Willo @ Wingello

Made a late call go down to Wingello on Sunday morning for this, as they were taking late entrants on the day.

Decided to use it as a learning process with the new HRM in a race situation, so went with the Garmin HR zones easily visible on the screen. Spent much of the first lap in zone 5, including hitting 6 a couple of times on the climbs. I didn't think there was a 6! I hadn't been able to get there on the only real training ride I had been on with the HRM, despite putting in a few hard (albeit short) efforts on hills.

Anyway, backed off a bit on the second lap, but still ended with an average HR well into the top end of zone 4. Which all probably reinforces the need for some targeted training if I want to get much faster. There is plenty of room for improvement....

The track for the Willo is a good mix of the best Wingello single track with some fire road "recovery zones" in between. Those Wingello single tracks seem to get better each time I ride them, though I find it a bit hard to keep speed up with the up/down/switchback stuff given my weight and height. Some narrow tree gaps here and there as well which were a bit of a test with 710mm bars after using 640mm ones for a couple of years.

Got passed by Jenny Fay about 16 mins into the race, making me feel like I was just digging a hole on one of the fire trail climbs. Had the same feeling when the lead groups of elite went past on the second lap.

Even though the race and category positions compared to the field initially seemed a bit disappointing, my time relative to the winner's time was a slight improvement on the CP the week before, so I guess it just means there were less people in tourist class in this one compared to the CP....