Wells Ave 8/26

Stayed out at Mohegan Sun Friday night until 5 AM doing some “mental recovery” after a few weeks of high volume and with lots of intensity. A workout gone bad on Thursday suggested that I needed this. Anywho, 4 hours of bad sleep on Friday night and a four-hour ride in the heat of the day on Saturday (97F) really had me feeling destroyed at Wells Ave on Sunday. Was so close to going back to bed when the alarm went off. To make things even more interesting, I got a flat about a mile from home when riding down to Wells. Ran the bike home and drove there. Thanks to Tim for fixing my flat while I got ready for the race. I don’t think I would have made it otherwise; the race went off within 10 minutes of me parking.

There was finally a B race for me to enter so I didn’t end up sitting in praying not to get dropped for 32 miles. What a nice change to compete against people in your category. It was noticeable immediately that the pace was much slower than the A races. Moving up to the front is a lot easier when your heart rate isn’t 95% of max.

For the first prime I was way out of position and didn’t contest it. For the second prime I was somewhere in the middle and made a move up the inside to go straight to the front. Two guys had already gone off the front though and although I tried, I didn’t have a shot. Similar story for the third prime. Also helped pull back some break attempts. Felt much stronger than usual.

By the time the fourth prime came around I recognized that they were calling primes every three laps or so, and I made sure to be in the front ten wheels at the start of the lap. A larger Union Velo rider made a good strong move coming up turn two and I snagged his wheel. He pulled off going into turn four and there I was up in the front with an MRC rider glued to my wheel. Broke a little to the left as I throttled it to 95% and I thought I had it. Nope, the MRC rider was sprinting balls out up in the inside. I reacted with a balls out effort of my own and we crossed the line within inches of one another. Neither of us could tell who got it, but in the end the officials voted 2-1 that he had it. Darn! This was a huge effort for me though, hit a new max HR of 199, and I was gasping for air. It wasn’t the plan to go 100% after any primes! We sat up and chatted for a bit, and the field didn’t catch us until well into the back straight.

As I accelerated to hop on the back of the field it happened, I puked. Staying on the back just wasn’t going to happen. Sat up and waited to get lapped. Upchucked again a little bit in my mouth in the meantime. Ouch. I guess that’s what happens when you think your max HR is 194 at the beginning of the season, and hit 199 mid-race. Good stuff.

Hopped on the back just intending to get a little more workout in. Quickly ended up at the front again though. Seemed like no one wanted to work. I’d be up front for half a lap, pull off, come up to the uprights, let the HR come down, and STILL no one would pull through. Fine by me as long as I’m not working.

With three to go there was a two-man break that got a solid gap, maybe 100m or more. Two or three of us took some good pulls and brought it back for the last lap. As the pace came up for the last lap I drifted to the back, not wanting to get in the way of people that hadn’t been lapped. It was kind of nice watching how the race played out from the back though. One BRC rider make an early break and stayed away for the win. Most everyone else scrambled with their own solo efforts, scattered all across the road.

After the race I went for a one-hour mt bike ride. Got my highest intensity ever (according to my HR) and some good long miles in this weekend, not to mention a good amount of fun. This week I will be tapering off for GMSR.

Norwell Circuit Race

I never would have made it to this race if it weren’t for Tim pushing me. The two-hour plus drive home from the hilltowns the evening before in addition to fixing my bike while trying to recover from the 56-mile race just seemed like too much. Also had to drive Erica to the airport in the time. However, I was back at the house wide-eyed at 8am, so I set out to get my bike working. It took over two hours but I was finally able to bend my rear derailleur back into a workable position and get it tuned up nicely. I was a little annoyed to see that I banged up my two-week old handlebar tape in the crash.

The ¾ field at Norwell was a 21-mile race including nine laps around a ~2.5-mile loop. There was one hill on the course, climbing about 100 ft with grades of up to 8%, so it was pretty flat overall. There was no yellow-line rule in effect with the exception of a 200 meter section, so it was really nice for moving around.

My goal for today was to just sit in and see how I felt, as my legs were pretty sore from the Tour of the Hilltowns. Surprisingly I felt plenty strong, and my heart rate was way lower than I’ve ever seen before. With two laps to go I was licking my chops for a sprint finish.

