Beauval

This is not a race, but with an average speed of over 40kph, echelons across the road and the breakaways, it feels like one.

No one seems to know why it's called Beauval but it's been running for more many years, with Eddy Merckx and Lucien Van Impe apparently being former patrons. It's a ride for racers and there are often pros from Quickstep and Omega Pharma Lotto turning up to ensure that it's never easy.

I've done a couple of these rides now. I'm using them to do things I wouldn't normally do in races, like attack when the pace is high, take long pulls on the front, sprint longer out of the corners (not onto, but past the wheel in front) and generally make things difficult for myself.

It's been really good for me to identify weaknesses and the odd strength. There's some guys that could probably ride me of their wheel on the flat. I'm quite light at 67Kg so it might just be there's not much I can do about it. I have to work really hard to pull at 40+kph, I don't really watch the power meter during the ride, but I'd guess I'm 110-130% FTP. Some can pull at that speed for much longer than me, and maybe under FTP.

I've always known that I'm not so good at sprinting out of corners, going anaerobic, then holding race pace on the straight. I don't seem to recover very well after the sprint. There's plenty of opportunity to improve that here though. I'm going into the corners as 6th or so wheel, sprinting out of corners and then trying to go straight to the front to do a pull.

On the plus side, the longer the ride goes on the stronger I feel, at least relative to others. In training I don't have a big peak power sprint, but I seem to be able deliver it at the end of a hard ride. I imagine this is the payoff of the long L2 rides. I somehow managed to get fifth in the hotly contested final sprint, without really being sure where the finish was! No points, no applause, but there's big kudos in doing well here.

The problem I have now is, that this ride seems to cover all the demands of racing to the point that I'm not really sure what I should be doing with the rest of my training time. Hills are missing, so I know I need to address that in training. Another issue is that I enjoy this ride so much that the enthusiasm is masking some of the fatigue. I write this the day after beasting myself without any feeling of tiredness or soreness at all. I'm taking an easy day today regardless.