BaseCamp group coaching member Daniel Anhalt shared his experience at a 200k ride in France.
Just got back from Spain and France for my first rides outside for 2014. I am so pleased how well Basecamp prepared me. I did one week riding gravel in backcountry above Valencia. Pretty technical gravel. With changing surface and pitches, I would find myself in high cadence or low cadence. It felt so much like the high cadence and low cadence workouts we did.
I then got an invite to do a 200K ride just south of Paris. I bought some road tires and put them on my gravel machine. They call it an Audax, which is abbreviation for audacious. I was quite nervous, as to whether I had enough fitness from Basecamp to do this so early in the season. Large portions of the ride we were in my tempo power range, looking at my power meter. We did pacelines. In the narrow farm roads, there were lots of corners, with short 5-10 second bursts of power coming out the corner to stay in the group. It was not a race, but we were pushing it way hard, in order to finish it off as quickly as possible. This is chateau country south of Paris along the Loire river, so we did stop for some pictures. The chateau is Chambord, which is the second largest outside of Versailles. Sunday 2 days ago, was TSS 311, 5070 kcal, 2794 kj.
Scary, is that 2 days after the event, I do not feel trashed. Bottom line again, is that Basecamp prepared me quite well to successfully ride outside, with all the various drills and workouts we did. Thanks coaches, and fellow riders. I am super happy.
