I left the house and started on my usual 25 mile loop, which I was going to shorten to 15 miles, but really didn’t feel like dealing with cars….so I took a random ride to explorer different neighborhoods…. 9 miles at an IF of 0.45. Perfect.
Today was a new day and although we didn’t come away with a “W”, we performed well as a team during the Cat 3 criterium in our own backyard. We lined up with six again, but this time we were resolved to make and execute a plan. Did we follow it exactly? Well no, but it is a rare thing indeed to get that done, especially in a flat competitive criterium.
The race started out fast and I was having to work pretty hard to move up but, after a few laps, I was able to work towards the front. Mostly my plan was to cover attacks and no let anything get up the road without us in it (or at least not very far). I ended up in one that lasted a few laps before the halfway point, starting at 2-riders and growing to 4. After that was pulled back, the attacks resumed and I recovered for a minute and resumed my role.
In all of those attacks, Aaron ended up getting into a small group that ended up 4-strong with 3 different teams represented (+1 unattached). This was enough to make sure it succeeded and I alternatively spent time near the front setting a tempo, covering attacks, and resting.
the break
One of the times I was further back in the pack, I ended up getting tangled up with Zach (TCRC) when he had to suddenly move over due to something occurring in front of him. My spokes played a tune on his bike (skewer?) and gave him a tire burn on his calf. The only permanent damage sustained was 1-broken spoke on my front wheel. High-tension radially spoked wheels don’t stay true enough to ride and so I had to pit for a wheel. With no free laps (under 8-to-go), it meant just riding the course until the break and then the field went by. By then, there was only 3-to-go and I just sat on back out of the way until the sprint ramp up and just rode it in well away from the field to not mess up the scoring.
finishing it up…with a softening rear tire to boot.
Net result was Aaron got 3rd, and David finished the best of the rest with a sprint for 5th.
field sprint…. David the freight train
The funny thing is on the last corner of the last lap, my rear tire felt soft… by the time I got to turn 1 after the finish, it was noticeably flatter. So I have two different repairs to do…#1, front wheel broken spoke, #2, change a rear flat tire.
1 broken spoke = end of my race.
Photo galleries for Juniors, M50+, Women, M30+, and Cat 3 are up.
Oxford is next (Plein Air Classic). Probably going to double double (Cat 3/4 and Cat 1/2/3 both days). Then I probably won’t race again until mid-August. A break (from racing) will be nice and I will be really ready to go again by then.
I really don’t have a lot to say about the road race. A four man break went, we weren’t in it. We caught them within sight of the finish. I finished 18th after doing too much work in the chase. It was a tough hot race for me (IF = 0.93)
I thought I would do a better TT than last year. I was wrong. I rolled an 8:44 (4 seconds more than last year). This gave me another 18th place. Polar power numbers looked good, either the Polar is wrong or something else is going on.
Not a good day. Crit is tomorrow.
Still very hot and we got to race during the peak of the heat at 2:15pm. I found out that somehow I rolled a 6th place time trial with my 22:35 time. The race and the heat must have caused a shift from last year…. So with my 9th in the RR and 6th in TT, I broke even for Saturday.
The Sunday crit course is the same old L-shaped one that I remember from 2004. This time I found getting up the hill much easier than I remember it back then and the downhill tight double turn was also much easier than I remember.
I was the lone Memphis Velo rider in the Cat 3 field which had 5 teams with at least 3 riders in them (Cumberland Transit, TriStar/Juris, Gran Fondo, and Jittery Joe’s, and TCRC). I knew that would mean that the attacks would be frequent… I was right about that. Most the early stuff was pretty short lived… but then there was one attack that caused a split… The split was caused my least favorite tactic (blocking), but nevertheless it happened.
Above gallery is a selection of photos by Marsha White.
I jumped around them and I tried to bridge up and ended up being caught in between. A few riders came by me and then I was back in what was left of the field… although that was almost a misnomer since more a few people where up the road… The composition meant that I needed to either bridge or pull them up to the field. I tried the first, and I was covered… after a few times, I couldn’t snap enough for a credible attack, so I decided to just pull them up. By then the group ahead slowed up with two 20 seconds ahead.
At this point we started counting laps and I tried a 3-to-go attack that turned out to be more like a leadout. Other attacks ensuned and I ended up strung out with the rest of them… I finished 13th.. A few others rolled in behind, but along the way we lost about 6-8 riders with all the attacking going on. So as far as a result, it was a bust, but it was still some good training and good racing. I saw what was happening, but there was only so much I could do about alone. I just can’t cover all the moves.
