Working Man's Stage Race - Stage 2

An official 39th place in yesterday's time trial scored me a whopping 37 points, so no shot at a decent G.C. finish. My goal for the rest of the race changed to try and score good individual stage finishes without worrying about GC contenders going up the road. I wasn't sure what to expect in the road race today, having had very mixed results this season in road races. The downhill finish with a turn would suit me well, as long as the small KOM hill doesn't crack me. The pelican can be a most punishing beast.

Tough day at work today. Every now and then I get totally wrapped up in my work, and I don't leave my desk for anything, including food or water. Today I had a good amount of food, but was very dehydrated by the time the race came around. You get used to eating/drinking for morning/weekend races but it's easy to goof it up for the WMSR. Before the race I was worried that this would catch up with me by the finish.

The race started off super easy, nearly Monday afternoon recovery ride pace. Michael McKittrick (CB) went on a break early on the first lap, but no one was interested. We stayed at our casual pace and picked him up somewhere around 2/3rds of the way through the first lap. There were no KOM points available on the first lap, so the first trip up the KOM hill was easy. I set the pace up the hill at what I considered a nice easy pace, and was surprised no one wanted to come through. Fine by me.

Someone had attacked before the KOM hill on the first lap that stayed away for a very long time. As we crossed the KOM line on the second lap, I heard a spectator say that he had a minute gap. I think this was pretty shocking to people and served as motivation to pick up the pace.

Starting on the third lap we were starting to work harder. It was not a very smooth effort, but instead a few minutes of hammering followed by a few minutes of soft pedaling. We were going faster than before, but certainly not as fast as we could be. Somehow I accidentally fell to the very back of the pelican during this time. At least it was easy to sit in. We finally picked up the breakaway rider half way through the third lap. He must've been pretty beat after a lap and a half of being off the front.

Things picked up at the beginning of the fourth and final lap. A three-man break went off on the short climb near the beginning of the lap. I think this caused a lot of people to freak. There was a strong reaction by the pelican, and the pace picked up as if we were sprinting for a prime. The three-man break was short lived, and was eaten up quickly. Everyone seemed afraid to attack after this and we soft-pedaled until we got to the KOM hill.

I did not have good position going into the KOM hill on the last lap. We had been bunched up forever, and it was impossible to move around significantly. Once we hit the hill the pace went hard. I hugged the right side of the road up the first initial rise and blocked any of the few people behind me from moving up. As we moved onto the false flat there were a good number of people that were struggling. I felt good and used this to get my position, moving from way back (30th?) up to about 8th wheel by the time we went over the KOM line.

Coming down the descent I was right where I wanted to be, but I lost a lot of position by the time we got to the last 90-degree turn that is located about 400m before the finish. Entering this last turn I was in 15-20th wheel and on the safer inside line. We were all weary of a crash here, but luckily I think we made it without any trouble. I came out of the saddle and sprinted hard as soon as I could after the turn. This may have actually been a little too hard because I eventually had to stop pedaling to avoid hitting a line of people in front of me. Luckily, a hole opened in the dead center of this line of people and I used my momentum to move through it. Just as I slid through this hole, I was hit by handlebars on both hips. After sneaking through I finally had a look at the front of the race. There were still 6 or 7 people up about 30m in front of me. I again came out of the saddle with a full-on sprint, and used all my reserves to close down the gap. In the end it wasn't quite enough and I crossed the line in 5th place, about a bike length back from a tight four-man finish at the front.

My power data for the sprint finish was very good today. Coming out of the final turn was a 1000W for 10s effort. The final sprint after sneaking through the bunch was not as explosive maxing out at 930W, but I think this was good for finishing off a 750W for 30s effort after the final turn while dealing with traffic. Power data for the rest of the race was on the tame side, although a super high VI of 1.4 (normalized power divided by average power) suggests that this race was unusually peaky.

Overall this was a great race for me and I'm very happy with 5th place. The weather was fantastic tonight was truly perfect and the course was beautiful. Talk about a 180 from last year. Unfortunately the women weren't so lucky and there was a pretty bad crash. According to the results it looks like half the field DNF'd.