Six Gap Century and Criterium

The Pro/1/2 podium for the Six Gap criterium. L-R: Scott Kuppersmith, Lucas Wardein, and Brian Toone
Analise wake-boarding with Brad
Josiah and me about to start jet-skiing
Josiah giving us the hang ten sign while wake-boarding with Brad

These photos above are my favorite from a great family weekend of hanging out with friends, racing and riding bikes, and enjoying the beautiful mountains of North Georgia. Analise and Josiah wake-boarded for the first time. I got to ride a jet ski for the first time. And we had a great time hanging out with Brad and Brenna and their kids at their family lake house on Lake Lanier less than 30 minutes from Dahlonega. Here’s how the racing went on Saturday and the epic riding went on Sunday…

Saturday @ 7:30PM, Six Gap Criterium
The course was the same three corner course plus the downtown square which is small enough that I heard at least one person describe it as a roundabout. So the course was either three corners and a 180 or 7 corners depending on how you count the square. Either way you go, the course is really fast with two uphill sections and two downhill sections. I was slow in getting to start line so I started on the back row of a small field of about 25 pro/1/2 riders. The layout of the course meant that there was really only one spot to pass people – just past the start/finish all the way through the top of the hill after turn 1. The rest of the course was so fast and had turns coming at you so quickly that it was difficult to pass anyone.

I had to watch the early breaks on the first couple laps go as I was still working my way to the front. Fortunately, none of those stuck, and I was able to get to the front by the fourth or fifth lap. A few laps later I went with a move that didn’t last long. A few laps after that was another move that I was in – this one lasted a couple laps but never got a good gap. Only a couple laps after that, I bridged up to a move started by Brendan Cornett (TBB Sports), who has been riding super strong this year, and one of the UHC-706 riders (Jonas?). Brendan was clearly the strongest and drilled it hard, but we never got our gap out to more than 5-10 seconds. Even so, we held that gap for quite a few laps (about 1/4 of the race) before getting pulled back in.

Then there was a flurry of attacks that eventually saw Scott Kuppersmith break free. A lap or two later, Lucas Wardein (Florida Velo), attacked and bridged to Scott solo. I think at that point everyone looked to UHC to bring back the move, but the gap had ballooned to nearly 30 seconds so it was too late to bring it back in the last five laps. Johnny Brizzard (Subaru) raced aggressively but couldn’t get a gap to stick. He was at the front drilling it hard at the start of the last lap when I decided to attack as soon as the pace let up. Going into turn 1, we slowed down just a bit and it was now or never so I attacked as hard as I could hoping to hold it through all the corners. I was able to just barely hold it to the finish with Brendan and Oneal Samuels (UHC-706) coming up fast behind me for 4th and 5th. Kristine got a good video of the finish starting with me charging through with about 500 meters to go…

She also got a video of the field rounding the square earlier in the race…

I was really happy to finish my last criterium for the year with one more podium! All my power/heartrate data is below:

Six Gap Criterium Pro/1/2 – heartrate/power data (click to enlarge)
Six Gap criterium pro/1/2 power map (click to enlarge)
Six Gap criterium pro/1/2 last lap power data (click to enlarge)
Six Gap criterium pro/1/2 heartrate zones

Six Gap Criterium Lap Data
Pro/1/2 Third Place
Lap	Time	AvgPow	MaxPow	HR	MPH
1	1:16	301	796	165	25.7
2	1:15	255	725	169	26.2
3	1:14	266	849	170	26
4	1:13	301	877	169	27.3
5	1:08	381	874	181	29.1
6	1:12	324	711	185	27.6
7	1:17	280	651	177	26
8	1:17	247	570	175	26.2
9	1:22	233	806	165	25
10	1:14	304	955	166	27.8
11	1:10	359	801	181	29.4
12	1:20	219	644	176	26.5
13	1:20	210	779	165	25.9
14	1:20	233	882	162	26.7
15	1:13	325	884	167	29.3
16	1:11	344	921	183	31.1
17	1:09	352	691	185	29.5
18	1:15	300	655	186	28.4
19	1:21	234	594	178	25.5
20	1:15	239	777	169	27.9
21	1:16	217	813	166	27.7
22	1:18	259	920	163	26.3
23	1:13	271	756	176	28.6
24	1:13	352	890	180	28.5
25	1:11	296	696	184	28.6
26	1:13	317	661	183	27.7
27	1:15	279	631	182	27.4
28	1:14	294	643	180	27.4
29	1:17	291	837	179	25.9
30	1:16	228	630	177	27.3
31	1:19	192	738	172	25.7
32	1:20	214	746	164	26
33	1:15	221	745	166	26.5
34	1:27	195	767	163	22.8
35	1:21	241	973	161	24.9
36	1:16	240	807	169	26.2
37	1:17	235	872	164	25.5
38	1:23	206	873	166	24.4
39	1:21	234	890	166	24.4
40	1:15	249	852	165	26.8
41	1:20	282	887	166	24.9
42	1:21	262	810	180	25
43	1:15	285	912	177	26.8
44	1:13	287	917	175	27.4
45	1:12	235	715	176	27
46	1:07	463	990	185	29.2

