Wells Ave B Race - 3/22/09

March racing at Wells Ave will always be at the mercy of unpredictable New England weather. In 2008, March races were held every weekend but with temperatures were in the 30’s. In 2007, snowstorms cancelled at least two of the races. 2009 is off to a great start. 3/15 saw temps reach 50°F for the B race, with it topping out around 60°F after the race. Yesterday wasn’t quite as warm, but March temps in the 40’s aren’t too bad. The sun even poked out after the race to make for a nice post-race ride. If this keeps up I will be spoiled for future races. Ken and Tim met up at my place before the race, and we headed out at 8 AM (yeah it was colder then) for Ken to make the 9 AM C race. For some reason Tim thought it was a good idea to leave South Carolina at noon on Saturday, drive until reaching Boston at 3 AM, and then riding to Wells Ave in freezing temperatures just 5 hours later. Lunatic!

Enough about the weather. The turnout this week looked pretty good again, although maybe not quite as good as the week before. The B race looked to be somewhere around 50 racers, and the A race was more. I raced the B race again this week so that I could see more of the front of the race. Also, my legs were totally destroyed from squeezing in as many miles as possible this week. Maybe I did the B’s again because I’m afraid and didn’t want to race against the heavy hitters in the A race, who knows.

Right from the gun a break of two went off the front. People do this basically every race, and I normally don’t think much of it, but this time it contained Leo Desforges. If anyone could make it work I figured it would be him. But on our first lap coming around the start/finish, with the two dangling off the front, the prime bell rings and off we go. Everyone has fresh legs and feels good 3 minutes into a race so the pace surged. The field swelled up wide as everyone fought to be at the front and it looked to be a very aggressive sprint. I had started casually on the very back and was way too far out of position to go for this early prime. This early prime shut down the break quickly.

After a couple of laps I went from feeling “badly” to “eh” and I moved up for playtime at the front. The prime bell rang again while I was sitting in 15th position, so I got ready to duke it out. Coming over the little riser and down the back stretch we got a little swarmed and I drifted back a few spots. As we came up the finishing straight I was too far back to contend, but I moved up behind the guys that were sprinting hoping to get launched into a break. A couple of us tried to force the pace on turn 2 after the prime, but we didn’t make a real attack, and just strung things out a bit instead.

10 laps in or so Leo worked his way to the front and attacked in turn 3. Nick Mashburn (CB) was on the front and chased him down. Leo’s teammate Matt D’Allessio (sp?) came to the front to slow things down. CB also had people on the front that looked like they’d shut down the field. I wasn’t far back at the time and decided to chase down the break before it got too far away. It didn’t matter much to me if I bridged up or pulled the entire field, and I just smoothly ramped up the power to 500W average for the next minute. I knew someone had my wheel, but it wasn’t until we made contact with Leo and Nick that someone yelled out that we had a gap and that we should try to make it work.

After bridging my legs hurt pretty badly, and I was really hoping to take a short break. As soon as we made contact someone yelled at me to pull through, which I did, and then someone said we needed to pull through harder. Ouch. I started having serious regrets about getting into the break. It didn’t matter much though, after taking just a few pulls and being away for less than 2 laps we were caught. Our average speed while staying away was right around 27 mph and it seemed like the field must’ve stepped up pretty quickly to shut us down.

That breakaway attempt really hurt me and to make thing worse the prime bell rang on the next lap just before I got caught. My legs were on fire as the field caught me coming over the riser on turn 2. I was being overtaken at a huge speed differential and was afraid for a second that I might be dropped. Luckily it was much easier to accelerate once we got on the downhill back stretch and I hopped back on.

For pretty much the rest of the race I was in a world of hurt. Even sitting in didn’t feel good. I tried moving up a few times but I rarely found myself in the front half of the field. Any effort even remotely above threshold made my legs scream. It wasn’t a cramping issue, just an evenly distributed burning sensation throughout my legs. I could keep up with every little surge, it just didn’t feel good at all. Normally breathing is more of an issue for me, but I think this week’s high volume of training made my legs the limiting factor for a change.

A good-sized break of 8 riders or so stayed away for most of the mid-race laps, and I wanted to chase it down, but it contained my teammate Stefan. That just added to my list of excuses to sit in and not do any work.

At 5 to go I was trying to figure out a plan for the remainder of the race. I didn’t want to just roll through the finish without doing anything. I figured there might be a prime with 3 or 4 to go and that I could try for that. Instead I decided to try a Robbie Mcewen sprint for the finish in which I would remain completely hidden from the wind until the last possible minute and pray for a sprinting lane to open up. There was no way I had the legs to hold out on the front and then contest the finish. I put myself about 10 wheels back with 3 or 4 to go.

We came around for the bell lap and I was around 15-20 wheels back on the mid-right side. I figured this was way too far back to have any realistic chance at the finish. Coming up the riser on turn 2 Geoff Martin (NEBC) came out of nowhere to lead out the race. He cranked away on the back straightaway giving all his power to the wind, but where I was sitting it was only 200W of effort. This effort prevented any substantial swarming and I think it may have fatigued the racers that were at the front.

Coming out of turn 4 the finish line came into site, and the sprint was on. Several racers immediately pushed to the outside of the turn desperately searching for an open lane. I was still on the mid- to right side of the road with 15 wheels or more in front of me. Learning from my mistake last week, I stayed seated and in the drops just holding the surging wheel in front of me. It didn’t take long for those surging wheels to start blowing up with more than half the length of the straight away to go. When they blew up their speed decreased significantly, and I actually had to brake to avoid running into their back wheels. Luckily a small hole opened up that gave me a clear lane. For the first time today my legs felt fantastic and I was able to sprint strongly. My sprinting muscles didn’t feel the least bit fatigued. With a perfectly clear road ahead of me I was passing racers rapidly and it wasn’t long before I came up beside the leaders. The line was right there, I threw my bike alongside Scott Glowa (CB), but I came up just short. Two more pedal strokes might have done it.

I was a little bummed to see that the official results had me in 4th place, and I’m almost positive that’s not right. It looked like there may have been some confusion amongst the officials regarding my position because I was originally marked in 5th place, crossed off, and moved up to 4th. Oh well. Either way I was happy with the result.

My Powertap had the average speed for the race at 24.7 mph with the first half being slightly faster than the second half. Power for the race was 252W/211W (average/normalized), lower than last week because I was tired and sat in a ton. Sitting in the majority of the second half of the race yielded a NP of 232W. My finishing effort was 800W for the final 25s with a peak of 1,150W. After the race Tim, Ken and I did 2 hours at 80%. I’m beat today.