Labor Day Omnium Day 3 – Circuit Race

I took 4th place today in the final race of the labor day omnium, my highest placing ever in an NRC event, and I fell just one lap short of taking a solo win. It was an amazing experience even though it was a bit disappointing to miss the podium by one spot. Still very happy though! Here is how the race played out:

The course was the same course as the long first lap of the time trial on Friday – technical 2.6 mile course closed to traffic but wide open for a fast tactical race. With 25 laps and nearly 70 miles of racing ahead of us, I figured that we would average 25mph. As soon as the race began, however, I realized that 25mph was definitely underestimating the speed of the group as we continued to average well over 27mph lap after lap. Once the race blew up into several small groups, the average speed dropped to a final average of 26.1mph … here are the lap splits annotated -

NAME    DIST    SPEED     POWER      TIME     Comment
Lap 1   2.7 mi  25.7 mph  220 watts  0:06:25  
Lap 2   2.7 mi  27.6 mph  284 watts  0:05:57  Fast
Lap 3   2.7 mi  27.7 mph  256 watts  0:05:55  Fast
Lap 4   2.7 mi  27.5 mph  283 watts  0:06:00  Fast
Lap 5   2.7 mi  27.5 mph  284 watts  0:05:58  Fast
Lap 6   2.7 mi  27.9 mph  245 watts  0:05:53  Fast
Lap 7   2.7 mi  26.8 mph  227 watts  0:06:07  
Lap 8   2.7 mi  25.3 mph  257 watts  0:06:31  Points prime (1pt)
Lap 9   2.7 mi  24.8 mph  244 watts  0:06:36  
Lap 10  2.7 mi  26.8 mph  246 watts  0:06:06  
Lap 11  2.7 mi  26.6 mph  256 watts  0:06:10  
Lap 12  2.7 mi  22.9 mph  188 watts  0:07:09  Slow
Lap 13  2.7 mi  27.3 mph  238 watts  0:05:59  
Lap 14  2.7 mi  26.4 mph  207 watts  0:06:13  
Lap 15  2.7 mi  27.3 mph  222 watts  0:06:01  
Lap 16  2.7 mi  27.6 mph  271 watts  0:05:57  Points prime (1pt)
Lap 17  2.7 mi  26.6 mph  290 watts  0:06:09  
Lap 18  2.7 mi  26.5 mph  271 watts  0:06:13  
Lap 19  2.7 mi  27.3 mph  272 watts  0:06:00  
Lap 20  2.7 mi  25.1 mph  254 watts  0:06:32  
Lap 21  2.7 mi  24.7 mph  267 watts  0:06:39  Points prime (3pts)
Lap 22  2.7 mi  26.1 mph  306 watts  0:06:16  Solo
Lap 23  2.7 mi  25.6 mph  283 watts  0:06:25  Solo
Lap 24  2.7 mi  24.6 mph  263 watts  0:06:39  Solo
Lap 25  2.7 mi  24.6 mph  244 watts  0:06:40  Caught finished 4th

The first few laps were really fast with splits in the field and large groups rolling off the front. I made it into one of these splits with about 15 riders, but there wasn’t enough cohesion in the group to stay off the front. At this point, it’s hard to remember exactly how the final break materialized. I was riding aggressively on the points prime laps to try to get omnium points and managed to snag 3rd place on two of them good for 1 point each.

On lap 16, I was already in a break of about 12 riders when I led out the sprint for the omnium points hoping to get a jump on the faster guys. I managed to hold on for third but the sprint itself had shelled a few riders. At this point we were down to 8 riders. About midway through the next lap, a group of three including Alexey Schmidt (Team Type I), Serghei Tvetcov (Aerocat), and Demis Aleman (Jamis) rolled off the front of our break. For the next three laps, the five of us that were left – me, Oscar Clark (Realcyclist), Shane Braley (Chemstar), a Mountain Khakis rider, and Team Cocos rider worked to chase back up to the three off the front. When we finally caught them, it was back to a break of 8, but one that lacked any cohesion at all as everyone was tired and everyone had strong riders in the field and chase behind us. I didn’t want to get caught so I kept trying to push the pace and would roll off the front either by myself or once with Alexey and once with Shane. The rest of the group would always get itself organized again and work its way back up to us.