Sunday @ 7:30AM, Six Gap Gran Fondo
Less than 12 hours later, I was lined up with close to 3,000 other people awaiting the start of the annual Six Gap century. There is a reason why this event draws so many people – the course covers some of the best cycling roads in the entire country. Huge climbs, awesome descents, and lots of fun awaits those who do this event. The century also has a KOM competition that was sponsored this year by the USA Pro Cycling Challenge (the pro tour race in Colorado). This year’s competition was based on your chip timing up Hogpen Gap – a 7 mile stair-stepper climb with sustained sections as steep as 15%.

The first few miles leaving the high school were a great time chat with people and enjoy the draft of such a huge group. When you get that many cyclists together, you know that there are going to be a lot of yo-yoing back and forth as the pace accelerates on the downhill and then suddenly slows on the next steep roller — so you do your best to pay attention and help each other out by calling out when the pace is slowing and everything is fine. The group takes up pretty much the whole road, but on a Sunday morning in a rural section of the mountains of north georgia, I can only recall seeing a couple cars the entire 10 mile section leading into the first large hill on the course.

I was pretty far back when we reached the first of the six major climbs of the day – Neel’s Gap. I worked my way close to the front by the top of the first section of the climb. Then shortly after the bottom of the next climb, I finally made it all the way to the front. My teammate, Boris Simmonds, accelerated a bit and got away from the group early on the climb. Jimmy Schurman (Globalbike) set a fast pace that eventually reeled in Borris and dropped everyone except Christian Parrett (Globalbike), Mark Fisher (strong rider from Birmingham), and me. Across the top, we slowed down enough that quite a few riders joined us on the descent with a group of maybe 20 riders starting the climb up Jack’s Gap together.

The pace up Jack’s was tame enough that most of us were still together going into the third climb of the day (Unicoi Gap). Mark pushed it super hard at the bottom. I was on his wheel so I initially went with him, but I was pushing 375 watts up the climb and wanted to save some energy for the next climb up Hogpen Gap. Mark went on alone and I joined the rest of the group cruising up Unicoi at a more leisurely pace. We stopped at the top and refueled with lots of PB&J sandwiches.

Our group pushed the pace hard heading into the Hogpen climb so we were down to less than 10 riders by the turn onto GA-348. Jimmy Schurman was drilling it hard at the front and pretty soon it was just me, Mark, and Christian again. We crested the first part of the climb together, but Mark came off our group on the next steep section of the climb. Eventually we caught a couple riders who had not stopped at the Unicoi rest stop. Last year, Jimmy had dropped me at the steep section of the climb where there is a pull-out and several portapotties setup. This year I was happy to be able to hang with him and Christian all the way to the last steep roller before the top (about 1K to go). I just couldn’t sustain an above-threshold pace anymore so I eased up a bit to finish the climb at right about my threshold power of 300 watts.

After a couple minutes of waiting for more people from our group to catch up at the top, we headed down the super fast Hogpen descent. I thought Wolfpen was included again in the KOM competition so I pushed the pace hard at the bottom, Jimmy took over in the middle, and then Christian finished it off. Wolfpen is not nearly as steep as Hogpen so there was about 10 of us who survived the climb together. It’s tricky passing all the 3 gap riders and my voice was kinda horse from shouting “hello, on your left” up the climb and down the descent on the other side.

