Oracle Road Race: Race Report and Week 4 Recap

It's been an interesting week. Monday morning, while getting dressed, standing still mind you, no gyrations, walking down stairs or summersaults...nope, standing still, pulling on a sweater, I tore an intercostal muscle beneath my left arm pit. Those are the muscles that keep your ribs together ... when you injure them, it's quite painful.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I tried, without success, getting myself dressed without my stupid rib yelling at me. Friday morning I was successful! I felt proud of myself, this was an accomplishment. When I arrived at work, though, I realized I had forgotten to zip up my pants. DOH! (Luckily I had a long jacket on that I believed spared any innocence from permanent ocular damage.)

Today was the Oracle Road Race, a course that suits me well. I believed, hoped, that those guys that could match me in the criterium could not hang with me on the climbs. This scale told me I was 206 pounds this morning, yikes, but I can still climb pretty well, provided it's not too long or steep or too punchy.

Course Profile, about 54 miles, 4,000 feet of climbing.

I had a couple of teammates with me in the race, Gene, Rich S. For the omnium I was in 2nd place, behind by 7 points. So, if I won the road race, no matter what happened, I won the omnium, too. Winning came with some merchandise, and I like stuff.

The course was 2 laps, down the hill a back up. The day was windy and started pretty cold, even a small patch of ice on the road!

Down the hill was without event but our group was pretty large. Going down hill that fast with gusty cross winds in cold weather in a cat 4/5 and collegiate b/c kids is unsettling! But, we made it.

First shot up the hill was punchy. This is my first attempt at matching anything in a road race in almost 3 years and I was in trouble near the top. I decided to ease off and catch back on down the hill.

As soon as I did, I saw the cattle guard, marking the top. There's still climbing after that but it's more my style. I could see them but couldn't catch back on. They started attacking each other and were soon out of sight.

I wasn't sure, but I thought there were 2 guys in that group that were in my race. I sat up and waited for a big strong dude that got dropped before me and we worked together through town, picked up a college kid on the way down.

Here's a video of the big dude, (Scott Thompson), and I working our way through town. There were nice crowds watching the race yesterday.



I kept thinking how pissed I'd be for sitting up there if it cost me the race. But, even on the long downhill where you could see a long way ahead we couldn't see that lead group. We just weren't closing in. The headwind made it tough and they were obviously working together.

So, about half way down I stopped taking normal pulls and just went full gas for 2 minutes. Then, I saw the group ... way ahead still. I redoubled my efforts and worked hard for another 2 minutes and at the bottom of the hill we were just 25 yards behind. We caught them easily then.



I joined the pace line, there were about 10 total, including the two I brought down the hill. As I examined the two masters riders in the group I saw they were NOT in my race. All I needed to do to win was sit in and not crash.

That's what I did. Back up the hill, the two older guys worked over all of the kids. I just rode tempo up the hill and dropped everybody but the one kid I brought down the hill. Turned out he had a chance to win his race so I worked for him, well tried too. On the downhill section coming into town he lost my wheel ... I was going 53 in a 25, not sure what happened there. Anyhow, he won his race too.



So I won a cool pocket sized blue tooth speaker so I can jam tunes without ear buds when training, some Skratch labs recovery mix, some socks and a few boxes of Girl Scout Cookies! BOOM!

Some race and training notes:

1. I tried straight maple syrup as fuel during the race. I used it and water for the first half and then caffeine and a sugary electrolyte drink for the second half. My gut didn't complain and my energy felt good throughout.
2. Every time I race on hills I get at least one person that says, almost the same words regardless of the person, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a big dude ... how do you climb like that?"
3. I need more road racing experience. Unlike crits, I know what to do, but my body isn't used to it. Responding to the punchy stuff on the climb was very hard for me, even though I was well within what I could do. The second time up the hill, just doing tempo, was faster, yet way easier, than the first trip up the hill.
4. I could barely walk after the race. I have neurological issues with the muscles in my feet still, from my back injury. Hamstrings get cranky, too, but they were fine yesterday. If I suffer like that after every race, it's still worth it. :D
5. My normalized power for the whole race was 309 watts. I'm very happy with where my power is and was concerned after last week's time trial. But, a week of rest goes a long way.

This coming week I will be increasing my volume of training and doing some FTP testing. I'm curious if I'll have any growth in that 20 minute range. I know I'm way stronger in short term power, so regardless of the results, I feel I'm headed the right direction. Still, I have a long way to go, which is what motivates me.

Thank you again for reading, I hope it's been entertaining and perhaps informative.

PS: I will create a video of GoPro footage to go along with the race, but it'll take a few days.

Historic University of Arizona Criterium: Race Report

It was a bit nipply, as Clark Griswold would say!  Twenty one degrees at my house when I left for the race this morning, and in the low 30's at race time.  Still, the sun was out, the course was pretty interesting, and, well, it's race day!

I always want to win, and am working on developing some instincts for racing criteriums that may help me win, but that's just it ... right now I'm trying different things.  Today my #1 goal was, do not crash.  In the first race on the day there were 7 separate crashes on the one tricky corner.  In my race, just one.  As the day went on and the road warmed up, the paint on that corner got less slippery, so that helped.

The second goal was to try some different break aways using features of the course and see if one sticks.  I felt good and believe that if I could've gotten away I had a good chance of staying away.

Thank you John Hays for the great pics!

 Spoiler, I didn't get away.  In fact, nobody did.  There were just a few guys shutting everything down.

The course:  0.8 miles long and starts slightly down hill headed east with a very fast pair of turns (numbers 1 and 2) that send you slightly back up the hill then a bend to the right and a very pinched and technical 150 degree turn.  This is where everybody crashed when it was cold.

The venue was very cool, on the UofA's campus.  The streets were pretty nice, grass everywhere, and palm trees.  There were a lot of spectators, making it a lot of fun.

When the race started I just wanted to stay in the front 1/3 of the pack, stay safe, do zero work.  My garmin ended up getting wonky on me, but from the data I collected, I did a good job not working at all when I didn't need to.

I am also happy to report that on the fast pair of turns on the east end of the race, I was faster than the other riders.  I guess because I could carry my momentum through the turn.  That same inertia hurt me more than it helped on the tricky, dog-legged turn.  I popped off over 1,100 watts twice, and over 1,000 repeatedly in the short 11 minutes interrupted data I collected.  All in that one corner, all just coming back to speed, not attacking.

It became very quickly apparent that whoever went into the last turn (the tricky one) first, would be the first to the finish line, provided they didn't slide out in the turn itself.  For one of the prime laps I was 3rd wheel in the corner and had no chance.  Each prime and the race itself was won by whoever was first in that corner.

If I had a time out during the race, or was smarter, I'd have changed my plan from a late break away to just getting on the front on the back half and pulling the whole field to that turn and gunning it out of the corner!  DOH!

During the race several guys tried to get away and none did.  I tried three separate times, and never got very far at all.  On the last lap I just tried to stay in front of the people in that were in the omnium competition.  I ended up coming in 4th in my category and 7th over all, and I did let one of the omnium competitors slip away, I didn't see him.  So, after day 1, I'm sitting in second place.

Here's the footage from my GoPro from today's race.  It was a lot of fun.  It was also nice seeing Rich Horn out there cheering me on!  What a teammate!

Tomorrow's race has a lot of climbing, twice ascending a long category 2 climb.  Who knows what surprises the day will hold!  I'm built for crits, not hills...but I ride hills not flats, so I'm comfortable when we go up and down.  I might surprise a few folks tomorrow.  Then again, I might get spit out the back right away.  We shall see!