With 5 laps to go, they rang the bell for a points prime. Without any cohesion in the group, I rolled off the front again this time getting a pretty good lead. Realizing that there were three omnium points on the line, I drilled it hard to try to stay away for the points. I looked back and was shocked at the gap I had opened up. So that helped me to keep pushing harder hoping to have enough of a lead so that when the group started to chase I would be able to hold on for the points. About 3/4 of the way through the lap, I realized that I was going to get the points and that I had a big enough lead that there was a realistic chance I could win the race! I settled into as hard a rhythm as I could maintain and stayed away for the next three laps. I couldn’t even sustain 300 watts by this point in the race even with the extra motivation of a chance at winning an NRC race. So by the start of the last lap (2.6 miles from the finish), a group of 3 that had split off from the rest of the break caught up to me.

At this point, I no longer had any thoughts of winning the race, and I was still concerned about the remnants of the break or even the 1st chase group from the field catching up to us by the end so I went to the front one more time to try to keep the pace up into the rolling section. There was an attack at the bottom of the climb, then a counter-attack by Serghei at the top that saw him get away solo. A couple seconds later, Demis attacked hard up the right-hand side with Oscar and I on the far left. He immediately got the gap and closed the distance to Serghei. Oscar and I were left behind to fight it out for 3rd. In the final sprint, I tried to go early attacking on the feedzone hill but Oscar was able to hold my wheel and come around to take third with me getting 4th. Ahead of us, Demis took the win just ahead of Serghei.

Gene and the Swagger crew put on a great VIP tent with food/drinks for the riders, and the podium ceremony was in front of thousands of people gathered for an annual concert. With the 5 omnium points that I got during the race, plus the 14 points for finishing third, that was enough to move me up to 11th overall for the weekend. At the beginning of the weekend I was hoping for a top 20 in the omnium, so I was able to almost get a top 10. Great way to wrap up the NRC racing calendar. I’m excited for two more races to end the season – Pensacola in two weeks and then the Six Gap criterium and century the week after that.

Here is my power data (no heartrate this weekend, left my heartrate monitor in my office on Friday) -

Annotated power map

Annotated power / speed / elevation graph

Day 5 – Crossroads Classic – Salisbury Circuit Race

Race Summary
15th place (9th in field sprint). This placing was enough for me to take 11th overall for the 5 day omnium. My hopes for a top 5 were dashed after a poor road race yesterday. And today, I just missed making it into the top 10 by 3 points. Still, this was a really strong field up here in North Carolina, and I was happy to have some strong races even if the results weren’t quite there.

The video below shows the field sprint for 6th place. (Caution – loud awesome cheering at the beginning) I was pretty far back still at the point that Kristine took this video, but the sprint was uphill, and I passed a bunch of people in the last 100 meters to finish 9th in the field sprint, 15th in the race.

The Details
The laps for today’s race were just under 1 mile long. The key feature was the finishing climb. I started out pretty well and fought hard to stay towards the front. I ended up bridging up to a good looking break with about 14 laps to go. The break was a bit too big, though, and our gap shrank from 20 seconds to 8 seconds in just one lap. I think we ended up staying away for maybe 4 or 5 laps total. Chris Harkey (Hincapie Green) and one of his teammates slipped away as a counter attack with a Mountain Khakis rider. The three riders quickly built a lead as nobody chased for an entire lap (I think this was with 5 laps to go in the race). There were two more riders that slipped away with 2 laps to go. I waited for the field sprint and ended up 9th in the field sprint, 15th for the race.

