This year’s Sunapee race turned out to be completely the opposite as last year in terms of weather. Instead of 45°F freezing rain we had 65-70°F with clear skies, and it was a pretty ideal day. We stayed at the Newport Motel Friday and some bird that sounded like a car alarm (maybe it was?) was on a rampage all night long. Breakfast was a little tricky in the room eating mostly breads instead of my usual eggs and oatmeal. Still had plenty to eat though.
I’ve been struggling so far this season on pretty much any course with a hill. My plan for Sunapee was to carefully manage my efforts before hilly sections and avoid starting climbs in the red zone. With any luck I hoped to stay attached to the lead group and play a roll in the finish.
Yet again I managed to almost miss the start of the race. I was sitting around talking to two teammates about 5 minutes before rollout with another 10 or 15 racers in our field when we realized that the real field was on the line. Officials were yelling out “Cat4’s on the line!” and we were all out of position. After moving up I lined up at the back of the 100-man field, not the place I wanted to be.
Starting at the back of the field, the big challenge was to avoid mishaps that were happening in front of me. Almost immediately on the initial descent down the finishing climb, the rider if front of me locked his brakes up. Less than a mile after that, I notice the field slowing significantly and riders scrambling to the sides, and a racer gets spit out the back with his chain dropped. We raced to reattach to the main field. Four miles in, two riders in front of me locked up handlebars and swerved violently to the side, again causing us at the back to come to a halt. Again we raced to reattach to the main field.
About 8 miles in is the first significant climb. It may have the most vertical gain of any climb on the course, but is much more gradual than others. Coming into this long climb is a fast descent through a small village at a junction of roads. There were cones set up on the yellow line and sure enough, one of the riders managed to catch one of them head on, and went flying over the handlebars. This took out at least 10 racers. I was just far enough behind it to avoid going down, but I still had to stop. Once again this left me scrambling to reattach to the field. I did manage to rejoin the field near the top of the climb but this effort was significant, requiring 320 watts over 5 minutes, very near my mp5.
Shortly after I rejoined the field, there is a fast 50mph descent. I was still hanging onto the very back of the field when I realized that a significant gap had opened up about 10 wheels in front of me. There must’ve been an attack on the descent because the field was really moving across this flat section. I came to the front of the split and closed the gap, but just as I did we came to a small, steep hill that did me in and I couldn’t hold on any longer. I rode solo for the next 10-15 miles.
Near the end of the first lap I joined three other riders, which quickly turned into 10, and before long we were closer to 15. We were mostly a 50/50 mix of cat4 and masters 45+ riders, although other fields could have been in there and I wouldn’t have noticed. A couple of us were making efforts to paceline but I think we got big enough that we just ended up winging it. The chase group was big enough to make things fun and kept the race a race.
After making the turn by the lake, 2 miles from the finish, the pace was kicking up and it looked like the others wanted to compete for the finish. Coming into the rotary I was about six wheels back and in good position. Heading into the finishing climb everyone in front of me basically stopped which left me to lead up the hill. I didn’t really want to be the lead man going up the hill and gave it what felt like 90% effort. It took somewhere between 2 and 3 minutes on this finishing effort, which is a difficult distance to gauge. I blew up pretty badly about 200m from the finish allowing one rider to come around. To my surprise, he was the only one to pass me.
While I was frustrated about getting dropped, especially so early on, I still ended up having a lot of fun at this race. Being in the chase group really helped. We also finished in just over 2 hours which doesn’t really mean much, but it’s much nicer to finish averaging 21.Xmph in a group than 19.X finishing solo.
Saturday night I was exhausted thanks to that stupid car alarm bird from the night before and slept in Sunday. I opted to skip Wells Ave this week to get in a long endurance ride of 95 miles at 200W average . The last 10 miles were torturous ; I haven't felt so exhausted in a very long time.
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