January « 2010 «

Challenge Barcelona, October 2009 run under contract by Evolution was hailed as a resounding success by pro and age group athletes. But if the Challenge family has an embarrassing relative that turned out to be a bad sort and they don’t like to talk about it’s Evolution.

Pro athletes have been enraged by months of being fobbed off with bogus excuses about anti-doping results and Evolution still refuses to pay prize money. Doubt also surrounds the hundreds of age group entries they accepted through their now illegal .com website.

Things started to go sour when Evolution stopped fulfilling their contract and complaints started coming in to the local council that they were not paying contractors. Challenge boss Felix Walchshofer headed to Spain where it was agreed with the Maresme County Government to end their contract and a new company was set up to organize the 2010 event and secure the future of Challenge Barcelona using the challenge-barcelona.es website.

Evolution, unfortunately has ignored this decision and illegally continued to run their challenge-barcelona.com web site. They have continued to accept age group entries for a race they are not organising.

For age group athletes I can offer some reassurance as my best sources in Spain and Germany promise that the race will go ahead. Even if you can not get a full refund the new challenge-barcelona.es company will still allow you to race without being out of pocket.

For pro athletes I can offer no such reassurance other than the weight of the law is on your side. The Evolution boss has a poor reputation in Spain and it seems unlikely that the pro athletes will be paid until they are forced to do so in court. This process could take months and many of the athletes are now cooperating to seek legal advice on getting the money sooner.

I sincerely hope Challenge can get through this difficult time as they will be left with a superb race with the full support of local authorities and a great race organiser. Just make sure if you are entering go through the www.challenge-barcelona.es site. I just hope the pro athletes aren’t left out in the cold.

It is now the view of many that Challenge should accept responsibility for athlete welfare not just in Germany but at all of their franchised races and pay defaulted prize money. The success of their new races has come from having a trusted Challenge brand and good prize money that attracts top pro athletes. If we are left to flounder when things go wrong however, athletes are left feeling let down and betrayed so what happens then?

I’m not doing my long turbo ride at quite the same magnatude as before Christmas, mainly because now I’m back to running over 100k a week with the session sandwiched between a swim and run but I’m always trying to refine what I do a little.

I’m trying to train myself mentally not to go too hard in the first hour to get my power average up. It’s the classic way to race an Ironman, go hard for as long as you can then try and hold it! This is not the best way to race in a non-drafting environment however and definitely n0t the best way to train. Overheating is a particular problem on the turbo trainer where you are hotter than normal and there is little air movement it is easily done and will effect the rest of your session.

tbo

I started yesterday (blue) with the intent to not worry about my power average for the first hour and steadily building to 300 watts. I then do a really simple set of 2x30min at 300+ watts staying above 250 for other riding. You can see that last week (orange) I was well ahead at the hour mark but failed to achieve 300+ watts for my intervals, did not finished strong and average less watts overall, 276watts versus 282 this week.

Lesson learned? Yea well, I think we always know better than to chase averages and that pacing is important. Implementing it is a different matter though so all I can do is keep working on training myself mentally to control my efforts. Of course buying more fans to reduce over heating can help too that’s why I’m just off Amazon getting a second.