Here is the Strava segment data … I’ve included the 28 laps plus the finishing climb for the last lap … also, here is the link for the interactive strava data: http://app.strava.com/rides/1152324

NAME   DIST   ELEV  SPEED    POWER     HR      TIME
Lap 1  0.9 mi 56 ft 27.4 mph 333 watts 145 bpm 0:02:00
Lap 2  0.9 mi 56 ft 26.7 mph 264 watts 159 bpm 0:02:03
Lap 3  0.9 mi 56 ft 26.5 mph 255 watts 158 bpm 0:02:04
Lap 4  0.9 mi 56 ft 25.4 mph 230 watts 158 bpm 0:02:09
Lap 5  0.9 mi 56 ft 27.4 mph 258 watts 159 bpm 0:02:00
Lap 6  0.9 mi 56 ft 25.6 mph 217 watts 156 bpm 0:02:08
Lap 7  0.9 mi 56 ft 24.1 mph 210 watts 155 bpm 0:02:16
Lap 8  0.9 mi 56 ft 27.4 mph 261 watts 164 bpm 0:02:00
Lap 9  0.9 mi 56 ft 26.5 mph 243 watts 166 bpm 0:02:04
Lap 10 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.3 mph 253 watts 162 bpm 0:02:05
Lap 11 0.9 mi 56 ft 27.1 mph 311 watts 172 bpm 0:02:01
Lap 12 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.7 mph 254 watts 171 bpm 0:02:03
Lap 13 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.5 mph 215 watts 161 bpm 0:02:04
Lap 14 0.9 mi 56 ft 25.6 mph 240 watts 162 bpm 0:02:08
Lap 15 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.9 mph 272 watts 173 bpm 0:02:02
Lap 16 0.9 mi 56 ft 25.4 mph 223 watts 167 bpm 0:02:09
Lap 17 0.9 mi 56 ft 27.1 mph 292 watts 175 bpm 0:02:01
Lap 18 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.5 mph 211 watts 174 bpm 0:02:04
Lap 19 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.7 mph 254 watts 170 bpm 0:02:03
Lap 20 0.9 mi 56 ft 24.9 mph 228 watts 175 bpm 0:02:12
Lap 21 0.9 mi 56 ft 25.8 mph 210 watts 168 bpm 0:02:07
Lap 22 0.9 mi 56 ft 25.4 mph 207 watts 168 bpm 0:02:09
Lap 23 0.9 mi 56 ft 26.7 mph 212 watts 167 bpm 0:02:03
Lap 24 0.9 mi 56 ft 24.0 mph 187 watts 165 bpm 0:02:17
Lap 25 0.9 mi 56 ft 27.4 mph 232 watts 169 bpm 0:02:00
Lap 26 0.9 mi 56 ft 24.5 mph 190 watts 164 bpm 0:02:14
Lap 27 0.9 mi 56 ft 25.1 mph 218 watts 169 bpm 0:02:11
Lap 28 0.9 mi 56 ft 30.7 mph 374 watts 183 bpm 0:01:47
Finish 0.3 mi 33 ft 31.1 mph 703 watts 187 bpm 0:00:30

Salisbury power map annotated (purple = low power, blue/green = med power, yellow/red = high power)

Salisbury power graph

Bates Road Circuit Race (Day 5 – Georgia Cycling Gran Prix)

HOT! Those three letters describe my day yesterday with the air conditioning in my car broken. Here are three temperature graphs from the day.

Drive from Winterville, GA to Newton County outside of Covington, GA!

The Newton County circuit race – the race had some good shade on half the course.

The three and a half hour drive home to Birmingham without air conditioning

Race report
Our race was again combined with the cat 3 race making for a total of 79 riders in the field. My right leg was still tight/sore from cramping hard at the end of the crit on Saturday, so I decided that I would race this race pretty conservatively for at least the first part of the race. I also guessed that with a large field on a rolling course, it would be unlikely for an early move to stay away. I was halfway correct on this because all of the moves (and there were a bunch of them) in the first few laps came back to the group.

