roadcx.net

Yesterday, I started out with the Trinity ride on my X-Fire (with road wheels), After my short ride, it was time to finish getting ready and hit the road down to Meridian. The trip went pretty quick because I finally tried out the Economist audio edition. I am always having trouble getting the weekly issue read (and yes, I do want to read most of it). The audio programs are well produced. After this weekend, I should be caught up on my “reading”.

My criterium wasn’t until 6pm, but I came down to the race course in time to watch the Cat 4 race play out. I had 4 teammates in it with two of them finishing 4th and 6th. Here is the gallery.

After taking photos of the Cat 4 race, I started to get ready and to warmup. I was going to ride the trainer, but decided to go up and down Front Street which worked out well with a slight hill and a good run without stops.

I had an okay start, quickly getting into the pedals (Speedplay Zeros are working a lot better than my Keo did). I did, however, start out in far too hard of a gear.

So I started out closer to the middle back than I was comfortable with… I worked my way up while trying to stay out of the wind. The course was generally safe, but some of the corners had some pretty sketchy pavement some of which was unavoidable when in the field 2-3 wide through some of the corners. After some initial attacks went and came back, I was close to the front at just over 20 minute in. Looking up the road, there was a small group with most of the all teams represented. I jumped and fairly quickly bridged up to the group (through a few corners). The group itself numbered about 8 when I joined. A lap after joining the group, I pulled off after a pull and what seemed like a lot of riders joined us (turned out to be just 2). I figured we were caught, but wanted to stay near the front anyway.

After a while, we started getting time checks from the side of the road. For several laps, I wondered who was up the road. In retrospect, it makes sense, I just misread the situation. It wasn’t until the time checks grew to over 1 minute and then switched to “20 seconds until lapping” that it dawned on me. We were the lead. Which made a lot more sense since I know I didn’t see anyone go off (and we had the lead moto).

Our group was 11 strong with one each from MV (me), TriStar, Myogenesis, Tria, Precision Bicycles, Hot Tubes, and several from Herring (5). More importantly (to me), I was the only Category 3 and this race was scoring / paying out separately, so I essentially had the Cat 3 win. With a few to go, the group fractured with 4 in the front group. I wasn’t going to kill myself to bring the group up and the composition of the rest of the group, pretty much meant that they weren’t to be caught. I found out later that the officials finished the field out a few laps before we were done, which is probably good since we would have caught them with only a few laps to go. (Also, notice that I for the first time in my racing career, I managed to pin my number on the wrong side…should have been on the left. Since I was in the break, they were able to keep track of me pretty easily….)

In the end, I ended up 9th in the group (overall), 1st cat 3. Todd took some photos of my race (gallery).

Today is the road race. I like this course, I hope I can do well here as well. Two years ago (as a Cat 4), I spent most of the first lap off the front either solo or with a small group. After coming back to the field, I also went with the winning break, but fell out of it up one of the hills.