Murphy’s Law Before a Big Race
I remember back in my bike racing days in the 80's, my friend Jim Dolan had a major bottom bracket malfunction on the day of a race. He said, "It is so funny, you can train on these things for a year and nothing happens, yet on race day they fall apart!" It does seem like equipment seems to have a mind of its own around a major race. This means that you have an even bigger responsibility to learn your equipment and if you are not maintaining it by delegation to others, you learn what "right" is.
I was called to Houston this week to help my friend Julie Mosier Crosno who all of a sudden had knee pain and upper hamstring pain. She had never adjusted her bike and has an iron will to push through any difficulty to reach her goal. The problem was, it was a week before the Ironman World Championship 70.3 triathlon in Clearwater, Florida. Julie didn't know what was happening, but she had lost confidence in her bike. Her husband Mark had brought the bike to me the week prior for inspection and maintenance and while I gave the bike a once over, I never touched the bike setup as I wasn't about to change anything. After a change of shoes and new cleats, Julie noticed the pain and became concerned. I was called to Houston and the first thing I did was check the setup.
In fact, the seatpost had slipped a couple of millimeters and I suppose the difference in stack height between the old shoes and old cleats made just enough difference to send Julie's body into a problem area. We found her perfect saddle height again and afterwards measured, finding that it was exactly at 706 mm, which is where we derived the saddle height earlier in the year. I had since learned a few new tricks about saddle angles and we applied these to the bike with Julie's delight in comfort and power from the adjustments. Next was the road test.
Those of you who have gone through my positioning know that the stationary bike gives a false reading for saddle height. I knew that for someone Julie's height, this would be about 3 mm, and since it was dark, I hopped into the car to follow Julie and give her some light. We took off to find the best saddle height. I didn't want to leave anything to chance this close to the race. Sure enough, drop the saddle, change the angle a bit, raise the saddle, drop back to the other position, perfection! Julie felt her entire core able to engage at this height which gave her legs something to push against.
There was a 1% uphill section on the course we used for her testing and she was maintaining 27 MPH with ease, and no pain in the knee or hamstring. She is ready to race!
There are two "take-aways" in this story. The first is the value in listening to your body. If you let it, it will give you great feedback. The challenge, of course, is to filter the "real" data from the "not-so" real data, so you can eliminate the worries and negative thoughts that can live in your head, rent free. You still need the ability to know if something is wrong, and be able to fix it. Julie could have pushed through this because she is a trooper. She might have injured herself and would have had a horrible race.
The second point is, how little deviation from your perfect position is required to cause problems. When I am tasked to "fit" someone to an existing bike and I can only get close but not exactly on target, there is initial relief but almost always a problem down the road. Perfect alignment means the ability to push harder and recover quicker. Imperfect alignment may allow you to push almost as hard, but be prone to injury. If you are way off target, as most people are, you can't push that hard anyway and recovery is compromised, so sometimes you have less problems!
Good luck, Julie and good luck to all who are competing in Clearwater. You have had a long season and you deserve to have a great race.