Then somewhere around the fifth of twenty-five 1.8 mile laps, a good group got away with John Stowe, Alexey Schmidt (Team Type I), Sabastian Cancio (Aerocat), and a couple other riders. They quickly got a big gap as our pace plummeted in the field. At one point, I was thinking that the break might actually lap us. There was usually one attack on every lap, though, that ramped our pace way up for half a lap before slowing down again. Gavin Landsden (BBC), Jan Kolar (BBC), and me put in a one-two-three attack on one lap that I thought for sure would have gotten something away – but my attack was swallowed by the field on the descent.

I drifted back to the back 1/3rd of the group on the next lap to recover. During the next couple laps, a strong group of riders including TT1, Aerocat, Oneal Samuels, and maybe one or two other riders got away from the field. After about two more laps and our pace had been really high for a long time, I decided that it was probably a good time to get a chase group going with the field probably tired from the conditions and speed. So coming through the start/finish line, I moved up sheltered from the wind to the left of about 30-40 riders strung out single file and then immediately onto the back of an attack with a few riders maybe six or seven? As the field started to catch us after the course’s long downhill, there was another attack on the gradual hill. This is the spot on the course where the field had been slowing down quite a bit, so when that attack went I knew that it had a good chance of sticking. I went with it and worked with about five or six riders to get a gap.

We worked really well together as the third group on the road and were able to pull back the second group on the road after a few laps with only the lead break ahead of us with more than a minute’s advantage. Once the two chase groups merged, I could start to feel my leg giving me problems and knew that my best bet at not getting dropped is if there were no attacks. So rather than sitting on the back, I tried to work hard mashing a big gear when possible to reduce the total number of pedal strokes that my leg had to make. Even though we had a few people who weren’t working in the chase, there was enough people working that we didn’t have any attacks from our chase group until maybe 4 laps to go. From this point to the end, I stopped working to try to save my leg to be able to go with any attacks and try to get a decent finish. Dan Holt and Joey Rosskopf were drilling it at the front of our chase bringing us up to a shattered lead group of about 3 or 4 riders with two riders from the original break (Alexey Schmidt and Sabastian Cancio) still off the front with a 25 second advantage with one lap to go. This worked well for me because the TT1 duo kept the pace high enough that nobody was going to attack and I didn’t have to worry about any sudden accelerations until the sprint at the very end of the race. Even then, I was in great position for the sprint, but decided just to ride wheels to avoid any further damage to my leg. When I was ready to pass a couple people before the line, I got blocked in by one rider on either side who must have had the same idea about 1/2 of a second before me so I lost a couple spots.

Still, I was very happy with the race -

1) My leg was OK enough to not only race, but also attack and make it into the break
2) No cramps at all thanks to the way the race played out and thanks to the person in the feedzone who gave me a bottle with two laps to go
3) Still had a lot left for the sprint
4) Didn’t die from heat exhaustion

You can see how the race played out in the Strava segment data below. I think Lap 7 may have been the lap that had the 1-2-3 attack from Alabama. Lap 10 is probably where I thought to myself that if we kept that pace up, we were probably going to get lapped. Then look at how the speed ramps up over Laps 11, 12, 13. Then Lap 14 is where the third chase group was formed. Lap 19 is probably where we merged with the second group on the road. Then you can see the high speed / low watts for the last couple laps where TT1 was pulling hard to bring us up to the lead group.

