Pre-beatdown warmup

This season is definitely going to be an immersion classroom in “The education of a racer” for me. I’m learning a lot even if I can’t apply it all yet. From these three races my pain points have all been the same – hills. More specifically my unwillingness to dig really deep early in these races to make sure that I maintain contact with the group on the first hills. Some of that is fitness, sure, but I also know that a lot of it is inexperience.

In today’s road race, a couple of things were working against me. First, it was pouring rain from the time we left the neutralized zone at Lake Lurleen State Park. The first hill came right after crossing the lap line and the pace was already very high. Just like in the Hell of the South and the Crit, I had trouble maintaining position in the group on the hill – especially when the entire front of the pack stood up at once and slowed dramatically. I had to brake, which really pissed me off, then surge to try and regain contact with the group as they sat back down at the top. Positioning myself nearer the front from the start would have prevented this.

By now the rain had stopped, but our tires were still kicking up roostertails. I worked myself back onto the group for the rest of that lap, but on longer hill on the back section of the course I fell off pace again and lost some ground. There was a fast downhill just after this with a couple of turns, so by the time I crested the hill I couldn’t see the main group. Once again in solo mode, I ramped it up a bit and soon found Joe (my Steel City Cycles wheelman from the crit) and we worked together with a couple more guys to see if we could catch back on. I spent a lot of time on the rolling sections and the flat sections on the front and pulling hard, then sitting in for a few seconds before pulling back around and increasing the pace again. Few of the other guys seemed inclined to bridge the gap up to the main group, so I burned a lot of matches on lap 2. I feel like I can take about 65% credit for us bridging back up to the group before the last climb. Even earning a scolding from one of the race officials for drafting off of the wheel truck (which we were not doing). We reconnected briefly, and I saw Joe move into the pack a few places. I was in the process of moving up when we hit the hill and I once again moved back a bit. One of the Velocity Pro Cycles riders (one of the chief race sponsors) and I lost connection with the main group around the downhill bends and didn’t see them again on lap 3.

The Velocity Pro cycles rider had helped some on the last bridging attempt rode with me, alternating pulls through the first half of lap 3. We talked about sticking together and seeing who we could take on the last few miles. By the time we hit the last hill, he was starting to cramp up and told me to go. I knew the hill had given me trouble the last two laps, but figured “what the hell” and gassed it. By the time I topped the hill I realized that I should have been riding the hills like this way earlier in the race and not burning so many matches riding solo when there were probably riders just out of sight behind me that would have been willing to work together. After the race, another racer said something that hit home “If you are off the back of a group, sometimes it’s better to swallow a little pride and let yourself be caught than try too hard to catch back on”. It’s funny, but when I am in that situation burying myself in the pain cave is a heck of a lot easier than sitting up and waiting to be caught.

Brian and I talked on the way back to Nashville about tactics and positioning. He thought that I would have been fine staying with the group if I had just made it through the first lap with them. The group was taking turns gingerly due to the wet roads, and was riding entire sections at nearly a recovery pace! I was behind them by myself, or in a small group, killing myself to make up time lost on the hills. That hard effort that I put in on the last hill of the last lap was completely mis-timed. That effort belonged on the first lap of the first hill. Had I done that I probably would have been able to sit in and help Brian out. He rode a smart and strong race, staying close to the front the whole time, never getting himself in trouble, and finishing 5th.

Education of a racer homework: Stay with the group in the early part of the race even at a high cost. They will sit up and recover at some point. Class Dismissed.

Pro/1/2 crit racing in the sunset

I spent a lot of time on the warmup laps thinking about how to take the lines around the course as fast as possible, so by the time the race started I felt confident that I could take that hill at 41 mph with no brakes and hit my sightlines each lap. The pace for the first two laps was really high – around 25mph – and I was hurting by the beginning of the third lap.

I held onto the group that Brian was in until late in the second lap, but I was losing ground on the short climb each time we hit it. I also got bumped hard at the base of that hill by someone who stood into the hill while in a group of riders five abreast. Not smart, but I bumped back and nothing more happened.

By the end of the third lap, the field was strung out pretty far except for the lead group. I found myself on my own and riding at threshold trying to see what would develop. I picked off several guys riding solo who were already pretty broken and moved up several places until I found someone riding my pace. As I passed him, I told him to jump on my wheel if he wanted to work together. He gladly obliged, and we picked up another five riders over the course of the next lap. Now seven strong, our little group was working well together and was making up time on the lead group with every lap.

Our speed surged again when I saw Brian and his group at the end of one of the University Blvd straight, but we held together. With 1.5 laps to go, a rider in our group skidded coming out of the off-camber-uphill right hander before the Univ. Blvd straight and the rider to my immediate right panicked and went down hard. He jostled me hard enough as he fell to knock my right foot loose from my pedal and almost take me down. I clipped in and rode away from it, but it was enough to gap me from the group I had been working with.

Even though I’m not trying to make a habit of finishing races solo, I ran the final lap solo trying to grab back onto my group. By the time I had covered around 1.5k of the 2k course I had nearly closed the gap. I sprinted solo for the finish because I felt like I had earned the right to.

First crit. Survived sketchy pack jostling, a crash happening RIGHT next to me, and I built a working group around myself to regain position. It was great. Watching the Pro/1/2 race at the end of the day was the perfect end to the day. They were taking 40 seconds less to complete a lap, and FLYING around the turns. You could feel the wind from the pack as they flew by. I can’t begin to describe the sound of their tires scratching for grip on the pavement, and the chorus of 100 derailleurs clunking across 100 cassettes as they started the downhill, but I’ll never forget it. If racing has a soundtrack, that is it. You can’t get this stuff on Versus, you have to be there.