The final climb up Woody’s gap is much shorter than all the rest, and the descent was mostly good this year. Last year, we got held up by more 3-gappers and more cars on the road. This year, we eventually caught a truck pulling a 4-wheeler on a trailer and had to wait for him for a mile or two. Then he decided to stop to let us by (which almost caused us to plow into the back of him) but I was thankful that we could bomb the remaining mile or two of the descent. The rollers were good, and Christian pointed out the start of the dirt climb up Woody’s gap so I’m going to try to hit that up for southern cross in february.

Another year, another fun time at Six Gap! Here is all my power data … the first map below has the six climbs annotated with power, time, distance and vertical elevation gain.

Six Gap gran fondo power map with gap times, distances, and power averages annotated (click to enlarge)
Six Gap gran fondo heartrate/power data (click to enlarge)
Six Gap heartrate zone summary

Finally, here is a map of our boating fun yesterday and a couple more videos of the kids wake-boarding with Brad.

Boating on Lake Lanier – fun!!!

Pensacola Cycling Classic – Day 2 – Criterium and Overall

Josiah in the middle of the large kids field. I’m talking to the promoter in the background about ideas to encourage racers to register earlier for the race — getting ready to follow behind the kids who were very excited to do an entire lap of the course!

Analise in the pink skirt had a front row starting position and rode well on a bike that is too small for her.

One of many unsuccessful attacks – this is heading into the course’s one lefthand turn.

Quick summary – 14th in the criterium after botched field sprint, but held on for 5th overall in the stage race. Up ahead in the six-man break, Frank Travieso (Team Coco’s) won a very tight sprint ahead of Michael McBrien (Subaru) in 2nd, whose twin brother Gene would win the Cat 3 race immediately following our Pro/1/2 race, David Gutenplan (UHC/706) in 3rd, and Shawn Gravois (Globalbike) in 4th. Ryan Saylor (Gearlink) and one other rider also were in the break, so the field sprint was for 7th place.

The details – the forecasted rain stayed away, so instead it was hot and humid for this one hour criterium. After a really poor time trial yesterday, I was in a distant 5th about 45 seconds back from Stephan Hirsch (UHC/706) in 3rd and Jan Kolar (HomeSmart/L5Flyers) about 15 seconds in front of me in 4th. I had a relatively safe cushion of 45 seconds in front of Jonathan Bowerman who had come off our break in the road race and finished about a minute and a half behind us. But Jonathan had a smoking fast time trial beating me by 45 seconds cutting his time gap to me in half. The rest of the field came in minutes behind us so unless a break got away and lapped me in the field twice, the worst I was going to do in the overall was 6th place.

I wasn’t going to give up a shot at the overall podium without a fight, though. My only shot at it was to somehow get into a break without Stephan and Jan. I was first off the line and led the pack through the first few corners waiting for the first attack. It came in the form of just one rider (can’t remember who) so I thought for sure that it wouldn’t stick. Then there was one more rider, and then another rider, and still I was on the front waiting for one of the teams to chase. But before you can say “oh my goodness you missed the boat”, there was a solid break of four with maybe 10-15 second gap over the field.

One team missing from the break was Team Coco’s. Frank Travieso corrected that by bridging solo at probably 35mph – given the incredibly short amount of time it took for him to leave our group and bridge the gap up to the leaders 10-15 seconds ahead of us. At this point, I thought not only was the break a done deal, but also that it was going to lap the field within the first 15 minutes of the race. The only thing keeping the break from doing that was a steady effort by UHC/706 who wanted to keep the pace fast enough so that the dreaded “double-lapping” wouldn’t happen causing somebody to leap frog Stephan in the overall. I also think they wanted to keep the pace high to discourage attacks.

I attacked as often as I could – maybe four or five times? Each time I was hoping to get one or two strong riders to go with me, but it never happened. I would go off the front, stay off the front solo for 20-30 seconds and then run out of energy, get drawn back into the field by the steady chase of UHC/706, rinse and repeat. I wasn’t the only one attacking, and all of these attacks had a nice effect of ramping the field’s pace up enough to gradually reel the break back in. At one point we were only 10 seconds back from the break. I had just finished an attack, and the pace in the field had started to slow down when Shawn Gravois (Globalbike) launched a perfectly timed attack and was able to finish the bridge to the leaders a couple laps later. The renewed horse power helped drive the break away from us again.

