Cyclonauts Criterium

Cyclonauts criterium is held on the Stafford Springs Motor Speedway. About two-thirds of the lap is on the race track, and the remaining third cuts through the infield. The section through the infield is narrow, twisty, and technical. Today there was a pretty consistent breeze coming out of turn four (by motor speedway counts). This made for a stiff headwind on the back straight of the course.

I raced the 4/5 field today because it started at 8 AM and I was trying to make it up to UMASS-Amherst for my brother’s graduation right after the race. I would have liked to stick around to race the 4’s, and maybe try the ¾’s, but it just didn’t work out today.

38 pre-reg’d for the 4/5 field, and 47 started. We got to the track later than I would have liked, at 7:40 AM, 20 minutes before the start. I’ve never reg’d and hit the bathroom so quickly, still had time for a few laps of warmup.

Being windy, I figured no breaks would stick today. Given this and my short warmup, I stayed on the very back of the field for the first 20 laps of the 40 lap race. The pace was a little peaky early on, and a few riders got shelled. There were a few times that soon-to-be dropped riders let a gap open up and I had to come around.

There was a racer that stayed about 10-20 seconds off of the front for somewhere around 25 laps. I spoke with him after and he was a friendly German guy that is training for NJ state time trial championships next week. I’m sure he got a good workout in today because he ended up being off the front for most of the 4’s race too. Our field was pretty content to let him sit out there until the Mystic Velo (Junior?) team came to the front and pulled him back in.

The pace on different parts of each lap was pretty much the same. We dive-bombed the first corner without braking, then braked hard for the second turn that immediately followed. This created a little bit of accordion effect and hard pedaling was required through the 180-degree turn before the back straight. The back straight was pretty slow because it turned into a stiff headwind. Coming around turn four into the finishing straight had a tailwind, and this was the ideal place for an attack. There were several break attempts here throughout the race.

With 15 to go I moved up from the back of the field to see what was happening at the front. German TT guy was trying to go off the front still every chance he got. I made the mistake of dangling off of the front with him for a lap or two, but refused to pull through when he eased up.

During the last 8 laps (~9 minutes) of the race, I felt stuck at the front of the field. I wanted to be near the front, maybe 10 wheels back, but I was pegged to the very front, never back more than 2 wheels. I wasn’t burying myself in the wind, and my perceived effort was low to moderate, so I didn’t worry about it. With two to go everyone started really easing up. A Cambridge Cycles racer and myself were on the front doing light tempo pace, and no one was coming around. I could feel people behind me getting anxious for the finish. Thinking back to my Palmer race, I was happy I wasn’t sitting in the middle.

My plan going into the race was to launch an attack 1-minute out from the finish. On this course that would be almost exactly a lap. Trouble was that being on the front was taking a toll on me, and I didn’t think I had the legs to give a 100% effort. Instead I went to plan B. Racers had been launching attacks all day coming out of turn four, and I figured someone surely would with one to go.

Anticipating an attack, I went down to the drops and shifted up a gear on the back straight before one to go. Coming around turn four I was on the front and really easing off the pace. Sure enough, a Quad Cycles guy comes attacking around with another rider on his wheel. I was ready for this and got in place on third wheel and we flew through the technical part of the course.

Coming down the back straight, I think the Quad Cycles guy opened up a gap on the second wheel guy. Entering turn three (of the motor speedway) I went to move to the inside to sprint, but just as I did the Cambridge Bicycles racer shouted at me “ON YOUR RIGHT!!!” He snuck by the inside of me at a pretty good speed differential with a BRC racer on his wheel. After the pair went by I went with them.

By the time I squeezed through the inside CB & BRC were already in full sprint mode and I couldn’t catch them. The two ended up catching Quad Cycles right before the line in first and second, and Quad got third. A rider came around me and nipped me right at the line to take fourth, the last spot in the money. I finished fifth.

Sitting in for the first half of the race was pretty easy, average watts were 202W and normalized power 229W. Average heart rate was higher than I expected given low perceived effort at 171 bpm. I think this may have been due to the non-existent warmup.

Average watts during the last 15 laps or whenever I moved to the front were much higher, 265W and normalized power 294W. Average heart rate was also 182 bpm, which again is higher than I would have thought. In the past my heart rate has been as high as 185-190 for ~30+ minutes in a crit, but that usually means I’m hanging by a thread. Average speed for the race was just shy of 25 mph.

Finishing efforts looked like this:

20s: 629W (after squeezing through the inside)
1min: 430W (last lap)
9min: 286W (last 8 laps being no more than 2 wheels back)

629W for the last 20 seconds really isn’t very much at all, and my heart rate pretty much maxed out at 197 bpm (200 bpm max) during this. I couldn’t have gone much harder. The reason for this is the last 9 minutes of the race, where I felt stuck at the front. 286W over 9 minutes is a little above threshold, and making a big sprinting effort is a lot to ask after such an effort. Ideally I would have been able to sit in 5-10 wheels back during the last 8 laps and exert far less energy. Sprinting power would likely have increased significantly but at the risk of getting blocked in.

Another option would have been to block out the inside lane at the end of the race instead of keeping it open and laying out a red carpet for an attack. The lane was small and it would have been easy to block out that space. The first two finishers squeezed through here so this would have had a big impact on the outcome of the race.