Ah Longsjo, the Tour de France of New England. With few exceptions, you can count on the top contenders within your category being present, making it a must-do race. What better way to measure your fitness than in a four-day stage race that has a little something for everyone?
This year’s format went Fitchburg State College Circuit Race, Wachusett Road Race, South St TT, and ended with the downtown criterium as usual. It’s different putting the TT on day 3 because the GC is a big mystery. Like 2009, the road race did not end on top of Wachusett, but instead in Princeton Center. I imagine the pure climbers weren’t a very big fan of this. The TT was again on the new fast and flat course where aerodynamics play a huge role. Certainly not a pure strong man’s TT, but personally I like the idea of having a fast man’s race. If you race bikes you should be able to go fast. If you’re strong but can’t go fast, what’s the point of being strong?
Keith signed up last minute, actually after last minute, so I had one teammate for the race. We were both in the same position, sort of lost in the midst of the season without any specific goals for the race. In our pre-race “meeting” we agreed to have no pre-race plan. Sa-weet!
Circuit Race
A ~3-mile loop with the finish line sitting atop a wall. The rest of the course is generally flat or slightly downhill which makes for very high average speeds. Cat 3’s did 9 laps, with points competition sprints on 8,6,4, and 2 to go. That means we were sprinting on lap 1. The wall is pretty short, less than a 1 minute effort, and I generally consider it to be a decent course for me.
Keith and I got right to the front on lap 1. With less than a kilometer before the turn into the wall we were side by side, and I asked Keith if he wanted a leadout. He said sure, so I went to the front and drilled it around the corner and up the first little kicker. I expected someone to have come around me by that point, but it wasn’t until I eased off half way up that anyone did. Unfortunately it wasn’t Keith. I should have paid better attention to who had my wheel. About 5 seconds later the eventual points competition leader, Luke Fortini, came by, and he was reeling in the first guy fast. I wasn’t really interested in the points competition so I didn’t contest it. One more person came by me and I ended up fourth, one place out of the points. Pretty cool for a leadout (albeit a failed one).
That little effort gave me some confidence. I’m sure I wasn’t the strongest person there for the uphill sprint, but I thought I could get a good result with smart positioning and confident cornering. For the remainder of the race I practiced different lines going into the wall and tried to conserve energy.
Fastforward to 2 to go and all heck broke loose. Going through the woods I heard the sound of bikes on pavement. I was happy to be in front of it. There’s something about a crash though that makes everyone nervous and twitchy. Just after that we made the tight turn onto John Fitch Highway and we were lucky not to crash again there. Too much pedaling into the turn followed by hard braking resulted in some creative cornering.
Per usual we sprinted out of the turn and eased off on the downhill. My calf was showing the beginning signs of cramping, so I stood up to stretch it before it became a problem. Just as I did, there was slowing in front of me and before I knew it my front wheel was crossed up. It wasn’t ridiculously overlapped, more just a crossing of tires, but I was knocked way off balance. My weight was shifted way to the right as my tire broke free and I shot to the right side of the peloton. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but there was an extended period of time where I thought I was going down. I failed to regain my balance I bounced off of at least one other rider. Before I knew it I sideswiped the curb and I fell beautifully onto a soft patch of grass. My ankle hurt like heck and I had a minor amount of rash but I was OK. Quickly checked my bike and started chasing like crazy.
I finished the race about 3 minutes down and out of the GC picture. Keith finished within the lead group so he was our GC man.
My handlebar tape got pretty ripped in the crash. I had just ordered parts to do new bars, cables/housing, and tape so that night I swapped it over. In the future I need to avoid doing this much mechanic work mid-stage race. Being on my feet all evening was not good for recovery.
Road Race
Waking up Saturday morning was brutal. We had a 9AM start, which meant the alarm went off well before 7. When I rolled out of bed my whole body hurt and felt whiplashed, and my legs were especially tight.
The road race is 6 brutal laps around Princeton. The wall itself that leads into Princeton isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but the terrain around it makes it especially tough. A series of three little rollers, with a pitch that probably does exceed 5%, precede the wall. Another steep kicker comes right after the turn in Princeton that is followed by a false flat through the feed zone. All in all it’s one hard effort that’s a lot longer than you might expect.
There was no way I was surviving this race and it really didn’t matter because I was already toast on the GC. My plan was simple: suicide attack when the opportunity arises. Maybe the peloton would let me get away because there’s a long way to go in the stage race. Maybe I would get a few points in the points competition. It was the only sensible plan!
