First stage race of the year!
The first day up was supposed to be a Time Trial in the morning and an afternoon Crit, but mother nature had other plans. The morning Time Trial went off with out a hitch the course was all right I guess. I am not the fore most expert on TT courses. It was an "L" shaped out and back with a small climb. I still bled time to the fastest guys in our class but felt like I raced better than the previous week.
The Crit ended up being cancelled do to weather. Wind with gusts up to 58 mph with rain, hail, and snow are not considered good conditions for bike racing!
Day 2 the road race. With the cold weather, driving winds, short steep climbs and chip sealed roads gave the race a very spring classic feel! On the line I was thinking the group would easy into it and take the first few miles as a warmup of sorts. I was wrong! The pace jumped through the roof as soon as the neutralized start ended. Guys attacked to every little climb the group was like an ameba at best and a mosh pit at worst. I put in an attack at the base of a short very steep hill when i noticed a big group went with me I eased up. Big Mistake! That turned out to be the decisive break. I tried to chase and get back on, but with the wind and other peoples unwillingness to help it turned out to be an individual Time Trial. It still baffles me that people will enter a race and not try, they won't work with someone if they think that person might be able to beat them later, so they just sit in and become a spectator in their own race. I road pretty much by myself for the better part of 20 miles until I caught a guy on the short little climbs leading up to the finish. I think he was spit off the leading group, he looked kinda rough, he has the Salvador Dali snot mustache mixed with the dead elvis grin. When I passed him he made no effort to stay on my wheel.
My base fitness is where I think it should be for this time of year and I realize I don't have my top end form yet which I all ready knew. The race made it painfully clear I need to work on my 5 min power. So all in all a good weekend of racing and it let me know where I stand and what I need to Work on.
Practice Crit? It felt like a regular crit to me. Except we had a little more diversity it the group, but most of them were dropped after the first couple of laps. The tempo was fast but not insane but there are some sketchy riders in the group. I sat in the first part of the race because my legs were very sore from the squat fest a couple of days prior. About 2/3 of the race I started feeling a little better and went to thee front of the group and did some work. One can only suck so many wheels in a day. With about 3 laps to go I dropped back into the group to recover for a lap before the real fun started. I heard the sound of metal, carbon fiber and bodies colliding, the guy in front of me locked up his breaks so hard he smoked the back tire and it exploded! I saw three guys laying on the ground and one bike still tumbling end over end. This caused a break in the field and I was on the wrong end of it. I chased a little but when I saw the 2 laps togo sign I just sat up and cruised. The poor dudes who were in the wreck looked rough one looked as if the end of his nose had been abraded off! OUCH!!! All in all not a bad day of racing for me, I felt bad but road pretty well. Still need to work on some of my power issues but it is coming around.
