Tour de Cape Weekend - had a great time with a bit of 140 mile warmup ride on Saturday and the Tour de Cape ride (incl warmup and cooldown) on Sunday. Wind was very strong making it tough fight on the way back south. We had a very strong group of 6 riders OK .. not a race but as a team we made good effort to push as hard as it would be a race. Good way of training for the first races of season 2025.
PEDAL FOR A PURPOSE 2025 Team Goal Diggers We had a great team of strong cyclists for the event. Thanks to all 6 cyclists putting in a strong 4 hours of pushing on the stationary bikes. With overall 96.4 miles in 4 hours and average of 271 watts power we have been able to finish first place overall and set a new record. Big kudos to Team Chief Kayla Kozi and riders Ross Lenehan, Jay Trojan, Chris Scott, Bruce Lander and Dave Cato fighting this charity competition together with me. It was a very interesting event and I enjoyed it a lot even its different to what I normally do on a bicycle. to me its a great way to start calendar year 2025 for cycling. Big thanks myself to Heidi Marie Walker who keeps me motivated for new challenges and Giovanni Prosperi as my coach. #hammernutrition #infinitybikeseat with my code #ingolf676
Year 2024 is almost over and I am trying to look back a little bit. Looking at overall miles, and workout time ... OK numbers are down quite a bit but thats on purpose since quality comes over quantity. I was planning for about 18000 miles (28968 km) for 2024. OK .. it turned out to be total of 25500 miles (41000 km) overall cycling but ... over 7000 miles (11300 km) has been racing. So my training was limited to 18k miles (about 29k km) only. Nevertheless ... in the short time of cycling (since 2020) and even much shorter time of bicycle racing (since 2021 a few short races and since 2023 ultra-distance racing) it looks like a cool 2024 to me. I had some results which to me are unexpected and very motivating. My key results 2024 have been: - Winning Men's over all age groups at Texas Longhorn500 and seeing a new age record for 60-69 - a cool 2nd place at Florida500 over all age groups - Winning age group 12 hours at Bid-Atlantic and 4th overall (incl recumbent bicycles) - winning overall agenda and age groups and new track record at 48 hour race in North Carolina (Psycho48) However my biggest accomplishments of the year are the completion of RAAM solo ... ok only 11th overall and 2nd at age group but crossing finish line in time was the most important thing to me. And at Thanksgiving weekend placing a new World Record for 60-69 non-drafting and most important self-supported 7 day time trial with 1858 miles (2990 km). In addition I had a few cool results at some other races such as the Gran-Fondo race series and lots of fun in some non race related rides with different distances. I hope to take some of the momentum into 2025 while I will try a bit different approach for the main races that I scheduled. Key to me is that job comes first and it's not easy having a regular job and doing all the training and racing in addition. It's lots of compromises on the possible trading schedule but job has priority. Thats why I am happy I was able to get a few cool results in for the year and as long as health plays along ok I am planning to see how well I compete within my age group and more important across all age groups. If time and budget allows I would be most happy to attend the one or other one race out of country. I hope that might be possible but I have to keep a close eye on budget for such travel and race cost. Some pictures are from the races and training as well as a few screen prints from Strava. Special thanks to my crew chief Heidi Maldonado who never let me down and was a great motivation and support factor in training and racing as well as my coach Giovanni Prosperi who believes in me and helped me getting all those cool results even at age 60 🙂 #hammernutrition #infinitybikeseat -> #ingolf676
World Record - Highest Weekly Mileage (HWMR) Ride Report Ingolf Micklisch
Day 7 It was supposed to be last full day riding. I did ok and got used to heavier shifting wind. The general schedule I kept same as last two days. However, I noticed in earlier Afternoon that I lost focus and my concentration went down. So I returned back to home base and decided to take 2 hours break with mostly sleep time. That helped a lot. Went back on the road and as of my calculations I was on good track to get at least around the 2000 miles. Since I had a few hours until midnight and 11 hours for next morning. Unfortunate once it turned dark, I had the disaster struck me badly. Kept an eye on the bike lane most the times. Lane looked clear the next couple of hundred yards and once shortly checking some information on the bike computer I looked up and … an uber driver had pulled into bike lane in front of me and stopped. My response time was everything but perfect. Could not get to the brakes quick enough and getting left of the car was no option due to traffic and right of the car was a tree. So I hit the car hard and bike was damaged badly but I turned out to be OK after all. OK – I lost a few hours on the ride but still made a very good distance.
Overall, for not preparing specifically for the attempt and doing it completely without support crew I was happy with the overall distance I was able to ride. In the aftermath the recovery process starts and plans for another 7-day attempt in year 2025 started. Lessons learned for sure are that without crew support that type of record attempt is very tough to do. Still, I learned a lot from this and it should help me in future attempts. Plus, I am happy I got out of the accident ok and still improved miles a lot for my age group.
World Record - Highest Weekly Mileage (HWMR) Ride Report Ingolf Micklisch
Day 3 Getting back home at midnight I set alarm up top have a 30-minute power nap plus changing lights and batteries. Unfortunately, the day started bad by simply not hearing the alarm … Just another downside for no crew support. You need to rely on yourself completely. The good thing was that I felt fresher for riding. The bad part was that I lost 3 hours. So milage was down. And that day was kind of bad for me having a flat front in the afternoon which was a quick and easy fix but hit a rock from a construction vehicle later the evening and had bad noise so returned to home base checking and swapping tires. Miles have been down more than I wanted. Those situations showed me that crew support is priceless. Was a low mile day due to that situation.
Day 4 Due to the lost time, I changed strategy a bit more … Went to 2-3 hour sleep a night and reduced number of stops to stop at home base only twice a day and have shorter water refill stops at park on the routes. I could compensate a little bit and improved miles again hoping to go for 2000–2100 miles target. Overall, the 4th day went decent and had no issues during the day. However, I did start using the 5-mile loop even during the day time due to holiday schedule came with lower traffic.
Day 5 Day started well and was happy with performance. The sleep pattern with 3 hours sleep went well and the reduction of stops did no harm. Due to reducing stops I added a few more jelly sandwiches in the jersey pockets. Water was refilled at park and overall performance stayed consistent. Main issue in the morning was heavy fog that caused me to leave glasses off until the fog went away. It was a bit tough for speed since visibility was not very helpful. Still managed it ok. Towards evening the weather changed a bit unexpected. Wind turned around a few times and start getting stronger.
Day 6 What a change to the day before. I was rested enough but the wind starts getting annoying and no expectation to calm down. Normally I do not mind with wind but this time it was mostly head and cross wind and only short sections tail wind. The overall strategy I kept as is and no changes. Miles had been ok.
