Race at the Lakes - Round 3

This morning when I woke up and I saw the weather radar, there was absolutely no chance that I wouldn’t be racing today. I like having a little diversity and bad weather always leads to a more selective field. The only question for me was would I ride my bike over to the race or drive myself instead? I made my decision quickly when the rain started coming down around 8:00 this morning. I decided to opt for the warm and dry car ride instead of the bike ride over. I recalled seeing a picnic shelter that I could go set up shop in and stay warm and dry and that seemed a lot better to me than riding in the cold rain. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that there was no chance in hell that we would stay dry during the race, I just figured why get wet any sooner than absolutely necessary.

The Cat 4 field was expectedly smaller than the previous two weeks races when the weather was a bit nicer. I would estimate that maybe we had about 25 guys in the field which I thought for such lousy conditions really wasn’t too bad. Joining me from Stark Velo today were Tim, Matt, Marshall and Josh.

This was a weird race today for some reason as it just didn’t seem to play out the way they typically do. Typically it’s a sit and sprint situation with one large field. Today this race ended breaking up more often than Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee. It all started off with Matt taking a solo flier early into the race, maybe around lap 3 or 4. He did a great job opening up a small gap but after a lap, he was back in the field. Summit did a great job of immediately countering Matt’s move. They didn’t get far but once we were all back together I noticed that these two small efforts split the field in several groups. What once was a group of 25 was now a small select group of 10. Nice, if this could work I’d be looking at a top 10 finish for sure! We managed to stay clear for several more laps but I don’t know whether it was guys killing themselves to win primes or what but there was never a consistent tempo that would have been helpful to keep us clear. We were soon joined by about 4 or 5 other guys who managed to bridge back up to us. I was happy to see that two of them were Tim and Josh because I knew by this time that I just didn’t have the legs for the race today and I felt bad not being able to help Matt out. Having two additional teammates who could help cover any dangerous moves meant I could almost just concentrate on getting myself to the finish line as I was struggling just to stay with this lead group. I don’t know how I go from feeling so strong one day to feeling horrible the next but I just never felt good in the race. Needless to say I had nothing left in the tank so when the tempo got really hot with one lap to go; I lost contact and rode in solo to finish up another mediocre performance for ‘08. Matt was the best placed Velo rider in 6th place with Josh and Tim finishing up just in front of me. I think Team Spin won today’s round but there’s one more opportunity for Stark Velo to pull out a win or podium at next weeks event.

A look at the data afterwards reveals that the race was much harder than I had perceived it being during the race.

Duration: 51:19
Work: 774 kJ
TSS: 99.5 (intensity factor 1.079)
Norm Power: 302
VI: 1.2
Distance: 19.81 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 883 252 watts
Heart rate: 101 183 168 bpm
Cadence: 29 141 100 rpm
Speed: 0 32.8 23.1 mph
Pace 1:50 0:00 2:36 min/mi
Hub Torque: 0 342 76 lb-in
Crank Torque: 0 1296 213 lb-in