With eight laps to go, I gave up attacking and started to position myself for the field sprint. I worked hard to stay at the very front and managed to surf through all the surges entering the last corner in 3rd wheel. But I came out of that corner on the windward side of the two riders in front of me — I’m still not entirely sure what I was thinking — it must have been that I somehow thought I was going to have some miraculous sprint — but I was immediately blown backwards by the wind getting passed by 3 people in the sprint and then an additional 2 people within 5 meters of the finish line to finish 7th in the sprint, 14th in the race.

Not a great finish, but I was happy to have raced really hard – especially with all my family there watching and cheering – and to have snagged a top 5 in the stage race classification. Lots of data from the weekend. I was happy to have set a new power record in the road race – confirming that it was indeed a really, really tough race. Here is all the power and heartrate data from the weekend in the following order: road race, time trial, criterium.

ROAD RACE DATA

Road race critical power curve – new power record annotated (click to enlarge)

Annotated road race heartrate/power plot – race tactics visible in the data. (click to enlarge)

New record amount of time spent in zone 5 in a single race this year.

Road race power map – all the action was on the hill, but the entire race was a suffer-fest (click to enlarge)

TIME TRIAL DATA

Time trial heartrate zones

Time trial heartrate/power plot (click to enlarge)

CRITERIUM DATA

Criterium heartrate zones

Criterium power map (click to enlarge)

Criterium heartrate/power plot – attacks visible (click to enlarge)

Labor Day Omnium Day 2 – Civic Center Criterium

Summary
This was a new course using some of the same roads that were part of the circuit race last year. The course was fast with plenty of opportunities for attack. I thought I was racing well, but ended up missing a split with 18 riders up the road. In the last few laps, 3 riders escaped from the field in pursuit. I ended up 2nd in the field sprint for 23rd in the race. One good thing to take away from the race was that I was happy about the field sprint – hopefully next time it will be for something in the top 20. Here is my lap data:

Labor Day Omnium Criterium
Pro/1/2 - 23rd
Lap	Time	Mi.	AvgPow	MaxPow	HR	MPH
1	1:45	0.7	263	743	149	22.9
2	1:34	0.7	290	775	160	25.6
3	1:31	0.7	316	873	163	26.3
4	1:29	0.7	297	887	175	26.6
5	1:29	0.7	264	734	172	27.3
6	1:31	0.7	268	949	172	26.4
7	2:55	1.4	301	925	179	28.2
8	1:26	0.7	287	805	176	28.9
9	1:26	0.7	293	752	173	28.8
10	1:27	0.7	312	997	176	28.4
11	1:29	0.7	274	906	185	27.4
12	1:25	0.7	276	788	180	28.4
13	1:33	0.7	258	862	171	25.9
14	1:38	0.7	224	785	173	23.9
15	1:36	0.7	263	780	169	24.9
16	1:27	0.7	237	698	179	27.8
17	1:34	0.7	209	703	170	25.5
18	1:35	0.7	242	785	171	25.4
19	1:31	0.7	268	780	174	26.6
20	1:29	0.7	277	799	179	27.2
21	1:27	0.7	304	975	178	27.6
22	1:26	0.7	277	812	185	27.8
23	1:28	0.7	320	1026	181	27.2
24	1:29	0.7	246	577	183	27.1
25	1:33	0.7	242	817	177	25.5
26	1:39	0.7	256	1062	172	23.9
27	1:33	0.7	305	920	183	25.6
28	1:29	0.7	236	1079	182	26.8
29	1:38	0.7	247	954	180	24.2
30	1:23	0.7	359	957	185	28.5
31	1:30	0.7	281	656	188	26.3
32	1:40	0.7	177	564	175	23.8
33	1:43	0.7	192	547	163	23
34	1:36	0.7	196	651	170	24.9
35	1:32	0.7	268	804	174	26.3
36	1:38	0.7	276	990	176	24.5
37	1:38	0.7	214	838	181	24.7
38	1:33	0.7	243	766	175	25.9
39	1:42	0.7	226	740	171	23.6
40	1:30	0.7	212	635	174	26.8
41	1:36	0.7	231	868	169	25.3
42	1:40	0.7	302	739	176	23.7
43	1:29	0.7	343	843	185	26.7
44	1:35	0.7	240	950	185	25.5
45	1:33	0.7	224	569	173	25.7
46	1:33	0.7	269	694	174	25.9
47	1:30	0.7	247	933	178	26.4
48	1:35	0.7	231	854	178	25.5
49	1:38	0.7	267	690	177	24.3
50	1:21	0.7	447	899	187	29.1