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6/23 update: I took some photos (unfortunately, not with the good camera so the quality is off):
Road race…. Haven’t done this in a long, long time (2002 or 2003, I think). Anyway, that was back when travel made me uncompetitive, so I was looking forward to a better experience this year.
Race started out with an attack up the first moderate hill that had 5-6 clear for a 1-2 miles. After pulling them back, there might have been some other short lived attacks, but they weren’t memorable. Probably 10 miles in, Barrett Krei attacked up one of the hills and I felt obliged to follow. I never really could close down the gap and I was caught and he wasn’t. A few miles later, a Jittery Joe’s rider bridged up and then built up a lead… The chase was sort of disorganized and frustrating.. Two different times, I sort of rolled off the front and decided to make a go of it… I think each one only last about a mile or so before the field pulled me back… and then shutdown again. Really the chase was not about teams it was all about apathy. 1:30 turned to 0:50 (when I was up) and then back out to 1:15… after a while it grew to 3:00 plus and the collective resolved to race for 3rd.
By this time we were winnowed down to about 15 or so…. We lost a bunch in the early hills. With maybe 6-7 miles to go (need to check my garmin, but forgot my cord this weekend), we went up the longest hill and the climbers took advantage… I crested 20-30′ off the past and soon the gap widened somewhat to 500′ with 7 working together. I decided that I needed to get to them and so I worked… All the while I was expected to get caught by the 2nd chase group, but it never happened. I ended up making the catch with about 3 miles to go.
This photo from 1 mile to go was lifted off Dustin Greer’s Facebook. How is that for a photo credit?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t much time to rest, and the finish was uphill. I managed to beat one of the chase group up the hill and got 9th.
After the RR, I hung around in Gainesboro (glad I decided *not* to leave my TT stuff back in Cookeville). I hit the drugstore (I needed fresh deodorant) and then headed to Subway. I went in alone but ran into a bunch of people I know and ended up staying there for quite a while in the A/C…..
The TT was in the evening. My start time was 4:52pm which meant I had plenty of time, but ended up using most of it productively on bike setup and then starting a short warmup riding up and down the hwy. It was still pretty hot, but at least we had a small tailwind pushing us somewhat on parts of the course. Unfortunately, we had a few decent hills to deal with on the 9 mile course. After starting out as I normally do for the shorter time trials, I ended up settling in on a more moderate pace up to the hill. Long story short, the hill was hard and I slowed down excessively going up it (I remember seeing 8 mph for part of it). At this pont, I am not sure of my place, only pretty sure of my time (self timed at 22:35). Looking at last year’s results, it pretty much means I am racing at a Cat 4 level, but maybe all the rest are hurting as well (I was told the race last year went easier in the Cat 3 field.)
Tomorrow is the crit in downtown Cookeville.
Stage 2 was a flat slightly wind-aided 3 mile TT. I put out a good effort (based on feel) and my Polar power sensor thingee agreed. For the 6:25 elapsed time, I was at 367W, which for me it is about right for that duration. Despite this, my time wasn’t close to the best (5:39)… I know some of that is fitness, but I have to believe that some it is aero… I am bottomed out on my stem on my TT bike (road frame conversion) so I don’t have any where else to go. I might have to buy a TT frame at some point.
So with that, I was 25th in the G.C. overnight, over 6 minutes out of 1st. (RR sprint was actually for 8th place). In the morning, we packed up from the hotel early to get down to New Orleans for Andrea’s morning criterium. She raced well, the group quickly split with 6 in the lead and she took 2nd in the sprint giving her a 2nd place in the G.C. as well. Already for her criterium at 8-9am, it was starting to get hot, but the time I started warming up for my noon criterium, it was really hot.
I spent a little extra time warming up knowing that I wasn’t feeling the best this weekend. I lined up in the middle of the pack for the start. At go, I probably suffered one of my worse examples of failure to clip in that I have had in a while, which put me off the back on the start… This is never a good place to be, and today was one of those days where it was really bad… I chased the field lined out along Lakeshore Drive all the way to the right hand turn up the levee hill.. I never made good contact and I was forced to chase again after coming back over the levee into the wind… The gap grew from feet to yards and I had a time gap off the field at the end of lap 1.
