Witches Cup Criterium, cat 4/5

The Witches Cup is a 3-turn downtown criterium that runs around Salem Common in Salem, MA. The three turns are tight and the pavement has a number of cracks and manhole covers, making this race one of the more technical races on the New England calendar.

Originally I had planned on this race being a priority to plan my training around, but between work, weather, and vacation I’ve only been on my bike once in the past 10 days. Come race day I left later than I had planned, hit traffic and made on the road decisions to change my route from 93N to 1N, and finally to 1A-N. By the time I made it to the race it was 4:50 (5PM start). Ken was waiting for me with food and water and pretty much saved me in getting ready to go.

I lined up towards the back of the race and stayed there for the first 15 minutes or so in hopes of warming up a bit. Not sure what was up with my heart rate today but it was running ridicously high, probably due to the little amount of riding that I’ve done lately. My heart rate reached the 195-200 bpm range during this “warm up” despite perceived effort only being medium.

A few racers were being dropped but for the most part I was able to stay ahead of this. Initially I tried riding the inside line but it seemed sketchy and hard so I moved to the outside line where I stayed for the majority of the race. It seemed a lot smoother there. This ended up being a good decision because there were three crashes during the race, all of which occurred on the inside line. One racer was taken away in an ambulance.

After sitting in for the first 15 minutes I felt good and moved towards the front. The first prime had come and gone and I expected that the second would be coming up shortly. The prizes were good and I wanted to try for one. Two riders were off the front so I bridged up to them anticipating that the bell would ring. After joining them I realized that this break was pretty much just one rider pulling around the other. By the time I caught my breath from bridging we had already been caught and the prime bell definitely hadn’t been rung. It’s amazing how breaks never seem to stick in cat 4’s.

As the bell was rung for the remaining primes I was out of position each time. I was floating back and fourth from 10^th to 25^th in the middle of the race, but it seemed like I was closer to 25^th on every prime lap. This was probably for the better because I started feeling really tired in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the race as it was.

During the last third of the race I spent most of my time resting up for the finish. The field had shrunk considerably from 73 starters down to 45 or so and I was not finding it difficult to gain position. It was my plan to burn a match and stick myself in the front with four to go and duke it out until the finish.

As we went around turn 1 with 4 to go I began moving up along the outside and heard someone’s tire burst, but I couldn’t tell where it was. Suddenly the rider who’s tire had burst came out the side of the pelican directly in front of me. I swerved to the outside to avoid him which was a bad decision because that was the direction that he was heading. I ended up giving the brakes a tap and got back to shelter, but ended up losing position.

With 3 and 2 laps to go I was able to move up a little bit, but not as much as I’d like because everyone else was doing the same thing. It also required quite a bit of extra work and I was really starting to fatigue.

The pace really went hot when we crossed the line on the finishing lap, but I was still a good 25 wheels back. With the tight turns before the finish I knew I needed to be much further up than that. I caught a lucky break between turns 1 and 2 when a big gap opened up on the inside. I went through the hole and moved up probably a good 10 wheels or so, putting me in 15^th position on the inside line. Not a horrible place to be.

Approaching the final turn to the finish I stopped pedaling just a little early, allowing a little more space in front of my wheel. I figured that the guy in front of me would break more than I’d like to, and I wanted to be able to carry as much speed as possible through that final turn. I didn’t time it well and I was forced to tap my brakes just a tiny bit. Exiting the turn I came out of the saddle to sprint up the clear inside lane but my legs felt like cement. I coasted down the finishing stretch and was passed by a ton of racers, finishing in 26^th place.

I don’t have my race statistics ready to post yet, but I will put them up later. Normalized power was 270W, average power was 242W, VI of 1.12. Looking at the power file I’m surprised that normalized power isn’t higher and that VI is so low. With the tight turns my power was about 500-600W coming out of each turn with coasting at or near 0W in between. This is the second time that I’ve seen a power file with an extremely peaky shape yet low normalized power. I’m not sure, but I think this is because the normalized power calculation is based off of 30-second averages. The 500-600W durations were only about 15 seconds long (if that) and a 30-second average may understate the shorter efforts.