I decided to head out 3 hours before the start of the race to ride some of the roads between Clemson and Anderson that I used to train on. I ended up on part of what we called the “sprint loop” because there were so many sprint signs on it (stop ahead, county line, city limits, etc…). I snapped a few pics along the way, and it was one of the best “warm-up” rides of the year, a stroll down memory lane. I went on a couple new roads as well, and there was some sort of hunting going on in the fields on either side of Fants Grove Rd – it was kinda disconcerting to be riding through all the shotgun blasts.

Complete ride stats, part 1

Complete ride stats, part 2

The awkward spot in the Denver Loop where you have to ride on US76

Roads from the Denver Loop

Fants Grove!

The four-way intersection … I would always approach this intersection from the right.

This weekend is named after the small town of La France outside of Anderson … Tour de La France!

Chad Andrews calling the last few laps of the Cat 3 race

Tour de La France

The backside of the Michellin plant that you can see the entrance to off of US 76

Looking backwards from a four-way intersection on the sprint loop. I had never approached this intersection from the road I took today – but I can recognize the back of the sprint signs (stop ahead) just down the road in this picture

Another sprint sign on the sprint loop

Crossing the creek on Fants Grove Rd – the vegetation here has grown quite a bit in the last 15 years.

Approaching the hunters on Fants Grove

The sprint sign at the end of Fants Grove

View looking towards the mountains near the tri-county spot

The Pickens County sprint sign

View looking towards the mountains

A blue heron flew away from the pine tree and swooped in front of me. I already had the phone out to take a picture so I got a picture of him flying in front of me. I never knew that these birds like to roost in pine trees!

This is where I proposed to Kristine 11 years ago. My number this weekend is 11. Awesome.

Looking south from where I proposed to Kristine – you can see a guy standing on a stand up surfboard – never saw that while I was a student at Clemson, but the crew team would row through here.

Two-up 53×11 standing start sprints on this road across the levee

Looking north along Lake Hartwell towards Clemson and the mountains.

Hunters in the field next to Fants Grove

Hunters in the field next to Fants Grove

Beautiful sunset sky looking out the IHOP window

River Gorge 2012

If you are looking for positive happy go lucky race reports, then skip over this one.

Quick summary of results
Time Trial – 46th, 10 seconds slower than last year, disappointing.
Criterium – Big crash with no more free laps. Instead of immediately telling us there were no more free laps so that we could chase, the official ushered us over into the pit to tell us to wait until the end of the race so that we could race two additional laps to sort out placings from 28th place on. I don’t think this got communicated to the results people, though, because as far as I can tell none of the people from my group are listed in the results. Very disappointing.
Road Race – 7th, best finish ever at this race, but disappointing to cramp so badly on the final climb and not be able to fight for the win. Disappointing.
Omnium – 12th. Surprised as my only omnium points came in the road race.

The River Gorge road race is amazing – entering three states (TN, GA, and AL) – and traversing a wild topography consisting of deep canyons and steep mountains. Click to enlarge – annotated power data for the Sand Mountain climb

Road Race details
I’ve included today’s (Sunday) road race details first. We started at the Covenant Transport Center headquarters about 2 miles down the road from the normal start, so this shortened the race from 62 miles to just under 60 miles. I started at the very back. It took until the righthand turn onto the first hill of the day for me to move about halfway up the large pack. The hill was a bit slower pace than previous years, so everybody was still bunched up. I moved up some on the long gradual descent after the first KOM. When we hit the wider road heading towards the Tennesse River, I was able to move close to the front not too far behind the BMC train as they chased an early 6 or 7 man move that I never even saw get away I was so far back in the pack at the beginning.