Coming up around the right hander and going up the finish hill with one to go there was a crash right next to me. Myself and several others had to slam the brakes to avoid it. There was no hope of catching the field as they were powering up the 8% grade at 20+ mph and a good gap had already formed. I fought as hard as I could but the pace was just too much to catch. I ended up finishing 28^th out of 35 or 40 starters. What a bummer though, two extremely disappointing finishes this weekend despite feeling as strong as ever.

I made the decision to sign up for the Green Mountain Stage Race after this weekend. Despite the disappointing finishes, I feel as if I’ve continued to make dramatic improvements in strength over the past two months. Like Oscar said this weekend, if nothing else, GMSR will put hair on your chest.

Tour of the Hilltowns

I had sworn off doing any more hilly races this season after Bow, but unfortunately I had already registered for the Tour of the Hilltowns. The course is in my old stomping grounds, and I know every little roller and twist and turn from Notchview to Berkshire East and on route 9. Also, I’ve felt strong in some crit races since Bow, so I was willing to give it a shot with the 4/5 field. There were some very strong cat 4 climbers in the race, so I was certain the pace would be nasty up the 1200’ vertical East Hawley Road. At 80 kg, my weak W/kg @ LT would surely leave me dropped on the 8% climb, and the plan was to organize a chase and hope to catch the main field before the route 9 climb to the finish.

The wind that morning was incredible, steadily blowing around at least 20 mph. Seeing as though it was coming out of the west, it would make for an interesting finishing climb into the strong headwind. In addition, temperatures were just 60°F, which made for an unseasonably cold race for August. I suited up in my long sleeve jersey.

I sat in as much as I could for the first 21 miles which were downhill to the East Hawley Road climb. Apparently everyone had this idea. The pace was so slow it was ridiculous. There were a handful of semi-hard pushes up some of the rollers, but that’s it. My average heart rate was probably somewhere around 135 during this section which is nearly in the recovery ride zone.

After the more or less neutral first 21 miles, we came to East Hawley Road and sure enough things blew up. I maintained contact with the lead field for only the first half-mile of the 3.5-mile climb, as I noticed my heart rate climbing above 185 which would put me way into the red. I eased up just a notch and settled into a nice groove, climbing at my LT heart rate of somewhere around 180. Initially a lot of riders went by, but in the top half of the climb I was picking them off. Cresting the top a spectator indicated that the lead group had a 3-minute gap on us.

I quickly paired up with a skinny younger-looking rider. We had a little bit of trouble working together effectively at first as he would push himself too far into the red when it was his turn to pull. Eventually we found a groove and were picking up two more riders when we come around a turn and a pickup truck from the fire dpt. is blocking off the road. There were three other riders that they stopped in addition to the four of us. Apparently a tree branch had been blown off by the high winds and caused electrical wires to fall across the course, making it unsafe for us racers.

As we waited more and more fields that were staged behind us caught up and were stopped. It was very unfortunate that it was my field that ended up being split in two, as it pretty much ended my race. We were told that the gap was somewhere between 2 and 3 minutes when we were stopped, and I really think we could have made it, especially with the significant tailwind that was to come in the next 5-10 miles.

This must have been a race promoter’s nightmare. Probably around 200 racers were stopped, then rerouted around the dangerous section before being restarted. The rerouted section involved somewhere around a mile or two of dirt roads with large rocks and steep pitches. Most people walked their bikes over a good portion of it.

So we get restarted, and the twenty chasers or so in our field were told to just sort of go, with no lead car or anything because we had been dropped. Fair enough, but for some reason a statey pulled out a lead the way for us anyways. Cool. So the twenty of us are trying to stay enthusiastic with nothing really to race for, but there’s no way anyone was giving 100% at this point.

Maybe 5 miles or so after being restarted, the statey made a right turn down some road that was not the normal course. A NCC rider commented after the turn that he didn’t think this was right. It wasn’t really a big deal at this point so no one said anything as it was a turn in the right direction. However, the road bombed down a steep grade, probably 12-15%, went over some deadly potholes, then made a sharp left-hander. The two racers in front of me were very close to going down, another rider lost his chain. Just after this though we were back on route 9.

