Kyle’s 6 hour and 1 hour Record Attempts by Kyle Lierich from Australia
Leisurely up the mountain. thought and as a coronation I was looking forward to Vermicelle. The rest was a piece of cake, we use the Rhine valley in the recumbent club as our "speed track". In the end it was easy to get the 350 km together - that's crazy. Many thanks to the organisers for the invitation and the realisation, of course also to Johan for his hospitality. <
Mountain route along Lake Walen.
“Hey Tim, this year I want to do a 6 hour, break my 2018 record. I’ll do that on the Saturday, first thing. Oh, and I’d like to do a 1hr the next day in the afternoon, try to beat my 2016 record. And, if we have time I’ll throw in a Flying 200″… I’m not sure what exactly sparked the interest into why I wanted to do both a 6 hour and 1 hour in the same weekend, hardly 24 hours apart. I’ve always liked doing epic things, mainly with training, but occasionally with performance days also. But I have always loved pushing new boundaries, getting stronger, and going faster. This year I was probably less prepared for the 6hr than in 2018. In 2018 had been doing alot of bike specific training for it, I changed my eating to focus on specific performance – which yes I put on some weight, but I gained alot of watts! I have always love simulating the event prior to it – which in 2018 I went out on my bike 2 weeks prior to the 6 hour attempt – and basically did it. I rode from 5am–11am, practiced all of my nutrition perfectly, and held the wattage I had figured out I’d be able to maintain for 6 hours – which was 270 watts. This year was a little different. I’d been focusing on Endurance Triathlon – which meant a lot of training, but I only ride about three times per week. I’d been feeling pretty tired for February and March, but still training pretty well, and I raced a Half Ironman 6 days prior to the 6hr attempt, and I had a really off day. My biggest ride this year had only been 4 hours, and I’d only ridden a recumbent position about 5 hours in total for the past 6 months (5 separate rides). I never really do any training in a recumbent and I was a little concerned, but I had nothing to lose.
The Day Before… I got to the Geelong Velodrome around 3pm on Friday, just to sit in the bike and ride a few laps to make sure everything was good to go for Saturday morning. I was fairly comfortable, but my heels were clipping a bit on my return pedal stroke. We discussed raising it up, but in the end I made the call not to worry. “It’ll be right, I’ll manage”... In the end Tim and Charles spaced the boom height up 3–5 mm higher in the body later that night in the shed and it gave me the perfect amount of clearance that I didn’t even notice it the next day. Meanwhile, I had a relaxed evening and went to the pub for dinner and had a fantastic Parma and Chips (Aussie)!
The 6hr Attempt I woke up at about 4:30am to get in some quality breakfast, and headed to the track. It was about a 40 minutes drive, so it was a nice time to think and reflect on things, before everything got pretty hectic. I got a really pleasant message of support early on Saturday morning – which was a really nice gesture. I knew I was going to do well. We got into the venue pretty early, the sun was just rising and I was eager to get going as soon as possible. A warm day was forecast for the day, and it was important I maximised the cooler conditions in the morning. Unfortunately we had to make some very minor modifications and tweeking of the bike, so I wasn’t able to start until 8am. I got changed, got my bottles and nutrition sorted to put in the bike ready. I carry all of my gels (10 SIS gels, 10 crampfix gels), 1 muesli bar if I feel like chewing something, I put in my 3x 1L bottles with sports drink mix (these sit in pretty nicely and my arm rests on one of them) and I also carry my mobile phone with headphones and a walkie talkie > 2019-2
31