BMC timed the catch perfectly at the bottom of the Sand Mountain climb. I had slipped a little ways back and started the climb about 20 riders from the front. I chased around a few people who opened gaps and then latched onto a large group led by two BMC riders. I was struggling to maintain a good rhythm but hung on all the way up until the 200 meters to go sign for the KOM. I was really cooked, but fortunately Ryan Sullivan (United Healthcare/706 Project) had also just come off the group, and he and I were able to work together to catch back up to the group (with Ryan doing most of the work as I barely hung on).

A few more riders caught up to us before the long descent back down to the Tennessee River making our group about 15-20 riders with all major teams represented. We were not a harmonious group as there was an attack or two across the top of the mountain, and even one attack at the top of the descent. I covered that one and made it back down to the Tennessee River just behind John Murphy (Kenda Pro Cycling) and one or two other riders. The others in the group caught back up quickly, and nobody seemed like they wanted to work so I attacked hoping to get things goings – but little did I know what a firestorm of attacks would ensue. Attack, chase, counter-attack, chase, counter-attack took us into the medium climb up off the Tennessee River. I looked back expecting to see the rest of our group closing fast, but they were gone. At this point, I knew this was the move but I wasn’t sure I would be able to make it over the climb with the group. I dug as deep as I could and made it.

There was maybe 7 or 8 of us. The attacking didn’t stop as John Murphy really wanted to get away. This ended up dropping two riders from our group to bring us down to 6 riders. John eventually got away twice. Both times Oscar Clark (UHC/706), Shawn Gravois (Globalbike), Ty Magner (BMC) and I worked together to bring him back, although the first time was before the stair-stepper cat 3 climb and Shawn did most of the work to bring John back. The second time, it was all four of us working together while John’s teammate, Robert Sweeting (Kenda) was able to get the free ride with his teammate up the road. We caught John right before the turn into the TVA area on a gradual hill. Immediately, Oscar put in a hard dig taking Shawn, Ty, and Robert with him – whereas John and I went straight out the back. I had bad cramps in my right leg. These cramps subsided fairly quickly so I hit it hard to catch back up to John and together we chased on the descent (hitting 58mph) back down to the TN river before the final climb up Raccoon Mountain.

John joined back up with the other four right as the road pitched up. I, on the other hand, started cramping again so I didn’t catch back on. As the climb steepened, both legs locked up and I had to coast to a stop up the hill, unclip, and wait for the cramps to subside. A few seconds later I was rolling again for another couple minutes. But right as I caught back up to John again, my leg locked up again and I had to coast to a stop again. This time after the cramp subsided, I was able to pick up the pace to catch and pass John. I thought for sure I had 5th place locked up, but 500 meters before the finish Tanner Putt (BMC) caught and passed me. A few seconds later Jake Rytlewski (Astella/ABD) came by, too. Jimmy Schurmann (Globalbike) was closing in fast when I hit the 200 meters to go sign. Fortunately, the grade had lessened enough that I was able to stand up and hit it hard to stay just in front of him to finish 7th.

In the group ahead, Oscar took the win, followed by Robert and Ty. Shawn was fourth, although he should some award for all the work he did on the step climb to bring back John the first time.

Road race heartrate summary

Annotated heartrate power data – click to enlarge

Time trial details
This year’s Pro/1/2 field was one of the best ever at River Gorge, which has always had a strong field. This year there were more than 60 pros and cat 1s plus an additional 30-40 cat 2s. I knew that I had no shot of getting into the top 10 in the time trial for omnium points, so technically it might make more sense for me to soft pedal the time trial to save up for the criterium. But what would be the fun in that? Plus, how could I compare to previous years?

River Gorge time trial power map – click to enlarge.

So I got a good warm-up in riding to the start with my teammate Borris. We headed up to the top of Raccoon Mountain via the finishing climb of the road race at a nice easy pace. Packet pick-up, several back and forths across the part of the reservoir dam not being used for the TT course, and it was time for me to go. I started out easier than last year, but then hit it hard on the short climb. My power average ended up being about 5 watts lower than last year (358 watts vs 363 watts), and my speed was about 1/2 mile hour slower (10 seconds slower). Last year I raced Mercx style with no TT equipment, whereas this year I raced with clip-on tt bars, an aero helmet, and a front trispoke wheel. I can’t help but think that the extra baggage slowed me down more than it sped me up. Definitely going to race this time trial Mercx style next year for another comparison.

