The Gainesville Georgia Cup event started the same way they always do and that's with a time trial. This one was 9 miles long and involved a good bit of low grade (2-4%) climbing in the first half. What made it hard, however, was the rain.
We knew that the rain was going to be there but the forecasters were divided on how much and when. Some said that we were going to be deluged with enormous amounts of it along with thunder, lightning and possibly severe weather while others said that it would blow through by early Saturday morning. What happened landed somewhere in the middle. We had a bunch of ugly weather Friday night but by Saturday most of that had blown through. What was left was a steady rain that varied from little more than drizzle to downpour over the course of the day. With the rain came early fog dew to the atmosphere trying to cool off and things were dreary.
My TT went pretty well. I didn't feel as good as I had in Perry (maybe about 90%) of that but I felt a lot better than I had at Tundra or Albany. I could tell from the beginning of my warm-up. The rain was both a mental barrier (you didn't want to ride hard with rain pelting you in the face and obstructing your vision) and, to some degree, a physical one (it was hard to get your muscles warm and keep them warm). Still I rode a strong race and my new position seemed to be pretty fast. I ended up finishing third which gave me some confidence that I might do well for the weekend's overall general classification.
The afternoon stage was different than usual. Usually we do the TT and a short criterium or circuit race on the first day and a long road race on the second. Due to scheduling issues, we did the road race on the same day as the TT. This means that you do the two hardest stages of the race on the same day (if the TT is a longer one) which is tough. The course was a 27 mile loop with several short, steep climbs and one mile long "wall" that we'd travel around twice. Add to that the rain and some wind that came up and we had an "Epic" ride. Racing in the rain is about the most physically exhausting thing a rider can do. Because you're wet, the road's wet and your bike's brakes and rims are wet, you lose the ability to maneuver well and stop in any kind of reasonable time. Now put yourself in a pack of 75 guys riding on one side of a narrow, two-lane country road with no shoulder and you can understand why the race was so hard. For two hours and thirty minutes your mind is constantly looking and listening for that telltale sign that a crash is about to happen. And even if you do hear or see it coming, there's a good chance you won't be able to avoid it. Add to that the fact that you're fighting cold conditions in little more than a lyrca body suit and what is a hard race becomes something you're often trying to merely survive. For me, the worst part of this kind of race physically is the cold. I have a really hard time staying warm in these types of conditions and the combo of the wet and the wind made for a long day. The best description for the day was "Flanderian" after the type of racing that one usually sees in Belgium this time of year (and that happened today by all accounts).
I rode well in the road race but once again the race was marked by defensive racing rather than something more aggressive. Both times coming over the top of the wall, there was a lead group of riders that got a gap on the field. Both times, riders on the front of the group choose to sit up and rest and not press their advantage and not let anyone else onto the front to push the pace. What should have been something that was a deciding factor in the race became little more than a selector to eliminate the weakest of the field. Given that I finished with the pack, I remained third overall.
Today we did the crit and after seeing a couple of ugly crashes due to the course design I decided not to really mix it up in the middle of the field. I couldn't finish lower than 5th on the overall as long as I finished with the main field and I knew I wasn't going to contest the sprints so I sat on the back of the race and turned it into interval training. The rider in 4th overall ended up jumping me in time due to a bonus sprint but that was OK with me as the race wasn't something I was targeting to do well in.
All in all it was a good weekend resultswise, even if Saturday was miserable. I finished 4th in the General Classification (the sum of the overall times for all three races) which is a really good result. Had I done just a bit better in the TT I would have lifted that quite a bit. I now go into a week's rest and recovery and then start the buildup for some racing in late May and early June. During that block, which I think will be two hard weeks followed by a week of rest and then two more hard weeks, I'll be looking to lift my fitness to a super high level.
There are some state championships on the line early in the summer and I want to be ready for those. I'm planning to do a blog series on my next big block of training to let you, my faithful readers, know what it's like for a serious (but probably stupid) amateur athlete to get ready to race. I've invested in some new tools that I'm hoping will help me train better so I'll be keeping you informed on how it goes.
Thanks for Reading.