I lined up in sort of the middle, so not that close to the front. Somehow I found myself on the front of the pack in the first mile or so. And wouldn’t you know it, Keith was right there too. There road is pretty narrow for 80 or 90 racers, so it’s easy to be boxed out of the front. I looked around for the green jersey thinking that would be one person that might be interested in early breaks, but he was nowhere to be found. Perfect! Maybe I would be able to get away solo. I turned to Keith, confirmed that we weren’t neutral still, and said cya later as I went on the attack.
For the first minute or two I didn’t look back, just go, go, go. When I finally did, I was slightly surprised to see someone from CLR on my wheel. I hadn’t heard anyone there. Anyone at the front of the field would have known I was attacking after my little conversation with Keith, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. The field was nowhere in sight. Surely Keith was trying to slow things down.
Boy did he pull through hard. It occurred to me that I had buried myself on a downhill and that it was probably much easier to sit in. We traded a few pulls, like two, before I was skipping pulls. Geez was I smoked. Maybe he understood because he went into a TT position when I didn’t pull through and set a nice tempo. The field seemed to be well out of sight already so I was happy to fall into a more sustainable pace (not that I had a choice).
After another pull or two we made the right turn onto 31 and I couldn’t hold his pace on the first of the rollers. A CLNoonan rider passed me as I went backwards. Shortly later a strung out field ate me up.
What better excuse to get dropped on the first hill than say you got eaten up by a break just before? Sure enough I was off the back around the time we made the turn through Princeton. Oh well, I didn’t really feel like “racing” this race anyways.
Finishing the race at my own pace was a lot harder than I expected. I was so toast by the last lap. I drank 5 bottles of Gatorade and took 4 neutral water feeds. My legs still cramped up so badly I could barely pedal. I lost over 10 minutes to the winner on the last lap and barely finished within the time cut. Ouch!
I wish I could have been there to help Keith who absolutely crushed this race of attrition and scored a 6th place finish in what had to have been a furious uphill sprint. I was psyched that we had a GC guy. Unfortunately time trialing might be his weakest ability.
Time Trial
I was so destroyed after the road race I couldn’t even think of racing the time trial even thought it was a fast 9-mile rolling course much like the CBTT. It felt like I had hopped in the race after months of being off the bike. Everything hurt. Obviously my legs, but my entire upper body was as tight as could be. My guts also felt like I was going to be sick. I also had a splitting headache. I hadn’t felt this badly in a long long time.
Not really by choice, I did everything you’re supposed to do for recovery. Basically I put on my compression stalking, passed out, woke up to eat, and passed out again. Wowy tired.
12 hours of good sleep can do a lot for you though. I still didn’t feel great, but I felt at least a thousand times better in the morning. My time trial wasn’t until the afternoon so I picked up some lattes from Deisel Café and came back to watch the tour in the dark. Every hour or so I had another bowl of Corn Flakes. It was awesome and I actually felt kinda good when I left for the TT.
I got there early so I could see some of the pros. Time trial setups are so cool. In stage races you get such a wide variety of setups too. As a general observation, it seemed like a lot of people must have had equipment on loan or something. Either that or the wheel rentals business is booming. Seemed like everyone had a disc or at least some sort of deep wheel profile. I also liked the road bikes that had been converted to TT bikes with bullhorns and index shifters. Some serious preparation time went into this race.
Keith got a sweet Fuji C-7 on loan from a teammate that had raced the master’s category. Extremely generous and also very cool considering he was making a run at the GC. We did our best to get him fit in the parking lot but there were only so many changes we could make. The bike was set up just a little too relaxed for my likings. The handlebars needed to go down another inch or so and the elbows needed to come in. Considering it was on loan, we limited the changes to only the saddle. I’m sure it was still a huge help.
As for myself, Tim hooked me up with a sweet sweet HED Stringer disc and a Zipp 1080 on top of it. Normally I would just run my disc cover over my PowerTap wheel and my Edge 1.68 front. Seeing as my PT isn’t working, yet again, I opted for his wheels. Given my recent internal cable routing issue I was a little nervous at first about the shifting on a different cassette, but it worked out OK.
The only other change I made from my 6/30 CBTT setup was that I packed a bag of ice in my skinsuit. It was in the upper 80’s and all I had was a L/S skinsuit. I took the bladder out of my camelback, filled it with ice, then dropped it in the back. No straps or anything, just the tightness of the skinsuit to hold it in place. It was a little lumpy with some of the plastic attachments which might have caused additional drag, but it also seemed to line up with my helmet better. Who knows without a power meter.
I was the third cat3 to go seeing as I was 3rd to last in the GC. My poor 30 second man had no aero gear and I passed him by the SRAM tent maybe 2 or 3 miles in. Coming down the long downhill leading into the causeway I could see my 1 minute man. I didn’t have a CPU so I don’t know how fast I was going, but I was turning the 53x11 at a good clip so it wasn’t too slow. Again approaching the turnaround I was in the 53x11 and I backed off big time knowing that it would be a grind coming back.
