, I filled my bottle. And briefly fixed the dropper problem. We took off afterwards and were then able to work our way back up to the leaders in the Grandmasters category on the following climbs pretty quickly. At that point Udo Bölz was leading, I believe. And Bart Prentzschens was in that group and a few other Open Man riders. We caught the group relatively quickly. And on a climb, around the halfway point of the race, we even went straight past the group. And at that point I thought, okay, perfect. The tactic is actually working really well. Juri is pacing himself really well and we're managing nicely. That was about at kilometer 37. And at that point we had 2 hours 14 in with 280 NP and 230 on average. And that's where I thought, okay, 280 NP I'd actually really like to ride the whole day. That would be really good for the pace. After that it went over several jeep tracks. First a bit through the... through Lawrenceford and then into the longest climb of the race, which at the bottom went over jeep track but toward the top kept transitioning into trail. And I thought it was a pretty punchy climb. The trails, since it had been wet all day, were already challenging to ride. But everything went well so far, and we really, I'd say, came up the climb well. In total that was eleven kilometers of climb, which took us 46 minutes 52. I should mention that there was a feed zone, a water point in between, where we each filled a bottle. And since it was technically demanding here and there, the wattage wasn't that high, 264 NP, 248 on average, but I was really satisfied with that at the time. And after that it went down for a long time, lots of technical trails, and also the last... yeah, the last 20 kilometers, I'd say, were a lot of trails. In normal conditions, I'd say absolutely wonderful to ride. They'd be super fun. The course today in Lawrenceford, I thought, was probably the best this week. It got really hard because of the rain and... That's where I really felt it, the last 23 kilometers, my suspension also completely gave up the ghost. So my fork didn't anymore, out of 120 millimeters of travel it maybe had 30 millimeters, so 3 centimeters of travel left. And my shock was also only half working. So that really, yeah, didn't make the situation with the dropper post any better and That's why today in the trails downhill, or I today in the trails downhill, definitely lost a lot of time. Nevertheless it went more or less okay toward the end and came through pretty well. At the end I clocked 4 hours 43 myself. The Epic results page isn't loading right now. In any case, I was pretty satisfied with the time, because Juri, apart from toward the end on a few climbs, had no collapse, rode through completely well. I have to honestly say that today I was more the limiting factor, I'd claim. Because I simply didn't come down well downhill. In the end, yes, we officially took 4 hours 49 for the stage and were 12th in the Open Man today. Although I should mention... Within one minute it went up to 7th place, where the former leaders of the class, Aveloracing, were. So we were only one minute behind them. They did have stomach problems, Markus Nikolai had stomach problems, But actually that wasn't a bad stage. And for example those who are currently fourth in the GC now, Stephen Bark and Gregory Harrop. Two South Africans, were only two minutes ahead of us. So actually it went super. With the circumstances we had today, I have to say, we were really satisfied with the stage. In the GC... after the stage we're still in 4th place, we're now 17 minutes behind 3rd, so if the guys, and I don't wish it for them, because they're really cool, if the Honeycomb guys don't have anything happen tomorrow, they'll definitely hold 3rd place and we have. On the other side, looking back, to 5th place, we only have 5 minutes, uh, nonsense, only 30 seconds lead. And then to 6th place only 4 minutes lead. So basically the race for 4th place is definitely still, yeah, very tight. But I also have to honestly say... I'll be glad if we just ride through cleanly tomorrow, and that's why, yeah, whether we end up fourth, fifth or sixth in the Open Man GC, Juri and I don't really care. Of course we'll try to race and give our best tomorrow, but... We'll be glad for now if everything runs cleanly tomorrow and we can finish the race. Otherwise, regarding today's stage, it was really good. We changed the tires again for the wet weather. Before we were running the Schwalbe Rick XC front and rear in 2.4. We now switched to Schwalbe Racing Ray and Racing Ralph in 2.35. That was, I thought, definitely the right decision, because they work better in the mud. Otherwise... Today I also fueled again with I think 150 grams. I started off with two bottles each containing 120 grams of carbohydrates. I emptied those in the first two hours. Along with one gel per hour. And then toward the end I packed two to three gels per hour, and then at the water points I just took in water or electrolytes. Exactly. Tomorrow there's still one stage to go with I think 65 kilometers and 2,100 meters of climbing. That'll definitely be punchy again, because really a lot of climbing over a short distance. The weather should be, I think, relatively similar, but ideally drier. In the women's race today Cannondale won over Toyota Specialized. It was definitely cool to see that it wasn't a complete run by Toyota Specialized for all the days and that they don't win everything. In the GC, though, not much changed. Toyota Specialized with Annika Langwart and Sophia Gomez have 23 minutes 26 lead over Vera Lusa and her partner. So I almost suspect, anything can always happen. 65 kilometers is long and a lot of defects can happen. But I'm going to assume that they'll bring it home tomorrow. In the men's race... That was really, well, I've already said over the last two days that it was a super awesome race and incredibly cool to watch. But today, I thought it was almost better. Marco Gilbert and Tristan Nortje won today ahead of Luca Predot and Simone Avadento from Villiers Vittoria and ahead of Scott Sram with Schurter and Colombo. And the last 20 kilometers were really, they're so hacked up that, when you saw how fast they were riding on those trails and you were out there yourself and know how slippery it was today also over those stones, It's really unbelievable how fast these guys ride over these things. You could also see that no other team could follow. The only marathon team that was still in there was Klimatise Orbea with Samuel Porro and Marc Stutzmann. I also have to say, unbelievable how Samuel Porro is even at the start here. He broke his hand two and a half, three weeks before the race at the Andalusia Bike Race. And is now riding here with a half-healed broken hand. That's definitely impressive. And Marco Gilbert and Tristan Nortje attacked the whole time together with Villiers Vittoria. Definitely impressive. Then there was a move where Villiers Vittoria... lost the chain, and that was it, Marco Gilbert and Tristan Nortje were gone. Filippo Colombo couldn't follow the whole action and so they had to wait. Now I'm definitely curious how it goes tomorrow. Villiers Vittoria is only 32 seconds behind Scott Sram. They managed to make up really good time today. So I think a Cape Epic as exciting as this hasn't been seen in a long time, where it's raced all out the whole way to the end. That's pretty cool and really fun as a spectator. So. Thank you for listening. I think I'll do another episode tomorrow afterwards, and I hope you all have lots of fun tomorrow when you watch the race. Thank you.