World Cup 1 “The Land Down Under”
It’s January and this 2024 season is getting started a little sooner than most years. For the first time since I’ve been racing at world cups the race was held in hot and sunny Adelaide Australia in the peak of the summer. Usually world cups don’t start until April so having one this early was out of the normal race calender. One thing that made this a tough trip from the start was how long it takes to travel to Australia. 3 flights and 1 drive totaling almost 19 hours of traveling not to mention the long layovers. Upon arriving to our destination I was surprised at the venue which was actually a race track for motor vehicles with lots of twists and turns but our team hotel was actually located at the track so that was awesome.
Racing proved to be pretty rough due to the fact I was sick for weeks prior to this trip and I just wasn’t acclimated to the scorching heat of Adelaide. On the first race day which was the time trial the temperatures were in the low 90’s with the temperature on the track pavement being much higher than that. I felt good at the start of my time trial but that feeling quickly diminished and ended up struggling alot to keep my normal power. In the end it was my worst power for a time trial in 3 years but still managed to place 7th which showed I wasn’t the only one struggling on that day. The road race was 2 days later an although I didn’t have the normal power to punch really hard to stay with the front group, some good things came out of that race. Last year fueling for the road races proved to be a struggle so after getting dropped from the lead pack my focus was switched to my new fueling strategy. The goal was to consume 90 grams of carbohydrates an hour and push my pace to see if I’d feel good all the way until the end of the race. Thankfully the fueling strategy worked great. For the 90 minute road race I was only 3 watts off of an hour power record and my 90 min power for this race matched my personal best back in 2021. So the good news is we have a great foundation to work on this year and although I placed 12th in the road race I’m very optimistic that I will have a great year going forward.
