Corsicana Stage Race - Riding for the team, TT success, and an inability to turn my bicycle.

With a bit of a shakeup in the racing calendar this year, the Corsicana stage race was the first stage race of the year. It was also the first big P12 instead of Cat 2 only race I have done this year. I love stage races, and the way it opened with a TT meant you got to see exactly how everyone was riding before moving on to the other races.

I used to not like time trials, it seems kinda natural being a small lightweight guy that I shouldn't be good at them. I took that for granted and just didn't like them. At one point though I decided to see how I could do if I worked on improving them and improve I did. A large part of it is that I sucked at time trials because I wasn't actually anything that resembled fit before, having fitness helps a lot. I also worked on my position and other stuff to improve my time trialing and wrote about it a while back. I became a decent TT rider. Now I really look forward to and enjoy time trials. It is the one race discipline there is that is almost no tactics all about your preparation. Over the off-season as part of my preperation for stage races and time trials I had my teammate, and bike fit expert, David Wenger work on my bike fit. I have been changing saddles and such on the TT bike I bought last year ever since I got it, and always changing something. I decided it would best to have the best person I know to look at it, get it dialed and let it be. Something I'm really bad at with bike fits, something about always feeling like maybe it could be a bit better. So I went and worked with Dave, and focussed on the whole thing. We widened my elbows allowing to to shrug my shoulders more, worked on my posture on the bike and moved the saddle up and forward a bit. I was super excited about it, but riding TT bikes is rarely fun on the road so I just didn't. I rode it once the next week and then broke it out maybe 2 other times up until the week before Corsicana. I was nervous about it, took it out on the Tuesday before the race and the bike just didn't feel right at all. When I got home I measured everything compared against measurements taken when I got the fit and found that the seat post had slipped a bit. Carbon paste and a torque wrench fixed that, and when I spun on friday I felt great and pumped again.

The TT at Corsicana is a net downhill ~5 mile race. Last year I did the course in 9:51 IIRC. I hit the start line thinking about trying to do 270w, but mainly just focused on not blowing up the first 3 minutes and then going hard. I had spent all of my spin out friday and most of my warmup working on posturing on the bike in order to ensure I could get into the right position with the helmet and everything. When I heard go I took off sprinting and settled into the aerobars as soon as I got on top of the gear. ~20seconds in, I took a look at the power meter as saw something like 450w.... don't blow up. Pulled it back and kept going. Racing a short TT like the one at Corsicana is funny, I never really settle in. That race adrenaline, crazy go hard feeling stuck with my the whole way. Everytime I would look down at the powermeter I would pull things back a hair so as to not blow up. At one point, straining my eyeballs to see the road while keeping my head down I though I saw a tent up near the top of the hill and started pushing harder. It wasn't a tent, just a mirage caused my the blurry double vision of seeing half your eyelid while going hard. Eventually I did see 1k to go and picked it up a bit. Pushed hard over the last hill and crossed the line thinking I had done pretty well but could have gone maybe a hair harder. Better that than blowing up in short effort like that.  When I looked at the file I saw that I had gone faster than last year and done something very surprising, I matched the effort from the Joe Martin uphill road bike TT last year on a net downhill course on my TT bike. My time was good for 14th/71 which I was very happy with. Even more important is that my teammate Grant had destroyed the race, finished just under a minute faster than me and 23 seconds faster than 2nd place.

Shrugging shoulders and straining eyeballs to go fast.

