Blog
Oscar Subuh-Symons

Oscar pulls on the England vest and takes his first foray into the European race scene at Trofeo Nasego. But like all debuts, there is no triumph without tragedy. In this case, navigating the vagaries of Italian breakfast buffets and finding the fine line between enough caffeine to keep you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ahead of your race and so much that you see the face of god as you vomit into a bush whilst hearing colours. Despite taking enough stimulants to down a shire horse, Oscar manages a taste of the dolce vita, holding his own amongst the internationals and continues a great season of racing.

Day 1 – Nasego Vertical

My Strava run

VK style of racing: 1,001 m elevation (according to my watch) over 4.2 km. The race started on a fairly moderate gradient for the first 600 m on the road before ramping up and from there, the steepness was unrelenting.

Having never done a VK before , I went for a “Mr. Boring-Boring” approach: using heart rate to manage my effort for the first 700 m of elevation. I know that my running-threshold HR (the max I can sustain for 1 hr) is around 185 bpm, so I tried to keep it around there for the first 700 m of climbing. I didn’t want to blow up spectacularly, since it was only going to get steeper!

Oscar pulls on the England vest and takes his first foray into the European race scene at Trofeo Nasego. But like all debuts, there is no triumph without tragedy. In this case, navigating the vagaries of Italian breakfast buffets and finding the fine line between enough caffeine to keep you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ahead of your race and so much that you see the face of god as you vomit into a bush whilst hearing colours. Despite taking enough stimulants to down a shire horse, Oscar manages a taste of the dolce vita, holding his own amongst the internationals and continues a great season of racing.

Day 1 – Nasego Vertical

My Strava run

VK style of racing: 1,001 m elevation (according to my watch) over 4.2 km. The race started on a fairly moderate gradient for the first 600 m on the road before ramping up and from there, the steepness was unrelenting.

Having never done a VK before , I went for a “Mr. Boring-Boring” approach: using heart rate to manage my effort for the first 700 m of elevation. I know that my running-threshold HR (the max I can sustain for 1 hr) is around 185 bpm, so I tried to keep it around there for the first 700 m of climbing. I didn’t want to blow up spectacularly, since it was only going to get steeper!

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