Dirk Friel Racing at the 2011 Redlands Classic - Prologue

We're sending "Happy Birthday" wishes to California today to TrainingPeaks Co-founder, Dirk Friel.  He's racing the Redlands Classic this weekend and we'll be posting his race files over the next few days.  Many of you know Dirk, but if you haven't had the chance to meet him or watch one of his interviews or webinars, you can read more about him here.




Dirk's Race Summary and Comments:

Today was my first national racing calendar event in 10 years. Returning to the Redlands Classic was like going back in time since the last time I did this race was in 2002 for team Jitter Joes.

Since then I retired from the pro ranks and have been racing as much as my family and work life will allow back in Colorado.

I have to admit that I didn't have any intentions of doing this race until about a month ago when my ex-teammate, Anton Villatoro, talked me into racing for his squad, team Swamis out of San Diego.


Things moved along pretty quickly and so here I find myself racing in a fairly big pro event. I definitely had to focus my training efforts these past three weeks to try and gain as much fitness as possible. My main objective was to work on my high intensity anaerobic ability and add in a few long mountain rides for endurance.

Besides Anton and I, there is one other ex-pro rider on team Swamis and that happens to be Alexi Grewal, most known for having won the 1984 LA Olympic road race. He is making a comeback and trying to see just how far he can take things so it's been entertaining listening to him talk about racing back in the 80's. He also won the 1988 Redlands Classic as well.

The Prologue

To view an interactive file of my SRM data within TrainingPeaks visit:  http://tpks.ws/Sel7



Today's opening stage time trial was short at just over 3 miles, but it was very tough with an altitude gain of 692ft. The majority of the gain was in the final 2kms where we had a quarter mile stretch of road that averaged 12%. That was a brutal section of the race and I averaged 428w for 90 seconds.



My overall time was 11:35 and I averaged 377w (384np). I'm sure to win this event with my body weight of 169lbs I would have had to average more than 420w. I was certainly no where near being in the top results, but at least I did set my season high 10-minute power value of 379w, compared to my previous high of 342w.

Here are some more interesting stats:
Time 11:43
Place- 158th
Average watts- 377 (384np)
Average Cadence- 87
Average Speed- 16.2mph
Average heart rate- 171
Max heart rate- 184

Stage 1 is Friday and it won't be an easy race at all at 122 miles. We will complete 5 laps of a very hilly circuit in hot conditions. Wish me luck and stay tuned for more!