Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Well, Middle Georgia that is.

There have been some results updates. It turns out that I took 19th in the crit/circuit race on Saturday so I did better than I thought. Any time I finish in the top 20 of a crit like thing, that's good for me.

OK, on to Sunday. I've written about this race before but let's have a brief recap. The race name gives you a little bit of a clue about the race in that it is supposed to have some vague similarities to the French race with almost the same name. The route is a 12.5 mile loop that we did four times. On each loop there is a reasonably stiff double climb in the first few miles and then a 2 mile dirt road section (that is interrupted for a couple hundred meters by a paved overpass over I-75). Some years the dirt section is really firm, some years it's dry and powdery (which is really hard to corner in) and this year it was wet but a little loose. We had to scrub a lot of speed to make the corner onto the dirt section but the harder bit was the section itself. Unlike hardpack there was about a quarter of an inch of wet, loose dirt/sand stuff that wasn't slippery but that took a lot of extra effort to sort of plow through.

The climbs combined with the difficult dirt sections made the race one of attrition more than one of attacks. We also had a cross wind on two of the paved sections that meant that if you were popped off the group by an acceleration, it would be hard to get back on. Almost of the race fields (Pros, Masters, etc.) finished the race is groups of 10-15 rather than in one big pack. Our group was an exception for reasons I'll get to in a minute.

For me the race was a really interesting one. The double climb came about 2 miles into the first lap and I had positioned myself about midway through the pack for the first climb which I expected the pack to do piano. No sense in going off on a break 2 miles into the race with another 48 to go with a stiff wind on about 2/3rds of the course. I was wrong about that. A couple of first time racers decided to go pretty hard and so the pack went up the climb a bit harder than I expected. This wasn't really a problem for me but several other riders were caught of guard and stayed in their big rings too long. About a third of the way up the climb they started shifting into their little rings under load and the predictable thing happened: one guy threw his chain. Rather than try to deal with it, he put his foot down and came to a stop right in the middle of the pack. The sea parted with guys trying to dodge out of his way and I got pushed into the soft dirt on the side of the road and had to completely get off my bike. By the time I got back on the road and back on the bike and going in a way that was courteous and safe for the other riders, I was 200 meters behind the group and all by myself. I thought some really choice things in that moment and considered climbing off the bike and packing it in for the day. No way was I going to catch 60 guys pulling a group along all by myself. When I saw that several other riders had been gapped, I decided to see if I could catch a few and we could work together to get up to the lead group. I caught and dropped each one as it turned out they weren't really to race at this level yet and so I turned into the crosswinds and then headwinds chasing the group all by myself. I kept telling myself that even if my race was over, I was going to use this as a hard training ride and I was certainly doing that. There would be times I would get the gap down to 100 meters but after the dirt road it was almost a quarter of mile and I would wonder if I had lost my mind. I made up some group as the group went across the start/finish line at the end of lap one and a good bit more on the second ascent up the climb. That surprised me quite a bit so I decided to try to gut it out a bit more. I have been chasing for nearly forty minutes but I knew that I had about 15 more minutes left in me at that pace and I thought that maybe I could close things up. About 2 miles later I did. Wow! A 15 mile chase and I was back with the lead group. That was good. What was bad was that I had trashed my legs doing it. My leg hamstring was trying to cramp and everything else had that borderline lactic acid burn that comes from a long time trial. My strategy of putting in a few attacks to try and create a break wasn't in really good shape. I decided to sit in on the back, hope not to get caught out on a gap and recover. I did that for all of the rest lap two and a lot of lap three.

When we hit the dirt on lap three I could tell that some of the guys were suffering and I began to move up in the field. Not far enough to stick my nose in the wind but enough to make sure that I could bridge any gaps that opened up. That turned out to be a good move as gaps opened several times int he two miles and I was able to get across without too much trouble. It was during this time that I realized that the things I had seen in the crit on Saturday were happening here too. No one wanted to lose the race so no one was really willing to take the risks to win it. Had my legs felt better, I think I might have really had a chance to attack here and make it stick. When we came of the dirt we were all together for a 4-5 mile run into the wind before a turn and a short segment to the start/finish line. About a mile out from the turn, a group of about 5 guys got off the front and opened up a 200 meter or so gap. I was sort of stuck back behind some guys and I thought to myself, "Damn, there goes the break...perfect time too." The main group of about 30 guys I was with just sort of sat up and started to give these guys some lease which I thought was a really bad idea. Negative racing I figured with a couple of guys blocking for the group ahead. Then a gap opened I didn't need a second invitation to join the party. I decided that I wasn't going to do well just sitting in so I surged off the front of the group, hamstring be darned, and started to bridge across. Here again my TT skills served me well. Halfway across, when I looked back, the group still looked like it has sitting up noodling around. I figured that if I could make contact, I would be in the break and we could ease up once over the climbs.

I made contact just before the base and told the guys that the field had split and we had a pretty substantial gap. Everyone looked kind of surprised. They had going for some spring points at the line and weren't really thinking of making anything stick. I was sort of stunned and encouraged them to ride hard and smart. They didn't so much. To make matters worse, my legs weren't in great shape and the pack seemed to have woken up. We were swallowed up by a smaller field of 25 or so at the top of the climb and we were all together again. I was sort of stunned. Why wouldn't anyone races aggressively. I found out later that in all the other races similar moments had occurred and aggressive riders had used them to split up their races but not us.

As we rode through the dirt section again, we had several more field split but no one on the front would press the advantage. Twice the front 10 riders (myself included) opened up 50 meter gaps but then let the person on the front would let off the pressure and the gap would close. Had we held the gap off the dirt and into the headwind, we would have shredded the more tired riders. So, end the end, the race came down to a reduced field sprint. The bad thing was, as I've already mentioned, I'm not the best sprinter. The good thing was that all the good printers had been shelled out of the field by the process of attrition over the climbs and in the dirt. My hammy was cramping badly but I decided to go for it and if I got hurt or pulled something, I'd have a few weeks to heal up before the next race. My sprint was actually pretty good but a couple of guys either mishandled their bikes or pulled right in front of me to I had let up some. Still, I managed to finish eleventh which was a great result considering what I had gone through in the race.

Overall, I took 8th in the omnium (a summation of all the points) which is excellent at this point of the season. I have to say that the high point of the weekend was killing the time trial but not far behind that was that on Sunday morning two of the race officials sought me out to tell me how impressed they were about how I raced the crit on Saturday. That meant a lot to me. I guess that there's a lot of frustration about the negative racing that's been happening over the first two big race weekends as a lot of riders are racing not to lose and that there's been a lot of blocking when breaks get up the road. Having both John and Bill come over to tell me how impressed they were about my attacking style tells me that I need to keep training hard and getting better and that sooner or later I'll start winning road races.

Well, this has gotten really long and I'm sure you are bored with my stories. I'll post a final wrap up in the next couple of days.

Thanks for reading.

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