I went down to Wells Ave on Sunday to get a race intensity workout in seeing as Sterling was cut short a bit. It was a sunny day and a nice temperature, but wow was it windy. On downhills where I’d normally be gliding over 20mph I was kept at 15mph or so. It was gusty too which would catch me by surprise and knock me off balance.
The A and B fields were combined by 945, most likely because of Mother’s Day. It seemed like a good turnout though with at least 50 people on the start, possibly more like 75. The field included a good mix of racers with a full range of cat1-4 men and a handful of women (NEBC elite team). NEBC had about 15 racers or so.
I was feeling a bit weak once things got going, most likely from having too many margaritas the night before. Stayed out of pretty much every prime, and spent more energy chasing down attacks throughout most of the race.
The half way prime came and went in what seemed like no time at all. It doesn’t seem like very long ago that 16 miles could qualify as a race. That’s most likely the difference between paying attention to attacks versus sitting in and holding on for dear life.
With about 16 to go the field was intact at there was a lot of activity amongst the strong riders at the front. After a series of strong moves and counters, the right mix of 6 or 7 finally got up the road. Landen got in the move and the rest of NEBC went into defensive mode. The move got away quickly and was nearly out of sight after just one lap.
In the final laps there were a lot of individual efforts to bring back the break or bridge, but nothing that would bring back the entire field. Alain Ferry started dragging everyone around at 30mph for what seemed like forever, but without someone else to pull through it wasn’t enough to bring back the break. With a few laps to go I think the break was on the verge of lapping the field and had orders to wait it out until the finish.
Somewhere along here I started losing track of all the people that were going up the road. I would have said it was only a few in addition to the break, but afterwards I was told that there were nearly 20 people up the road over several chase groups.
Coming into the bell lap I was in good position, maybe 5 or 6 wheels back or so. For a final lap we pretty much crawled around turns 1 and 2, and by the time we crested the little hill on the back straight our speed was only about 24mph. I don’t know if that was because so many people were up the road or if everyone left in the main field was just tired. Justin Howe (NEBC) attacked up the inside on the back straight, and he was chased by another rider on the outside. I was 3 wheels back at this point, and held my position as we accelerated hard. It was 800W for 8-10s to get up to Justin’s speed but he had a gap.
When we got around turn 4 I was still third wheel and a stiff headwind killed all chances of Justin’s Cancellara/Hausler-like move from succeeding. We overtook him with about 300m to go. Our speed was decreasing significantly, and racers were starting to come by on the outside. I looked to the inside and had room, and I opened up my sprint just a little earlier than I otherwise would have liked. My form was bad, and I took too much weight off of my rear wheel causing my tire to skip a bit and my bike to feel bouncy. I came around the two racers in front of me quickly, but there was a guy that had attacked up the outside who was out in front. My legs were good and I thought I could reel him in as he blew up, but his sprint was strong all the way to the finish and I wasn’t able to overtake him. I crossed the line 2nd out of the the main field.
My finishing sprint was 920W for 15s. It felt stronger than that I thought, but then I remembered that the reaction to Justin’s attack sapped my legs a bit. The final 45 seconds were at 665W average which is a longer harder effort than other recent races. I had the average speed for the race at 25.5mph, avg power 244W, and NP 291W. I really need to fix my laptop so I can just paste the power file screenshots. The internet is still dead on it.
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