Criterium details
You know what, this race was so disappointing I don’t really want to relive it by writing it up. Instead, I’ll just say that I need to work on paying a little closer attention to when the free laps end before the start of the race. I thought it was 5 to go, but apparently they had announced 8 to go. I got caught up in a crash with 6 to go and thought we had one more lap to get back into the race. I have included the annotated heartrate data below.

Downtown Chattanooga heartrate summary

Annotated heartrate plot. Speed data is spiky from bad satellite signal. Click to enlarge.

Annotated power map

Warm-up map with all three venues annotated. Click to enlarge.

GCGP Day 4 – Covington Criterium – 3rd place

GCGP Day 4 – Downtown Covington Criterium Podium – L-R Dan Holt (Team Type 1), Oscar Clark (UHC/707), Brian Toone (Tria p/b DonohooAuto.com and Infinity Med-i-spa)

It worked so well yesterday, I thought I would try it again. So as soon as the chief official said “riders ready” – the secret codeword for “go” in crits, I clipped in and attacked hard – leading most of the first lap. This strung out the field with a small separation, but shortly through the second lap the field came back together. Oscar Clark (United Health Care / 707) rocketed off the front with a Lifetime Fitness rider. They got a small gap, but one lap later Dave Gearheart (Team Mission Soruce) drilled it hard on backside of the course through the tricky schoolyard turn and up the hill towards the start/finish turns. Dave had closed a significant portion of the gap, but when he pulled over to rest, none of the next couple riders pulled through so I immediately jumped hard to finish the bridge to the leaders.

At this point the three of us were off and flying. Oscar was drilling it so hard that I could barely hold his wheel and the Lifetime rider came off after a couple laps. We got into somewhat of a rotation where Oscar pulled maybe 90% of a lap, and I would pull 10%. Even so, I was way above threshold. My heartrate was well above my LT heartrate of 180 for the first 10 minutes of our break – eventually settling down to my threshold heartrate of 180 for the 35 minutes it took us to lap the field.

Before lapping the field, though, I got to witness one of the best displays of sacrificial teamwork I’ve seen in a while. Dan Holt (Team Type I) attacked to bridge to us. Oscar’s teammate, Oneal Samuels (UHC/707), covered the move forcing Dan to do the majority of the work to make the bridge up to us. Once there, Dan was outnumbered by the two UHC riders so he wouldn’t commit to the break (especially after having to go so hard to catch Oscar and me). Oneal recognized what was going on so he went to the front and drilled it super hard for a couple laps and then peeled off – knowing that Dan would work with Oscar and me, but not if he was outnumbered. Sure enough, Dan fully committed to the break, and the one-two punch of Dan and Oscar meant that it really was all I could do to hang on. Eventually, our pace started to slow a tiny fraction and I was able to pull on the short uphill section before the course’s one righthand turn.

I was very thankful once we lapped the field and initially tried to hold Dan’s wheel in the group. Once I had rested for a few laps, I decided to move farther up and mark Oscar. Then a couple riders slipped off the front and started to unlap themselves (Buddy Spafford – Florida Velo and Claudio Arone – EBP Racing). I was fighting off some cramps by this point in the race having already gone through TWO bottles and trying to figure out when was a good time to retrieve my third bottle from my back pocket. Fortunately, Oscar’s team was committed to chasing back Buddy and Claudio. Still, I knew that it was also in my best interest if we stayed away so whenever the pace really slowed down if somebody was interfering with the UHC train, then I would roll through and try to pick the pace back up again. I think this only happened a couple times as the UHC riders were committed to drilling it at the front.

With five laps to go, I cramped hard and stopped pedaling drifting all the way back to the pack of the field. Fortunately, my cramp subsided just as the pace slowed down. So I got to rest for nearly two laps as our pace wasn’t super fast with 4 to go or 3 to go. With 2 to go, it was full gas again and fortunately I didn’t cramp again until the finishing sprint. So I sat up happy to take third. Meanwhile, in the sprint, Team Type 1 and UHC had competing leadout trains with Oscar edging out Dan for the win.

Moon and church – our race started at 8:30, lasted an hour and a half, and this was the night scene after the race.
Five days of racing, car is getting messy, text annotates the tile I got for third place