NAME   DIST   ELEV  SPEED    POWER     HR      TIME
Lap 1  1.8 mi 85 ft 24.4 mph 209 watts 142 bpm 0:04:26
Lap 2  1.8 mi 85 ft 24.5 mph 176 watts 146 bpm 0:04:24
Lap 3  1.8 mi 85 ft 27.2 mph 233 watts 151 bpm 0:03:58
Lap 4  1.8 mi 85 ft 25.5 mph 212 watts 156 bpm 0:04:14
Lap 5  1.8 mi 85 ft 27.1 mph 252 watts 156 bpm 0:03:59
Lap 6  1.8 mi 85 ft 23.6 mph 192 watts 147 bpm 0:04:34
Lap 7  1.8 mi 85 ft 25.9 mph 297 watts 162 bpm 0:04:10
Lap 8  1.8 mi 85 ft 23.2 mph 179 watts 153 bpm 0:04:39
Lap 9  1.8 mi 85 ft 26.3 mph 267 watts 167 bpm 0:04:06
Lap 10 1.8 mi 85 ft 20.6 mph 119 watts 142 bpm 0:05:14
Lap 11 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.3 mph 199 watts 147 bpm 0:04:16
Lap 12 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.8 mph 214 watts 149 bpm 0:04:11
Lap 13 1.8 mi 85 ft 26.4 mph 217 watts 153 bpm 0:04:05
Lap 14 1.8 mi 85 ft 28.0 mph 290 watts 168 bpm 0:03:51
Lap 15 1.8 mi 85 ft 26.0 mph 252 watts 163 bpm 0:04:09
Lap 16 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.7 mph 260 watts 165 bpm 0:04:12
Lap 17 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.1 mph 234 watts 163 bpm 0:04:18
Lap 18 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.8 mph 223 watts 157 bpm 0:04:11
Lap 19 1.8 mi 85 ft 24.6 mph 230 watts 158 bpm 0:04:23
Lap 20 1.8 mi 85 ft 24.6 mph 212 watts 155 bpm 0:04:23
Lap 21 1.8 mi 85 ft 25.6 mph 228 watts 155 bpm 0:04:13
Lap 22 1.8 mi 85 ft 27.1 mph 247 watts 158 bpm 0:03:59
Lap 23 1.8 mi 85 ft 26.0 mph 226 watts 157 bpm 0:04:09
Lap 24 1.8 mi 85 ft 27.3 mph 239 watts 157 bpm 0:03:57
Lap 25 1.8 mi 85 ft 28.0 mph 304 watts 170 bpm 0:03:51

Here is the link for all of the interactive Strava data – http://app.strava.com/rides/1003919.

You can also see how the race played out in the Strava performance graph below which shows heartrate and power. You can see how much smoother the power output is once we made into the chase group.

Strava performance data annotated (click for larger image)

Golden cheetah performance map annotated (click for larger image)

David Gearhart won the field sprint for 19th with my teammate Justin Bynum a few places behind him to take 1st in the cat 3s to bring home the overall omnium win! I ended up 6th in the omnium. Great racing, great training – next up is the Crossroads Classic August 3rd-7th in North Carolina.

Also, I almost forgot that not only did my AC stop working on the way to the race, my GPS took me on three different dirt roads to get there. At one point, I was convinced the dirt road was about to turn into a 4 wheel drive only road as it turned to what I would call a car’s version of double track … took a couple pics to document the experience but was pretty panicky by the time I hit the double track that I was going to miss the race. I had stayed to watch the end of the Tour de France and only left myself less than 2 hours to get to the race. I arrived at the race at 1:40 for a 2:00PM start, but fortunately they were running a little late. I think we started at about 2:15 or 2:20.

Digby Road – third dirt road of the drive to the start
Gravel/dirt double track – beautiful country!

Barbers Ride to Live Race Reports

Wow, what a great day! This picture about says it all. My teammate Pat Allison won the Pro/1/2/3 race, and I managed to hold on for 3rd after putting in an attack on the last hill. Travis Sherman rode strong to finish 2nd after having won the Masters 30+ race earlier in the day.

Summary
Before I go into the details from the races, here is a quick summary. We fielded large teams for both the Masters 30+ race and the Pro/1/2/3 race. My teammate Wes Douglas made it into an early break with Joe Ruf from Madison and Travis Sherman (Marx and Bensdorf). Wes eventually took third with Travis taking the win. I attacked with two laps to go and then broke away from our chase group to take 4th.

For the Pro/1/2/3 race, we took 1st (Pat Allison), 3rd (Me), 6th (Terry Duran), 7th (Stuart Lamp), and 9th (Darryl Seelhorst). Pat and I bridged up to the winning break on the 2nd lap, and for a while we had five guys in the break. Eventually we finished with 3 guys in the break working our numbers perfectly to get the win!