Next up was a eight corner, figure eight night crit with lots of bricks and some very rough ones. I was looking to race my bike. With Grant in the lead and myself in 14th it would have been great if I could have eaten up some of the bonus seconds on offer, but in order to do that I would have had to not sucked and ridden A+. Crits are not my favorite races generally, partially because I don't do well racing them. That part of my brain that doesn't like crashing and values my life functions too well. For the same reason I used to chicken out of riding off ramps, I don't do well with fast corners and sprint finishes. This is a short coming I have been working on, but it is very much there, and came out to haunt me on this night, but really the crit went wrong for me before the start. While warming up, riding alongside the crit course slowly on a dark street I rode into a massive pothole, flatted my front tubie and flipped over the bars. I got a wheel from a teammate, let some air out to accomodate for my lack of size, and rolled straight over to the start line. Front wheel now sporting carbon only pads on aluminum rims on a wheel and tire I had not ridden further than the block to the start line. Great setup for confidence rolling into a hard crit on a demading course with wet brick corners that you had just watched at least 10 people slide out on. I proceeded to ride myself straight out the back in three laps. I spent 5 or 6 laps off the back before being pulled. Thanks to some bobble of the rules by officials I then had 37 minutes added to my time (it seems as the though the time left in the race was added to the winners times to get my time for the stage). Fortunately, Grant doesn't suck at Crits he rode really freaking hard since both myself and Jake my other teammate in the race got dropped, he pulled back splits and rode like the monster he is to maintain his 1st overall by 20seconds over 2nd and third, both of which were on the same team. 

RR time. Always good to be in the lead as a team, but it meant it was time to ride hard to protect Grant. We did this in perhaps not the brightest way, but spoiler alert, were successful. Start of the race goal was to cover moves and not do anything, and try to keep the group going at some speed when they weren't. I did a lot of pulling of the group at 22-25 mph early on. This wasn't the brightest move, I ended up getting tired chased some moves down and then found myself mid pack when attacks that mattered started going. A strong group ended up forming on our 2nd lap that had one of the guys 20 seconds down. Thankfully for us, other teams GC interests were at stake and so people rode hard up front to keep the gap pretty close, while I was stuck floudering around mid pack trying to get up front to do some work. I had a number of riders inform me that Grant was putting in work himself to pull it back and I should do something about it. I was really trying to move up, I was but when there is 14 feet of pavement and guys 5-6 abreast it can be hard to move up. Eventually we hit the crosswind section leading to the start/finish on the third lap I saw daylight and high tailed it to the front. The gap had already been starting to shrink to the group ahead and so when I got up, I just pulled as hard as I could until I couldn't anymore, fell back to 2nd or third wheel and then took over again. Right around the start of the 4th lap we caught the group. It was hard. By my count the biggest the gap was was about a minute, when I got to the front it was 45 seconds and when I fell back into the pack it was 10-15 seconds and people were starting to fire off early counter attacks. I managed to stay near the front for most of that last lap. Gave grant some of my super calorie bottle (by my math I have managed to put 800 calories into one water bottle, so that when I'm terrified of eating I can still get it in), pulled back some small splits and then drifted back further again. On that last lap in the crosswind section I had pulled on before fireworks started to go again as people hoped to get a little split leading into the finish. Succeed they did. Thankfully, Grant was in it. Lost some bonus seconds, but took 5th on the day and won the overall. I finished in the field for the first time in a P12 race.

All in all a good weekend, but I really need to get back into a groove for crits. That was the difference between in the money and dead last on GC for me, I'm particularly bad and rusty right now. I bailed on a corner and rode through the grass at the Driveway 2 weeks ago, riding myself out of the winning break. This most recent driveway with some faster corners seemed to help some, but I'm simply not trusting my tires to adhere to the pavement ever since skidding across the road on Red Bud during a training ride in November. Suppose the only way to build that back is to go rail some corners on purpose, and maybe grow a pair.

 

Walburg - The Hell of Texas. (18th and dropped twice)

Walburg is always hard. It has a reputation for being a windy race with echelon's across the road and having generally nasty weather wise. This year was not much different. It was warmer on the start and throughout the race than usual and didn't rain, that was nice. It was however, very windy.

Wind was out of the south at ~30kmh on the start line. Loop started with 20k of tail cross/ tail wind, then 4k of dead on head wind, followed by 10k of HARD crosswinds, and then about 5k of sheltered small rolling hills, on a twisty small road that finishes with a hill and the finish line not far past it.

