Sterling Classic Road Race, cat3

Ah Sterling, the last of the New England Spring Classics for me this season. I’m headed out west and will be missing Sunapee. Spring road races have been scarce this year. Battenkill technically isn’t in New England but it’s about 30 minutes across the border so I count it. We had Turtle Pond and Quabbin which fell on the same weekend. But that’s about it. Five big road races, only four of which I can race.

That leads me to this week’s dilemma. As described in my previous post, it’s likely that an ingrown hair resulted in a skin and tissue infection and my first major setback of 2010. I was off the bike for 7 full days waiting for the swelling to go down, and it might as well been a year. It felt like it anyways. I was also pumped up on lots of antibiotics. In the past I’ve felt pretty crappy doing intensity while on the antibiotics and on Thursday afternoon I had pretty much written off any chance of racing at Sterling.

Thursday’s weather went from a bad forecast to a really nice evening. The swelling on my foot was way down, so I decided to go out for a little spin. My Powertap is out being serviced right now, so average speed was my only real feedback. Of course that turned my “little spin” into more of a tempo ride. Despite feeling like death my average speed was decent and I pulled the trigger on Sterling.

Three paragraphs in and we’re only to the point where I decided to register for this race. Pretty incredible considering I didn’t even mention the weather forecast (which was miserable). I guess in this case I found the challenge of managing setbacks to be the more interesting part of my weekend.

Like everyone else has said, the weather was brutal on Saturday. Lucky for the afternoon waves, the rain eased up to nothing more than a light mist. No thunder, no hail, although the roads were still soaked.

My motivation was pretty rock bottom so I showed up just 45 minutes before start time, pinned up and went. The course is flat and neutral for 5 or 10 minutes and I think it’s neutral the first time up the finishing hill too. It seemed make a pretty natural warmup so whatever, no worries. NEBC didn’t have a team showing today with only Oscar and myself being present. It was also Oscar’s first race of the season, so he was just looking to build his racing form.

For some reason the first lap really hurt. I had started near the back planning to just sit on for the first few laps and see how I felt. The rain and wet roads seemed to have everyone really nervous. Lots of space was allowed between riders and the pace around turns was often slow and wildly unpredictable. This caused a lot of chasing. The turn onto Rt. 12 was the worst. Huge gaps were opening and I was definitely behind it. Same exact thing happened to me last year so no surprise really. Luckily this time my buddy Aaron came around and told me to hop on as he bridged the void. Super nice move from him. I think we dumped close to half the field here.

The first time up the hill didn’t hurt too badly. I find the first major hill is usually the hardest for me, but not today. Maybe it was because we went so fast prior to that. Somewhere around here the break of the day got away too. At first it was three but they shed a rider and were down to two. That’s a long way to go for so few people.

I was just sitting in doing as little as possible for the first 5 laps or something. The hill was really working me every lap, but I was hanging in there. It seemed like every time I would back off just a fraction the entire field would too. Sweet. If they had charged ahead I might have been in trouble. With each additional lap the long gradual grind after the wall got more and more painful. Then it took longer and longer to recover on the downhill. Boy did I feel lousy.

Coming up the wall was really hard on the lap where we were shown 3 to go. A lot of gaps opened up and I was able to cross them, but boy was that taxing. It seemed like there were only 20 guys or so on the front end of this. I was really hoping that a few guys would keep drilling it on the front and cause more selections, but it was not meant to be. We eased off big time after the long grind and I think it all (~40 of us) came back together.

That lap was a real match burner for me and I didn’t think I could survive another effort like that. We only had one more time up the wall before the finishing climb, and I really just wanted to finish with the group. When we got to Rt. 12 I moved up to the front so I could try and control the pace and sag climb if I had to.

I was first wheel turning onto the wall and I set a most non-ferocious and tame pace. For some reason only 3 dudes came around me. I pretty much sat up and spun my legs after crossing the finish line, trying to take it as easy as possible for the next gradual grind. The three guys in front of me rolled away and eventually people started coming around me. I was really pretty surprised by this and started realizing that maybe I wasn’t the only one that was hurting.

This gave me the idea that I might be able to contend the finish. After all we were only 8 miles to go with no more climbs (other than the finish). It was easy to sit in the front couple of wheels on the downhill. I was barely pedaling and a couple guys tried making desperate attempts to get away. Each time someone attacked we would all chase it down. Most everyone was interested in the uphill sprint.

On Rt. 12 we really ramped it up. I’m sure everyone just wanted to be first wheel turning onto the wall. I did my best to stay in the first couple of wheels without expanding too much energy, but it was taking a lot out of me. Lots of sudden accelerations were wearing me down quickly. By the time we got to town center I knew I was toast, and instead of thinking about how I was going to win I was thinking about how I was going to avoid getting run over. I was only about 10 or 15 wheels back. As we turned onto the wall I immediately pulled over hard to the right. I only lasted about 5 pedal strokes at that finishing pace before I was blown. Wow did I feel bad. Despite finishing near the back of the group I was 32 of 69 starters for the day. That’s a lot of dropped riders.