|
|
|
|
|
|
- Melanie McQuaid
-
Occupation: Professional Xterra Athlete
-
Palmares: Three-time Xterra Triathlon World Champion
-
Location: Victoria, BC
-
Website: www.racergirl.com
-
PowerTap User Since: 2006
|
My first few miles on the Powertap Mountain Bike Disc Hub
by Melanie McQuaid
For the last many years that I have trained, first as a mountain bike athlete and more recently as an off road triathlete, I would put about 80% of my riding hours on a road bike. This came naturally as I have always done my interval training using a power meter, and up until 2008, I did not use a power meter on my mountain bike. The time I spent riding trails focused more on quality endurance and technical training.
This winter I started to employ the PowerTap SL 2.4 Disc Hub System off road. I have replaced one of my hill workouts with another off road workout on hills and have started the process of data collection and analysis to compare my ability in January to my hopefully improving ability in March. What is interesting is the comparison of the hill workouts done on the road to my hill workouts done on the mountain bike. I have no doubt that some of my observations can help me to better plan for these workouts and how to tailor my training program to better reflect what I am going to encounter racing. Many of these observations merely confirm what we already know are the differences between mountain bike racing and road racing. However, the actual quantification of these differences is of interest.
Floyd's Camp In So Cal and The ESAs
I woke up on Saturday January 20th thinking, screw it. I don’t feel like getting on a plane, I am just going back to bed for another few hours and later I will just get up and go suffer on another ride in the rain by myself. Luckily, Ross was making coffee so the thought of drinking some liquid motivation was more enticing than a few more minutes of nap time. I got on the plane, flew to LA, got a car and jetted to Temecula.
The 2006 World Championships; Cherry On Top Of My Sundae
as reported by Melanie McQuaid on racergirl.com
Maui No Ka Oi…. Maui is the best! How true is that? The Xterra World Championships is held annually at this amazing paradise in the middle of the Pacific. Each year the race lives up to its reputation as a challenging, unpredictable and unforgiving venue. Extensive rain left the course strewn with huge boulders, ruts and grass. The weather was beautiful during the week, but by Sunday high winds made the swim choppy with some decent swells, and on race day the thermostat was turned up quite a bit compared to the rest of the week. The result? Gaps on the swim as weaker swimmers were weeded out, carnage of crashes and flats on the bike course and complete meltdowns by very talented runners in the last portions of the run on the beach as they approached the finish. Epic, brutal, unforgiving and “not fit for man or beast” are some of the descriptions of this race. Never has this race ever been longer or harder than this year, and I am absolutely stunned to have had the race I did on Sunday. I think I had wings. Maybe there was invisible force field protecting me from my near disasters on the bike course, of which there were many. Whatever it was, I managed to leave no doubt as to who brought the best form to Worlds this year. I knew it could be good but I didn’t know just how good my form was. An eight-minute margin to second was well above my expectations, and I can go into the off season totally satisfied that the work, sacrifices and plans I made this year were the right ones. Flippin’ sweet!
|
|
|