First wind in the crosswind I put myself in the front echelon, right Michael Jones's wheel (a guy I know to be a very very solid motor). Thankfully Michael and I know each other well and when I saw the conditions were perfect, I yelled at him to GO and he went. Winning break formed 1hr into the race. There were ~8 of us and we were throttling it. Differences in fitness/fatigue seemed to become apparent quickly. We were not working fluidly, guys couldn't pull through or wouldn't leaving constant opening and closing gaps in the echelon. I decided I would just fill the first gap I saw and not get stuck behind someone popping off our group.  Eventually decided I needed to not take another pull and instead of filling the first gap I saw drifted back to a longer rest. A gap opened, some people sprinted to close it and the guy on the back gave 0 response. I moved up to try and drag myself back up. I pulled hard, got closer, punched it to try and get in the wheel. Guy who I was sheltering jumped past me, moved over enough to nearly take out my wheel and said something to me (not really sure what, something about not being able to work I think). I got dropped by the winning break and fell back to chase 1


When the chase group caught me I slotted right in and started working. We were working pretty fluidly and hard, making gains on the leaders. Group slowed it down and smoothed it out as people we got ready for a longer chase. Gap grew a bit then settled at about 1:15 for the next hour. As it became apparent that people were tiring, some started skipping pulls and the gap was staying steady, I started to think about how to get up to the leaders. I started pulling longer, and pulling the pace up a hint on each pull, and also started making note of who to be next to if I wanted to drop some dead weight and make a hard push for a catch on the last lap crosswind. Unfortunately, I had made a big error that often plagues me, I didn't eat enough (one of the big two things that hold me back in races, I was good on the positioning that usually does me in today) . I ate one gel and drank half a bottle all day). As we hit the tailwind section of the course I started to fade, people started to pull harder and there was less draft. All bad. I got popped by a little surge while trying to get back on after a pull and rode in solo. My back also started to seize up from two hours of pushing it in the drops.

I ultimately I finished ahead of the 'field' (60ish person field with about 20 DNF's... did I mention it was hard?). 18th. Top 20 is always respectable but I feel like I could have been top 5 if I had filled gaps like I had been earlier and ate food. I'm disappointed because I feel I could have done better, my fitness is good. I am satisfied with progress, this is a race in which I got dropped by the main field 1/3 of the way through last year DNF to 18th is definitely an improvement. It is also worth noting, that while I am pretty slippery. Super windy races tend to not be the domain of guys as light and small as me. Kinda a petty excuse, good amateur bike racers are good on flat roads too, but this is kinda the opposite of ideal terrain for me. So doing even moderately ok in this type of race is pretty good for me.

All that said: I REALLY need to figure out how to eat in races. I come in with a plan to do so, but when the race is on all day it is hard cause I need to breath, and handle the bike in a crosswind. I need to make it happen.

Numbers for those who like them:
Race time: 3:31:36
Average Speed: 35.7 kmh (22.1 mph)
NP: 199w
Average power: 180w
Work: ~2300kJ
Average HR: 166bpm

State RR 2014, Cat 2

First one of these in a while.

I was really excited for this race, the only Cat 2 only road race in the fall road race season. Fitness and training had been on a general upwards trend since the beginning of August. I was hitting targets, personal bests and could tell out at the Driveway every Thursday. I was racing stronger with stronger guys, in moves I didn't previously belong in. All positive indicators.

This course is just a good hard course, lots of rollers with 5 very distinct and challenging hills and small rollers and fast downhills in between, as well as some false flat before the finish. We were racing 99 miles, 3 laps with ~60 starters. Last year I was 2nd, but in the Cat 3's with only 66 miles. It was going to play out and work out differently than last year.

I was looking forward to using all the various things I had learned in races this year to use and to hopefully get a result (the latter didn't happen but I'm happier with the former than I have in most other races this year). That meant: chilling out more, eating and drinking more, not trying to do everything on my own. With the length of this race all of these would be extra important.

