I went out early this morning to watch the 5s (Vaughn and Andy) race. I will be the first to admit that between one and ten, I was about a one and a half of my desire to race today. I really just did not feel good and my body was hurting from the falls on the last two weekends. After the races I started setting up and getting myself ready for the 12:30 start time.
My plan was to setup a trainer and do about one hour of Spinervals Sprinting Machine. Then head out on the course with about 15 minutes till race start and do a few laps. One thing that I noticed in the 5s was that with an uphill start several had troubles getting started and clipped in, so that was something that I was going to plan for in my field also.
I got the bike setup on a trainer and started a routine. I had not uploaded Sprint Machine but I did have another video so I through it on the iTouch and used it instead. The funniest thing of the day was that an NCVC guy had setup his trainer about 15 feet from mine. I was just spinning and caught a glimpse of him falling. Yes, the NCVC guy wrecked on his trainer. I am not sure how, but he went down. He got up, muttered something to his bewildered girlfriend , put his bike on the trainer and tried again. After about 40 minutes, I got the rest of my kit on and headed out to the course.
The course was fairly fast with one pretty good descent and one climb, of course so, it is a circuit. The descent was fairly long and my first time down, I did not feel great. I just felt a little sketchy from yesterdays race. I continued around and made the climb, piece of cake, that was not going to be hard. I moved around to the start finish line, Coppi and NCVC had already started to lineup, 20 minutes before the start, wow, already. So instead of doing another loop, I stopped also. The last thing that I wanted was to be DFL on the start. After a few minutes the head ref asked why everyone was already cued and sent everyone around. When we lined up I went to the far side and picked a pretty good line, I figured this was going to be a cyclocross start and I wanted the hole shot. I think there were 88 starters. Sure enough, as soon as the whistle blew, we took off. I had a great line and hit the hole shot in third, right where I wanted to be. I did hear some chaos in the background. I found out later that some guy could not get clipped in and took out two others. Yes, a wreck at the start line, nice.
The race took off and I was sitting third, I settled down and dropped back a little bit knowing that it was going to be a fast one hour race. Nothing really exciting happened during the first ten or so laps. I really did not feel good. Kinda like a little PTSD, but I stayed on the top third. Each lap I would catch 20 or so riders on the climb and would loose about the same on the descent, I just did not feel like descending at a high rate of speed and either way, it did not take long for me to coast back into the pack.
I did pull on two laps, the first time, I just was getting to nervous, I had one of two solutions off the back or off the front, with the first not being an option. So I went off of the front and lead the climb, flat and then got passed on the descent. But I knew it was going to happen because it was a preme lap. As we came around the last corner for the climb to the preme, I hopped behind one rider that was going fairly aggressively I figured that if he went for the preme I would go with and try to catch him at the end, he came out of the saddle but did not last long, so I just settled back down and did not sprint for the finish.
With about three laps to go I moved forward again and off the front with an NCVC guy and Kelly Benefit. The Kelly rider was strong and was trying to organize the five of us, but it was apparent that just him and I had anything left, and neither one of us wanted to drag the other three, so we settled back into the pack. With one lap to go, I had a pretty good plan, I wanted to take an inside line on the last turn and then power up the climb as I had done several other times. Bike Rack had got organized and they were moving five guys up to the front, NCVC and Coppi had several riders each but relate were not communicating. One Coppi guy just went off the front by himself Still not sure why, he had a half dozen riders he could have worked with. Bike Rack did a good job of moving forward, I grabbed a wheel and was promptly cut off by a another rider. ironically, I remembered him from last years Vint Hill, he did the EXACT same thing last year causing a wreck on the last lap. I came into the turn and picked a good line, but the front of the field already had a good lead on me. I got around the one jackal and took the inside, I had a good sprint up the hill for a 27th position finish. I didn’t wreck... that was my goal today.
My numbers:
Average Speed: 24.7 mph
Normalized power: 247
Max power: 1207 watts
Average HR 167
Max HR 186
Next race Chantilly Crit next Saturday
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