Around the turn turnaround cone I was super conservative. I wonder how much time you can make up or lose there? I sprinted back up to speed and caught my 1 minute man shortly after.
After that I was at the front of the 3’s and had a motorcycle escort in front of me. That made for a good carrot as I kept trying to get in its slipstream. Much to my dismay, the official didn’t let that happen.
The wind was out of the west and the hill after the causeway felt easy. It wasn’t a true tailwind but it did seem to help here. I didn’t need to go any higher than the 53x17 or 19.
I was tired at the finish but didn’t blow up or anything and had enough gas left to sprint up the final kicker to the finish line. It certainly wasn’t an earth shattering effort or anything but OK for a TT Probably on par with the 22:48 CBTT effort I did on 6/30. If I had to guess I’d say it was around 3.5 W/kg.
I had one little issue with the sweet disc wheel. When I sprinted out of the start it shifted slightly in the dropouts. The wide C-2 profile rubbed ever so slightly against my chainstays. Throughout the race I thought I had a brake pad rubbing.
My finishing time was 20:56 which put me in 38th place at +1:56 and right in the thick of things for the 3’s. A lot of 3’s finished around that time. Just 20 seconds faster would have put me in 23rd. Another minute would have bagged a top 10. All things considered I was pretty pleased with that.
Keith did a 21:24 which really shattered his GC hopes, dropping him all the way down to 30th or something. The crit was going to be purely for a stage result.
Criterium
I felt good Monday morning. I think it really helps that I can’t seem to TT at much better than 90 or 95% of lactic threshold power. 20 minutes at that kind of an effort is almost like doing openers. The day after a TT always seems to be a good workout.
But geez almighty was it hot out on Monday. We parked on this garage with white pavement and I was absolutely boiling before I finished kitting up. I had planned on riding the trainer for warmup but just kitting up was enough for me. I couldn’t take it.
My plan was simply to sit in and sprint for the finish. The course has two long straightaways with a 180 degree turn 1, and two back to back 90 degree turns 3 and 4. It’s a little over 200m sort of false flat uphill on the finishing straight. It’s rare that breakaways succeed on this course.
During the early laps I was sitting in the first third or so, but by mid race I was more in the back third. I wanted to race the second half in the front in case anything happened. Trouble was its harder racing in the back on this course. It’s much smoother and easier at the front. When we got to the half way point I was losing interest in moving up. It didn’t help that it was over 90F.
Luckily I did carry a water bottle for cooling and pouring that over my head and back made all the difference. It still wasn’t easy to move to the front. We were strung out for several laps around the mid point of the race. It wasn’t until 7 or 8 to go that we eased off enough that I could move up significantly without crushing myself.
Once in the top 20 my only job was to stay there. Keith was in there too. I started feeling stronger and stronger as riding at the front was noticeably easier.
With 4 to go our motorbike neutralized and stopped us completely. Not for too long, but for at least a minute I think. I was pretty frustrated by that because I was being swarmed after I had just made a good move to get to the front. Oh well though. I’m sure the officials had a good reason for stopping us and it was a safety first deal.
So we had a fresh start with 3 miles to go in the Longsjo Stage Race. Picture 80 rested dudes chomping at the bit with about 7 minutes to race.
Terrifying.
Just half a lap after the restart we were coming down the back downhill straightaway and everyone felt good and was trying to move up. I was forced into the far right lane which was not where I wanted to be. In fact, the only place I would have been OK with was on the front. Even being on the inside lane you’d likely end up getting dive bombed.
And then, just as I was worrying about how sketchy the upcoming turn would be, the guy 2 wheels in front of me went sideways. I haven’t a clue what happened. We were flying, and the guy in front of me ran into him and went over the handlebars. For a split second I thought about bunny hopping as going left or right or slow down didn’t seem to be an option. I didn’t have a prayer though and I added to the pile. Having just crashed on Friday I was well rehearsed and able to do a tuck and roll that would make Jet Li proud, landing on my left lat. After rolling to a stop I curled into a ball and hoped no one would hit me and luckily no one did.
Once again I got up, quickly inspected my bike, and finished the race. We were only 3 laps to go at that point and I couldn’t get a free lap. Huge bummer.
Keith stayed to the front and out of trouble and finished respectably in the top 20.
Summary
Another Longsjo in the books for me although it was certainly not what I had in mind. I guess some races are just not meant to be. I’m still a little in shock about crashing twice. The last time I’d crashed was April 2008. I’m lucky to just have general soreness with some scrapes and cuts. I’m also lucky that my bike had next to no damage. Apparently Specialized Tarmacs are really good at crashing.
Time to rest up and try again.
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