Chesapeake Crit - In the Money

Trying to bridge the 23 seconds

The night before I started getting the bike and immediately noticed that the rear tire was flat. Now normally this would not be a big deal, but on a set of tubulars, less than twelve hours to the race, its a big problem. Armed with a can of fix-a-flat and some superglue I did a hasty patch. No idea if it would hold.

The day started off as if it was going to be a nightmare. Started off with a four hour drive from Washington DC to Chesapeake Virginia. Once there I began the normal setup of the bike, was pleasantly surprised that the back tire was holding pressure. Got setup and began to roll and realized that the seat was way to low. Oh yes, last weekend my son was in town and we went riding, now he is two inches shorter than me so the saddle was lowered. I grabbed an allen wrench guestimated the height and tightened it down. This left a total of about 10 minutes to warmup.

The race started off fairly fast, we were strung out from the go. I settled in about mid-pack. I guess around the third lap two guys went off the front, they were never seen again. For the next 40 minutes it was pretty much five of us on the front doing the work. I would stay around third or forth wheel take a pull then work my way back into forth. With about six laps to go, two of us moved to the front and did some pretty massive pulls to get back the 23 seconds from the guys off the front, but we were unable to gain any time back. I figured at that point in time were were racing for third place.

Last lap I got myself into a pretty good position and was sitting second wheel. With one turn left, one of the guys took off from third or forth wheel. I decided that I need to go right then and was able to get on his wheel. I came out of the corner in first with about 300 meters. At this point I decided that all I could do was ramp up the speed and hope that I did not get caught at the line. My 21 second, 800 watt average, yielded 35 mph, 200 bpm heart rate and second palace in the field. One ride nipped me at the line for third overall. Great sprint on his part.

All in all, great day. Finally placed in the money. I was really happy about my results. Hey, it is always rewarding when other rollup afterward and congratulate you on a good race, not something that I have had happen before.