As expected, the headwind was ridiculous. At first we weren’t organized at all, and moving along at 16-17mph on the flats. The NCC rider did a great job of organizing us into an echelon, despite a few riders having no idea how to make it work which caused a little bit of yelling but whatever, at least we were going to finish some day soon.

The last five miles are about 5% grade average. With 2.5 miles to go we were still rotating around nicely, when I locked up wheels with the guy in front of me as I rotated on the back of the echelon to the forward-moving line. I think there must’ve been a huge gust of wind or something because his wheel came back rapidly at me just as I was moving over. My weight was leaned in the direction I was moving, and it resulted in me crashing. We were only going 10 mph, and I was actually able to click out and hop on my right foot without totally touching down. Unfortunately my rear derailleur impacted pretty hard and was bent. I tried to hop right back on but as soon as I did my chain went over the top cog. I shifted down a few gears and got it to work, but I was now 50 meters back. I pushed hard into the wind but couldn’t close the gap. Every time I would try to pick up the power gears would skip back and forth between cogs. By the time I made it to the top of the climb and through the finish I was pretty darn frustrated. What a crazy series of events.

Was the Witches Cup Hard?

Or at least that's what I think my Garmin data is suggesting. Below is a graph of heart rate and time. First off, my heart rate was pretty much pegged the entire Witches Cup race. Half way through I got a "break" that allowed my heart rate to fall almost to 180 (my max HR is 198). I remember feeling really good here.

In the 3/4 race at Fall River my heart rate was significantly lower. It may have been because it was my second race of the day, but I'm not sure. It also may have been the nature of the course having a significant uphill section. I recall working extremely hard when my heart broke 180 up the hill. There was a good amount of time to rest on the downhill, but I recall gasping for air there too.

This second graph shows calculated power in a range of heart rate bins. Peak power is pretty similar, with the Witches Cup being slightly higher. The bigger difference is the width of the two curves, which shows that my heart rate didn't come down as much during the Witches Cup. I'd like to figure out why this is. Was it the slightly higher power? Was it the peakier nature of the race, coasting into and accelerating out of turns three times per half-mile? Or maybe it had something to do with the Fall River 3/4 race being my second of the day.

Witches Cup

My first downtown criterium, and one of the bigger events I’ve done this year. 69 starters in the cat 4/5 race, lots of cash primes, and the strongest p123 fields I’ve seen to date. The forecast called for a perfect weather, and it turned out to be just that. The course is a triangular-shaped loop that circles Salem Commons. It is nice and wide, but there were a ton of potholes and cracks in the pavement, most of which were marked with orange spraypaint. The back stretch was the worst part. I was warming up and pedaling super soft, going maybe 14mph or so, when a rider passes me five feet to my left. Out of nowhere, the rider’s front wheel falls into one of these maneater potholes and BAM! He goes right over the handlebars and is laid out on the pavement. This is right in the middle of a straightaway pre-race, no turns or other riders in his way to force the crash, felt like a pretty ominous sign.

My legs were incredibely tight in the morning, maybe not enough stretching after my recovery rides on Monday and Tuesday. Took a few minutes out of my work day to go outside and stretch out. It seemed to help a bit. Got about 20 minutes of warmup with three, 1-minute high-cadence intervals, before the race. Heart rate seemed high, easily going up to 140-150 at low perceived efforts. If I was pedaling hard enough to keep up with everyone passing me, surely I would have been in the 160-170 range. I wonder if they warm up at higher intensity than me. Sitting at the starting line I tried to relax, heart rate still 110-120, must be nerves.

I got a really bad start. At the line I was positioned in the back third, but when the gun went off I just couldn’t click in my second pedal. EVERYONE passed me, and I had to sprint to catch on the back. This pretty much set the tone for my first four laps. There were a lot of riders in the race that were in no where near good enough shape. People starting dropping out after lap one. I’d be on a wheel, the rider would lose his ground, and I would move around. Between moving around dropped riders and dodging potholes I was expanding a lot of energy. Four laps into the race I was questioning if I’d even be able to make it 45 mintues.

