race day hickup

[toride]

Hello Guys, I have competed today in my local XC race, ive been doing this for 5/6 seasons now, I can hold my own and place anything from 4th to 10th.. today was a weird exception, I just never really felt any strength or interest to perform resulting in steadily dropping further and further back from a decent 5th into the first corner.

Now should I put this down to using my turbo to pre-warm before the race.. this is unusual for me as my warm up usually consists of 2/3/4 laps of the course.
OR Drinking with some friends last night, consisting of five glasses of red wine with a good meal.
I used my turbo trainer last night for about 40mins of good high intensity, feeling strong through out.

The thing is that drinking before race day is something I do pretty often and can perform.. but, I hardly ever use my turbo to warm up.

any thoughts will be appreciated

[theremery]

Lack of sleep and coffee does that for me sometimes.

[toride]

That's strange, this last week my coffee intake has shot up due to a new coffee machine in the house !
Im convinced its something simple such as that.

[btompkins0112]

Did the "good meal" include steak or similar? If so, I think that might be the culprit.

[toride]

Mushroom lasagne which was meat free, salad, followed by cheese and biscuits.

[theremery]

Hmmm....caffeine OD to the point where you'd have needed an infusion every 20mins intravenously to match "normal" [ and a shade much cheese (if it were me)].

[toride]

I'm planning a caffeine free week and see how next sunday goes.

[toride]

A quick up-date, last night I felt poorly, no go at all.... I have ridden today and it was hard, a flat 42miler of struggling along,so maybe not the coffee or not enough sleep, I am now thinking more in the way of im coming down with man flu.. or similar.

[xnavalav8r]

My first thought on reading your initial post was that maybe you are getting sick. It sounds like that may be the case.