As I continued to ride it out, people started popping off the back and I just kept on riding… When a half-lap down, a group of us decided to wait for the field to come around, but they met us at the wrong moment to integrate smoothly, so I didn’t. From then on, I just started to turn out lap after lap pulling back and catching those off the back and then lapping them…
In the end, the leaders came by 3 times and I lapped several people 3-4 times myself, so there were racers all over the course. I left before the results were up, but when I saw the final tally, the result wasn’t computed just right and had me behind several that I had lapped multiple times, etc.. In the big picture it doesn’t matter, but I was scored nearly last of those that finished it out. Oh well. 25th – 30th is probably my final G.C., but the 30th will hit the books. Way out of the money, so it doesn’t matter much. Despite this result, I was real happy with my crit TT’ing ability as I turned out lap after lap to the end at a pretty good wattage for me. The end result was a normalized power right off my FTP (I.F. ~ 0.97). That at least tells me I didn’t fall apart, I just failed.
Next weekend, is Avery Trace and Cookeville Criterium. I am about 50/50 about going at this point, but will get some training in mid-week to help me finish out the first half of my season ending July 4th weekend. Cat 3 racing… Besides Tulsa, I haven’t raced my own category since Tuscaloosa at the end of March.
I have a bunch of photos of the women’s race to put up and few from the Cat 4 and Cat123 race as well. But that will have to wait… time to sleep.
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This year the Tour de Louisiane started out with the road race in the morning. Last night I wasn’t feeling so great and only could eat part of our late dinner at Acme Oyster House. I ended up eating a PB&J bagel before I turned in and just hoped that I would feel better in the morning. This morning, the sleep helped, but I knew I was not quite 100%… but the road race started at 9am, so there was no time to complain.
Going into the 5 lap, 80 mile road race, I knew I needed to start off conservatively and see if I could get myself right during the race. This was all well and good, but the attacks started almost immediately off the starting line with a small split off of riders. That was pulled back and there was probably another one of those (or two) before a larger group moved off the front… and was never seen again. The break had representatives from several of the teams in the 40 man field so the chase was never really that serious. Fortunately, the amount of attacks were also few given my condition.
By the time we finished, the temperature was approaching 90F, but the humidity was pretty high making it feel worse. At the last minute, I opted for the 4th bottle. It was good because I drank all of it and part of a bottle that Andrea was able to hand-off on the last lap (after her race was done).
In the end, there was 4 or 5 riders that put serious time into the field (5-10 minutes?) and a few more between the leaders and the field. The sprint for 9th (or whatever place) was sort of half-hearted at first, but picked up when Brooks (Mercy) jumped early and got reactions from the front of the pack. Unfortunately, I wasn’t so nimble and had to bridge back up to the back of the group, bringing the field with me… I don’t even want to hazard a guess, but if I had to, I was probably about 15th in that sprint, maybe 25th overall? In any case, we all were “same time”. All of us were many, many minutes out of the race. With only a 3 mile TT and a criterium to go, the top 8 or 9 are pretty much set, the rest of us will battle for the remaining 6 paying spots (15 deep).
After the RR, Andrea and I drove back to Covington and started to track down closed restaurants (bad leads in the Garmin and in Google Maps) in downtown Covington… In the end, we drove back and ate at Silicy’s italian buffet near the hotel (think CiCi’s). By the time we got there, the concept of a buffet worked well, since we were both pretty hungry by then. What remains to be seen is how it will work for our short TT this evening…
Andrea and I got up early and made the drive down to Covington this morning with the purpose to make the 2pm tour at the Abita Beer brewery in nearby Abita Springs, Louisiana. After eating lunch, we arrived at the visitor center / tap room. About 1 minute after we got there, they opened up the bar to allow all the visitors to sample the complete range of their brewery. We each tried quite a few partial cups….
Driving around, I spotted this scene… I am pretty sure this is same place I blogged 2 years ago….
Tomorrow is of course the Tour de Louisiane. This has become one of my favorite races on the calender. I decided to race this instead of traveling back to Chattanooga for the state criterium weekend. The format is a bit different than last year with the RR first, followed by different courses for the TT and the criterium on Sunday. Unlike last year’s rain drenched RR, it promises to just hot and muggy.
After a mediocre performance at Tulsa, I need to step back and regroup for my planned 4-week run. Originally, I was going to stay home all weekend, but I have partially reconsidered and plan to camp with Andrea at Mousetail on Saturday night before her mountain bike race Sunday morning.
This week, I took a few days off the bike for various reasons, but mostly to rest. I rode an extended RB’s ride on Tuesday (51 miles) and a pretty moderate ride with Andrea this evening. The pollen is kicking pretty hard after all the rain, so I am either Mucinex’ed up or stuffed up. Fun stuff.
Tomorrow, I plan to make a reappearance at Trinity after 4 weeks of being gone racing. I am pretty rested and feel pretty good.
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We are not going to Mousetail after all…. it is fine, it would be good to a get another long ride in on Sunday (Outdoor’s ride). An entire weekend at home… what a concept!
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