Luckily, as I moved my way up things got a whole lot smoother and I was able to get in a groove, staying out of the wind. As I got more comfortable I was able to identify a section in the course where the pace eased up and I could move up relatively easily. By the mid-way point I was riding comfortably in the front third and felt very good. A few NEBC riders were doing a really good job of leading out for the primes. I was told afterwards that NEBC got 3 out of the 4 primes. Unfortunately I can’t say I had any significant part in that, I’m pretty sure I would have blown up with any big prime efforts.

The plan for the race was to stay in the front 10 wheels within 4 laps to go, no matter how much energy expenditure is required. No interest in conserving in the mid-back of the pack only to sprint by 10 people or so and take 20^th like at Fall River. Therefore, the real race is jockeying for position in the last four laps. This is tough with a strong field because everyone has this same plan. People were burning matches all over the place to move up. There was lots of bumping, moving up the outside in the wind, and just overall very aggressive riding. With 2 to go I was severely anaerobic and started riding poorly, letting big gaps form in front of me, sprinting too hard, then braking. With 1 to go I had slipped to the back, and as the pace went crazy I sat up and spun in to the finish, crossing the line 40^th out of 69 starters.

Mike Rowell made a great break going into turn 2, and stuck it out for a great win, so congrats to him!

Fall River Crit

The 4/5 field started at 8AM, which meant rolling out of bed at 5AM again on a weekend. This is really getting old fast. Not only does it suck getting up that early, I have no appetite then and I have to force feed myself. Erica says her biggest motivation to upgrade at this point is so that she can enter races that start later in the day. She’s right, it would make these races so much more enjoyable if I could “sleep in” until 7 or 8.

We arrived at about 7am, and things really weren’t all set up yet. It took a little bit to find the registration table. Ended up only getting 1 lap of warmup, so ~1 mile and no more than 5 minutes. Unlike Bow, there was no 400-foot climb right at the beginning so the first couple of laps served as a decent warmup I guess.

The course itself was pretty cool, four turns, 60-foot hill on straight, 60-foot downhill on another. The turns weren’t super-sharp, but did seem to cause a little bit of trouble here and there throughout the race. The downhill turn and straightaway had a lot of cracks in the pavement that made things a little unpleasant. The finishing stretch is a quarter-mile flat straightaway just after the hill. The course was closed to traffic so it was nice and wide. People that did the race last year said it was backwards this year.

The 4/5 race was a little squirrelly. Early on I was following a rider around turn one and he just sort of rode off of the course onto the grass for no apparent reason. He must’ve been uncomfortable cornering at that speed. Good thing he wasn’t on the inside lane. Towards the end of the race another rider locked up his brakes or hit a crack in the pavement or something, causing himself to fall and luckily only pushing a couple of other riders off of the course. It was very uncomfortable overall in the turns.

Early on Oscar went off the front, so another NEBC rider and myself raced up to the front to try and shut things down. We sat up and forced the field to come around. It was pretty meaningless in the end but made things fun.

Not a whole lot else happened during the race. A few worthless attacks went off the front, but like every other cat 4/5 crit race it came down to group finish. I was hoping to be in the front ten coming around turn one on the last lap, but I didn’t make much of an effort to position myself that way and found myself in the middle. Coming out of turn 3 and up the hill the pace really lifted up and the field pretty much exploded. I didn’t have a good wheel and was doing 25-30mph out in the wind coming up the hill. On the finish stretch I was really blowing up and got passed by two more riders despite getting out of the saddle trying to sprint. I crossed the line in 16^th out of maybe 40 or 50 starters. Ironically, a guy that Erica used to date in high school ended up winning the race.

In hindsight it wasn’t a bad race and was actually quite good in that I felt strong. It’s been a tough first season of racing and my experience in group finishes is limited. The lesson learned here is to “stay awake” at the end of the race, and that it may be worthwhile to expend a little extra energy earlier on to get into the right position.

Because I felt good, I decided to enter the 3/4 race as well. It went off at 12:15, so a fair amount later in the day. I was doing the race for experience and a workout, not so much to seek a result. This was also my first time racing in a 3’s race.