The details – Masters 30+
For the Masters 30+ race, we lined up with six guys and were aggressive throughout the race. Wes made it into the day’s winning breakaway with Travis and Joe from Madison. Once their break was established, I decided to sit in and mark the strong guys to get the free ride across if they attacked. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much attacking so we lost our advantage in numbers as Wes was on his own to battle it out with Travis and Joe. With three laps to go, one of the Pacesetter Steel riders attacked hard, and I covered it. But the pack was still fresh enough to reel us back in. Then with two laps to go, I drifted to the back and then attacked into the headwind after the first turn. I bridged to another Pacesetter Steel rider who was already off the front bringing Will Hibberts (Alabama Masters) and Travis Werts (Sonic) with me. We worked together for a lap, but then I was feeling that our pace wasn’t fast enough so I attacked again on the last lap. Only Travis Werts was able to come with me and then came off on the last hill. So I rolled in for fourth. Sammy did well in the field sprint for 10th.

2011 Barbers Masters 30+ heartrate summary

2011 Barbers Masters 30+ heartrate data

The details – Pro/1/2/3
We had eleven guys line up for the start of this race. I think that is the most riders we have ever had in one race! We raced this race pretty much to perfection as we were attacking and covering everything. I countered one of Stuart’s attacks at the end of the first lap and only managed to string out the field. Coming through the start/finish, there was a counter attack to my attack and we had 3 guys cover the move — Terry, Darryl, and Paul. Also in the break were Travis Werts, Travis Sherman, and Joe Ruf from Madison. The break was working well together and starting to establish itself. Meanwhile, back in the group we took turns covering moves.

Towards the end of the second lap, Ed Whitehorn (Velocity Pro Cycles) attacked and Pat covered it. They got a good gap right away and we were on the most difficult part of the course, so I decided to bridge across to it. I got away cleanly from the field and as I came up to Pat, I yelled “Let’s go!”. Pat thought the entire field was still there so I went flying right by. As soon as Pat realized that we had a good gap, he attacked the small group he was in and bridged back up to me. So the two of us were away. We caught up to the break into the strong headwind after turn 1. We came up fast and tried to rally the troops, but some of the guys in the break were already struggling when we tried to ramp up the pace. The end result was that we lost one of our own riders (Darryl) from the break and disrupted the rhythm of the break temporarily. It was a tricky situation because we did ramp the pace up quite a bit, which we definitely needed to do in order to get enough of a gap before the corkscrew downhill where the pack would make up some time on us if they were chasing hard.

Within half a lap, though, we had settled in and started a good rotation and had started to put some good time into the field. We continued at a blistering pace working well together all the way until just before the start of the last lap. Travis Sherman knew that we would begin attacking so he decided to jump the gun and put in his own attack possibly to see if he could reduce the odds against him. Pat led the charge and chased Travis down as the rest of us strung out behind. Travis attacked again before the corkscrew. Then coming into the headwind after the cork screw, my teammate Terry Duran put in a perfect attack because it forced Travis to chase. We caught Terry at the base of the final hill, so I put in a counter attack right away. I was pretty much dying by this point so I wasn’t going that much faster but it was enough to get a gap to force Travis to chase again with Pat sitting on his wheel. Coming down the finishing stretch, Travis closed the gap to me and came around, but Pat was waiting and came around easily taking the sprint by several bike lengths. My initial attack had given us enough of a gap that I was able to hold on for third with Travis Werts charging hard for fourth followed by Joe Ruf and Terry.

Kristine told me after the race that Tria was all over everything back in the field, covering every single move that tried to get away from the group. At the end of the race, Stuart attacked on the last hill and was able to stay away for 7th place with Jan Kolar just behind. Then Darryl won the field sprint for 9th. So that’s about it, what a great race!

Coming off the last turn into the finishing straight, still with a small gap. Travis still chasing. Photo by Alan Laytham

Travis Sherman finishes closing the gap to me with Pat waiting to take the sprint. Photo by Alan Laytham

Pat Allison takes the win followed by Travis and me. Photo by Monika Duran

2011 Barbers ride to live pro/1/2/3 heartrate summary

2011 Barbers ride to live pro/1/2/3 heartrate data

Here are some videos from the Pro/1/2/3 race courtesy Kristine.

