As it turned out however, it was a pretty nice day. In fact, many people were overdressed. It must have been close to 60˚ at the start. I'm not sure on the total count for riders in the 1/2/3, but 12 seems about right
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| We are rolling out from the start here, just about to ride over the steel bridge. |
Things started off fairly slowly, with nobody but Yaco wanting to push the pace up the first hill, which concluded without incident. The second hill (steeper) caused a little more pain and shelled about 4 riders, leaving 8 of us riding at a fast but still conversational pace. In fact, once we got to the route 51 section on lap one, we slowed down to a nearly fun-ride pace, with nobody feeling it necessary to pull the pack around into the wind. This kept going for quite a bit until the surges finally came with about a mile to go before the first turn in to lap two.
Everything changed on the hill section for lap two though, the field detonated immediately and four riders went clear (Hunter, Yaco, Eisele and Treadwell) with myself and Sloan chasing Hadzor for a while in the rollers.
After catching Randy we were surprised by the breakaway from the B field coming up to us, but that should have been expected with only a 2 minute gap between races and our field going incredibly slow on lap one. It complicated things though, since our own breakaway was still in sight up the road and we were closing down on them. After catching Wayne Bray in no-man's land, we settled in to a 4-man chase but the B break was still there, and we had to let them go by to do their sprint for the win.
That's the right thing to do of course, but slowing down to let them get room to sprint was about the worst thing we could do if we had any chance of catching our own break (not to mention that those guys were coasting and talking and even stopping right in front of us while we were trying to rail the corner on turn one)
So, with the break now quite a bit further up the road, we gave one more push at the hills, not amounting to much, and then formed up to basically ride the rest of the final lap. Randy somehow got dropped in the rollers or at a corner somewhere and we didn't see him any more. Once we made the turn onto 51 for the last time, we realized that the temperature had dropped considerably and the wind had changed into a full-in headwind blast that slowed things down even more.
Not really racing any more, I made the decision to pull for the last few miles (basically just wanting to make it into a good workout day and didn't even react when the other two went for the sprint)
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| We were a few minutes back but I think the guys wanted to "check their sprint legs." |
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http://app.strava.com/rides/7118775# Click on "lap 2" for the race
Welcome to the world of cat 4. Here is my mini-report (since I have not yet figured out how to write an actual post):
ReplyDeleteThis was my first finish as a cat 4 and despite the course not suiting me my second to last place serves to remind me how much more I have to learn about bike racing.
Lesson 1: LESS IS MORE. When I was dropped I was in the front of the field. I had no business being there on a hill that steep and that early on in the race. I burned out with about 50m before the summit as I watched nearly everyone pass by me while I was in anaerobic blowout. If I ride like that again I might qualify for the definition of insanity, given how many times I have tried to climbing with that method.
After that I rode the way with a guy who resolved to have the same fate as me: Once we got to the rollers, hammer down - at first it was to try to latch back on then just because we/I was so frustrated. Which brings me to my second lesson.
Lesson 2: the smarter you ride race the more fun it will be. Had I ridden a better climb in the beginning I might have been able to do something more useful (or enjoyable) in the group once we got to the rollers and the downhill parts.
- Brad
Nice Race Andrew. I'll be out with my CAT 4 report soon. Brad, as you'll see from my report, the problem is not being in front of the field on a climb (that's often the best place to be), but if you are, what you want to do is set the fastest pace that you can without blowing up. After all, if your in front, you're in control. My mistake was being too far back into the climb on both laps. I got lucky on lap one, but not on lap 2.
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