The difference from the 4/5 race was immediately noticeable. People braked BEFORE the turns which made things much less sketchy. Besides the constantly-occuring attacks, the pace was buttery smooth and it was a really fun race. An attack would come up the side, a few people would shout and call it out, and the field would swerve to the side of the road that the attack came from. There must’ve been an attack on pretty much every lap coming up the hill, we were doing 24-27mph coming up it almost every time. This kept putting me well into the red, but luckily the pace would slow dramatically across the finishing straight. This took it’s toll on me. I was beat and puked in my mouth with 4 to go, so I called it a day and pulled out. Too much free vitamin water and powerbars between races maybe, or perhaps it was the sun. I would have liked to finish the race, but was happy to have gotten such an intense workout in.

Tim had an amazing finish to the race, getting maybe a 10-second gap on the field on the last lap. Apparently he attacked on the downhill, and managed to keep the hammer down all the way to the finish.

Central NH/Bow Road Race

Felt confident coming into this race having completed two of the best and most intense weeks of training this season. Opted not to do the Concord Crit on Saturday to allow for additional recovery from an aggressive three-day block of high-intensity training Mon-Wed. Also got a new Specialized Toupe saddle on Saturday to replace my Alias which had split into two pieces.

The forecast for Sunday was great, and it turned out to be correct. Cat 4's went off at 830 AM, so it would be cool but also require a 5AM wakeup call to get to the start in time. Bummer. Almost fell asleep at the wheel on the way up. Got there a little bit later than I would of liked too, and had zero time for warmup other than pedaling a quarter-mile each way to the registration table.

From reading race reports and studying the course profile, I knew to expect a hilly course. In fact, part of the reason for choosing this race was to test my legs on the longer hills. Just a few days before the race, an email was sent out alerting racers that the course had been changed somewhat due to road construction. The change added 0.3 miles per lap and "a few hundred feet of climbing." Interesting. Cat 4's do 4 laps so thats a lot of additional climbing in the end.

Hanging with the teammates before the start, I found myself pretty much at the very front of the 100-man field. Well that's cool, I usually end up closer to the back. We roll out and pretty much immediately come across some big hill that was the result of the new route. Within 3 minutes of pushing the start button on my Garmin my heart rate reached 190. Soon after this first hill and a nice quick descent is the KOM hill. The first two-thirds of it are pretty gradual, but the last third is close to 10%. Heart rate reached 195 but I made it over intact. A turn or two later is a pretty good downhill that we got up to 55 mph on. There was a cone placed on the side of the road marking a deathly hole in the pavement. Someone at the front of the pelolton clipped this cone which sent it flying into the middle of us. Riders parted the cone like Moses parting the sea, but sure enough I heard that terrifying sound of metal against pavement. I found out later that only a few riders went down, but that it caused a nasty little split in the pack. Never did find out if anyone was seriously injured. The rollers on the back of the course weren't too bad. I do remember thinking that this course either went up or down, very few flats. I was putting in good effort, but nothing too crazy.

Coming up the first big hill on lap two killed me though, and I went right off the back. Looking at my data afterwards, my heart rate really didn't get very high (~185). I remember feeling as if my legs were just toast. Maybe it was the lack of warmup followed immediately by a 350+ watt 5-minute interval. I think this caused much more lactic acid buildup than normal. It also could have been just a lack of motivation and feeling tired from the 5am wakeup. Bottom line, need more power. Looking at the power charts afterwards I didn't even reach 300 watts for the 5-minute interval when I got dropped. I should have been able to do this.

I actually felt better as the race went on and picked up a lot of other riders that had been dropped. Seemed a lot of others were suffering too. Lap times were 31:10, 37:26, 35:27, and 38:10 for a total time of 2:22:00. The field finished in roughly 2:02:00. Most fields were doing about 30-minute laps.

This would be my last hilly race for the season were it not for the tour of the hilltowns race in 2 weeks. I pre-reg'd for that before Bow, so I may as well give it a shot. Hopefully the 4/5 field will be a little bit slower but I won't hold my breath. Maybe with some good efforts put in over the winter I can get myself ready for the hills next season.