I ran out of battery on my iBike because I had left it running in between races and forgot my iPhone charger so for power data, I only have the first three laps of the Pro/1/2/3 race. I have annotated the attack as follows – 1) My initial attack 2) Waiting for Pat after he attacked to bridge back up to me 3) Finishing the bridge together to the group (400w min through here)

2011 Barbers ride to live pro/1/2/3 iBike power data

Pro/1/2/3 first three laps
Dist:        7.87 mi (0:18:16)
Energy:     329.7 kJ
Cals Burn:  315.2 kcal
Climbing:     248 ft
Braking:      0.0 kJ (0.0%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  300.8   924  W
Aero        0  152.6   564  W
Rolling    16   47.2    72  W
Gravity -1287    4.3   754  W
Speed     8.6   25.9  39.6  mi/h
Wind      0.0   18.2  34.0  mi/h
Elev      353    386   416  ft
Slope   -10.0   0.05   9.9  %
Caden       9   82.7   106  rpm
HR        118  174.3   192  bpm
NP 344 W; IF 1.148; TSS 40.1
CdA: 0.342 m^2; Crr: 0.0055
168 lbs; 4/23/2011 1:27 PM
88 degF; 1013 mbar

Our entire bridge took just over 1.5 minutes and here are the stats on it:

---------Selection Stats---------
Dist:        0.75 mi (0:01:35)
Energy:      44.2 kJ
Cals Burn:   42.3 kcal
Climbing:      17 ft
Braking:      0.0 kJ (0.0%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power       0  465.7   893  W
Aero        0  247.7   564  W
Rolling    34   52.0    65  W
Gravity  -647   29.7   706  W
Speed    18.8   28.5  35.3  mi/h
Wind      8.7   21.6  31.6  mi/h
Elev      388    397   409  ft
Slope    -6.5   0.31   9.7  %
Caden      63   84.7    99  rpm
HR        165  182.3   190  bpm
NP 437 W; IF 1.456; TSS 5.6
CdA: 0.342 m^2; Crr: 0.0055
168 lbs; 4/23/2011 1:36 PM
88 degF; 1013 mbar

2010 Ride to Live Race (Barbers Motosport)

Anytime you live close enough to a race to ride to the race instead of driving, you know that no matter what happens it’s going to be a good day. I woke up to cloudy skies, but no rain. Kristine left with the kids to head off to an Easter Egg hunt in Alabaster with the Moon’s. So I finished getting ready and by the time I left at 9AM, it had just started to rain. By the time I had left my neighborhood, the rain had increased in intensity and it was a steady rain shower pretty much the entire way to Barbers. I made it to the race, found out that I had raised enough money for Livestrong to not only race for free but also to receive one of the gift cards to Cahaba Cycles. Thank you everyone for donating!

Masters 30+
22 riders lined up at the start of the 7 lap race with a light drizzle keeping us cold and ready to go. I was hoping for a relaxing start, but there were attacks from the gun with Travis Sherman (Moontoast/Tristar) and another rider getting away early. My teammate, Jacob Tubbs moved to the front to up the pace to make sure they didn’t get too far away. Will Hibberts from Alabama Masters ramped it up and we had a few guys rotating through in the chase. Then towards the end of the first lap on the steepest hill of the course, I saw that Travis had dropped his break-mate. I looked behind me and saw Travis’s teammate Mike Olheiser on my wheel and thought “drill it”! Sure enough – my acceleration separated me and Mike from the field and I quickly closed the gap to Travis. We had a small break at that point with a couple riders bridging across to us. We started rotating through with everybody taking pretty even pulls. Even so, the field was too fresh and about three laps later with three laps to go in the race, the field was about to catch us. I felt pretty sure that Mike wasn’t going to let it come back together without trying to get away so I prepared myself for him to jump — which he did through the start/finish line with 3 laps to go. I saw it coming, but when he attacked up the righthand side – I attacked down the lefthand side. I wasn’t in his draft though and he had a 10meter gap on me. So it was me vs. world time trial champion – not going to happen! He slowly pulled away and then, Eric May from Atlanta bridged up to me and we tried in vain to work together, but Mike continued to extend his lead.

