Saturday, January 5, 2008

Well that was unexpected... (Timpani Crit) (20070805)

Alright, so where are we? We're one race away from the CalCup, and all
of us fanatical point-chasing / status-conscious racers are gearing up
for a fitness peak and the big showdown, right? Okay, maybe just me, but
I'm going into this race with a little confidence from the District
Championship RR the day before where I climbed well and had a reasonable
sprint.

On the way home from that race though, James Bauer and I talked a lot
about improvements we could make. One revelation James had for me was
that if I hit the finish line on a sprint and I'm still hammering or
accelerating, I screwed up. I should be totally spent at the line! I'm
not going early enough apparently.

So I resolved to have a sprint today where I started maybe 100m earlier
than I have been. Which is a little bit of a scary thought when you
think about it, because that's a 250m sprint for me, and that's a lot of
tarmac to hold full power. Can I make it?

Only one way to find out....

So there's 70 or so of us in this cat 3 race, and it's windy, but this
is a featureless course. Flat. 4 rounded corners. Good pavement. So
basically, this is a big hammerfest sprint type race where breakaways
historically don't work.

Boris is also in the race with me, but Boris was hanging around in the
field and he and I didn't have a strategy together so weren't very
integrated.

So in our 55 minute race a few people fool around off the front but with
5 laps to go all the breakaways have been caught, we're all together and
it looks like it's going to be a sprint...

I'm near the front, riding on what I think of as "the inside eddy" - the
flow of riders coming up along the inside line, hitting the front and
falling back through the middle. I'm rolling in the eddy from around
10th deep to 5th just holding steady - near the front when I roll
forward but not in the wind, and fading back but barging into the inside
line of riders moving up when I get around 10th.

Mentally, I'm thinking of when I'm going to jump, how many people deep I
want to be, what gear to use etc, every lap for the last 4 laps I'm
visualizing the decisions I've made - 3rd wheel with 2 corners to go,
jumping out of the last corner. This gear, that line, etc. I'm not even
paying attention to the power numbers and heart rate coming up on the
computer but I dumped them later and they were pretty high . I didn't
feel bad but it's probably good I didn't see them.

The last lap comes and I'm still surfing the inside eddy, but now we're
doing it full-bore with bared teeth and lots of speed. People are
getting antsy and pushing around a little bit but I manage to pushy
enough and have good enough timing to get third wheel into the second to
last corner. Looking good so far...we're rolling at 32mph now and the
first wheel runs out of steam and pulls over to the inside.

Second wheel starts to slow down but someone back in the pack yells at
him: "Go!". Miraculously and for some unknown reason, he stands up and
does just that with about 50m to go to the last corner. He accelerates
pretty hard but I'm right on his wheel pushing hard into the last corner
in his draft.

From that point on, I don't remember anything else except the finish
line. We swept out of the last corner and I'm pouring full gas on
already, with 250m to go. The finish line gets bigger and everything
becomes earily silent and in slow motion. I don't remember shifting
gears. I don't remember feeling even minor discomfort. I didn't look
back or to the side. I remember having my mouth open (funny how you
remember some things). I do remember throwing my bike at the line, which
is also funny because apparently I had at least 5 bike lengths on second
place.

I fought for position starting around 7 to go and held it. I went for
the early sprint, and it worked. I won myself a bike race! woohoo

7 more cat 2 upgrade points (which scares the crap out of me, frankly),
15 BAR points for me and the team. Go Team Oakland!

The downside to being in good racing shape but being too young to do the
35+ races is that you only get one race a day and criteriums are so
short that you actually lose fitness by doing them. I need to ride two
to three hours a day on average to maintain fitness and I usually count
on weekend days for about four hours a day. So I ended my victorious day
with two and a half hours on the trainer under the wonderful Team
Oakland pop-up tent watching the rest of the races. The exciting life of
a bike racer indeed

But this crosses off the second of three goals I had for the cat 3s.
I've gotten a top ten and a top five now, but I have never finished a
race in the winning break. Looks like I'll be riding breakaways for a
while...

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