AZ RR #1 Early (D.A.)
Today was RR#1 for me. A week early since I will be volunteering in Kona next week.
The course was Pacfic Coast Highwat (PCH is SoCal slang) between Ventura and Malibu, with some duplicate back and forth to enable a full 100 plus mile ride. This course mimics AZ quite well. Generally flat, a few rollers, and wind. Today there was a good wind; weather forecast had it going up to about 15mph during the day. And due to back and forth I had mutliple sections of tail and head wind. Plan was also to run 60min after the ride.
Grade of my ride = D
Took off about 8:20am from Ventura. Within first 20min I knew it was not going to be the type of day I imagined, Legs felt heavy and tired. My PRE for an IF=70% felt like an 80% plus 
. So I decided to just ride very easy and focus on other key aspects, such as steady effort, hydration, and nutrition. Looking at power file now....."Wow", my IF was only 65%, though felt much harder of a ride. But that is not really the key points of my ride. At about the 100 mile mark, the wheels came off (my body). A very severe muscle cramp, inside quad, inside of leg, on BOTH LEGS, at same time nearly had me fall off the bike. It was very painful to remove my shoe from the pedal to dismount off the bike. I stopped quickly, got off and layed on my back on the sidewalk, unable to bend both legs. They had frozen up in a painful cramp. A couple miniutes later, my friend (also racing AZ) came up upon me. He suggested I take a big drink of his HEED since it contains electrolytes. I did, layed there for a few more minutes and it seemed to help as I was able to bend my legs and get up. Decided I would just soft pedal remaining 10 miles that we had to go. Within 60secs of riding again, I did multiple vomit launches of the HEED drink and then several dry heeves, while at the same time my quads were starting to cramp AGAIN. I was DONE! My friend rode on, came back with his truck and picked me up. I have done too many to count century rides over the last six months, and it has been a long long time since I have experienced something like this. I will be analyzing the data, reviewing my actions, etc in order to figure the mistake(s) I may have made in order to learn. To learn so I do not make same mistake(s) at AZ. If that occurs at AZ, I know I will be able to finish the race, but it will be a walking marathon. It's just not a scenario I want to envision. Recall at beginning of this post I graded my ride as a D, not an F and clearly I did not run afterwards. The one positive from this ride, however, over those 100 miles was my VI=1.02 . I'm also not an HR guy but will wear HR one some ride, just for the data. Today wore HR. Though I am likely ignorant on the topic, I did notice practically zero decoupling of my HR with my watts. I guess that is a good thing. Even though for whatever reason I was only able to comfortably push an IF=65% for 100 miles, I succeeded in very steady pedal pressure. So all-in-all one very positive take-away, and some figuring out why things occured before the next RR.
Best of luck to the rest of you next weekend on your RR. 
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