So we backed our pace down from AWOL to just really fast and the rest of the chase group with 2 Nashville Cyclists (Tim Hall and Patrick), Joe from Ante Velos and also Mike’s temmate Travis along for the free ride. We rotated through and quickly extended our lead on the remnants of the field. Mike continued to pull away from us so it then became a race for 2nd. Initially, both riders from Nashville Cyclist were pulling through — but then they wisely put one rider back to match Travis who was saving up for the finish. With one to go, I maneuvered behind Travis anticipating him to attack the group before the finish. Attack he did, and I went right with him. But we didn’t have good separation (maybe just a few bike lengths) and so I didn’t pull through when he let off the gas. In retrospect, if I had attacked at that moment maybe I could held off everyone or if I had pulled through and worked with Travis, maybe we could have stayed away and sprinted it out for 2nd. Nevertheless, my instinct was to not commit to that move — maybe I was hoping somebody else would counter attack and I would still be fresh enough to go with that — and then I could counter attack that counter attack to get away solo! Well, if that’s what I was thinking it all went through my head subconsciously as I simply didn’t pull through.

So we all came back together right at the base of the hill before the finish. Travis ended up on the front with me in second position. I was thinking somebody was going to attack from behind us, and I was listening for it to accelerate so I could hop on it and then come around before the finish. It never happened though so Travis was forced to lead out the sprint. He led it out from pretty much the bottom corner as we made it onto the flat finishing area. He attacked hard so the pace was high with me on his wheel. I was waiting, waiting and then with about 200 meters I attacked hard to come around him hoping I could hold it to the line — but one guy (Eric May) was able to come around me right before the finish. With Mike Olheiser taking the win in front of us, that put Eric in second, and me in 3rd.

When the race was over, I borrowed a rain jacket from Ed Whitehorn (Velocity Pro Cycles) — thank you!!! — as I was freezing and started on my 20 mile ride back home. I cruised real easy and thought constantly about the race, replaying it over and over again. My mistake was not maneuvering behind Mike before he attacked. As soon as I realized that we were going to get caught – I should have immediately worked my way behind Mike in anticipation of him attacking. Once that didn’t happen though and we were racing for 2nd, I then should have waited just a second or two longer before coming around Travis. Oh well — live and learn — great racing by all! Back in the field, Jacob covered moves and then took the field sprint pretty convincingly from the look of the photos posted online.

Pro/1/2/3
We had a good strong field with Team Type I, Moontoast/Tristar, and us all having good sized teams. We lined up with seven guys – Terry, Sammy, Jacob, Philip, Darryl, Paul, and me. It was attack, attack, attack from the gun. We had guys in every move. I made it into a break with two TriStar riders, Dan Holt from Team Type I, and one other rider. We worked hard and rotated well together, but it was too early in the race and the pack brought us back after a lap and a half. Then there were more attacks but nothing got away on that next lap. Then I attacked again near the beginning of the 3rd lap and got away with another good looking break. This one only lasted for a lap. I felt like we were rotating well, but the team representation must not have been right because we got drilled back again by the pack. As soon as we got caught, Tiago Depaula (Depaula Racing) launched off the front. My teammate, Terry Duran, saw it coming and latched onto it immediately. A few more riders bridged up and eventually it became a break of 5. Terry got out-maneuvered in the end but still finished a respectable 4th having already won a Masters 40+ race earlier in the day! For our field sprint, Jacob and Sammy both finished high up in it to finish 11th and 14th for the race.

No heartrate data from my masters race as the rain must have been interfering with the signal. But here is the HR data for the P/1/2/3 race along with the map of my ride from my house to the race.

1. 1st break
2. 2nd break
3. The finish