First lap I saw a trio of a ABM1 rider, Jacob Schofield of Bicycles Heaven, and a RBM ride up the left side of the road and take off. My immediate reaction, both from racing hard early recently in support of our strong guys in 1/2 fieds and cat 3 race experience was "these are pretty strong guys, I should go with it". But I put a lid on that quickly, being aware of the moment, watched them ride away and ultimately pull out a gap of about 2 minutes while the group rode pretty 'tranquilo'. On our way back down towards the start finish straight the pace started to pick up, and I made sure to be up front before the right turn which often has some harsh cross winds, but they were not to be found today. I ate some food, drank a little over half a bottle. Times were good.

Rolling into the second lap, my stumoch hadn't settled, not from food but nerves. I felt a nervousness in the field of some sort, and made sure to have a spot to get out in case any of the people I had noted as particularly dangerous made a move. On the last climb on the way out I saw Paul Carty move up the left, grabbed his wheel just in time for him to jump up the side. Coming over the top we had. a group of about 8 guys, all of whom looked at each other: 'Who wants to ride??' no one. Came back as quickly as it went out. This awakened the beast though. Attacks started flying full fledged, and it was in this moment that I played my hand a little bit too deftly. Both big climbs on the way in, I put in pretty hard digs on. Groups formed, and again no work pulled back. A big part of the problem, I think, was when and where I attacked. Everyone has to work hard to follow the attacks on hills, no one wants to work and the downhills after them played into the hands of the field. You really needed to push over the top and keep the throttle down. I could have used a little more discretion in my efforts, but I just had this gut feeling that the group could perhaps shatter. A gut feeling that was wrong apparently.

Third lap, I rolled into feeling hot. I needed a bottle of water to cool myself down. I didn't have great positioning rolling through the feed zone had to really slow down to grap the bottle and meanwhile the front had hit the hammer. I got my bottle and took off to catch up. Coming from being a little bit down, hot, and going straight into chase mode hurt. It was only a couple minutes at threshold, but at the wrong time. From that moment on I felt pretty blown. Over the big hills back out I made sure I was up front and sag climbed them. Hoping for no moves to go. None did on the hills, but on the way out a ABM1 rider took off solo and not too long later TC Porterfield put in a move and was joined by one other to get across. It was beautifully timed, we were slowing content with the on the road situation and no one wanted to chase down this duo... but they gained ground to make a trio quickly. I saw it go, thought it was dangerous and tried to get some leash for myself and another, no luck and I didn't have the legs to go it alone. Michael Dawdy started trying to make moves to go across and I went with those as best as I could. I was feeling another kick coming on, either that or everyone else was also slowing. Probably both.

When we started to head back into town I checked my sensations and thoughts about them and was essentially telling myself 'yes your legs are pretty jacked, but everyone is jacked. Race smart, race hard. You can still get something. I can't even remember where but Dawdy finally got away with 2 others.  Over the first climb on the way back I positioned myself up front and fell back a little but not too much. I put myself in a position where I wasn't throwing myself into the red, but was also capable of making sure nothing else went away without me. 2nd climb I held well until the steepest section had to make up just a bit of ground. No steep hills from there... golden. Legs were in a weird state were short sharp accelerations felt fine, but sustained efforts were terrible. It meant I could at least jump onto moves. Numbers in our field had significantly dwindled, the group was just about 20 strong. Then there were the 6 up the road. The six presented a problem, most of those left had either teammates up the road or were individuals. No cohesion in work to get things back. Somewhat guilty, but generally the group just attacked itself. Instead of putting in an organized chase, we attacked and slowed down. We got very close to catching the group and then people stopped working.

We hit a small rise, someone put in another one of those prolonged digs that hurt me so much and I was out the back of our little group. Game over. I rode it in from there, no one passed me I didn't see a person. Finished 28th. It wasn't a great race, but it had some high points. I pushed myself hard, could have raced harder.

Numbers: NP 200w, AP 146w, 23 'matches' of efforts greater than 2kJ over threshold for 83kj total in matches, 1010 kJ of W' Work, 2282kJ, 306 TSS, TISS Aerobicity 95%, 75% of W' used.

A real blog title, and some races I didn't want to relive through blog posts

Since I started chronicling my cycling adventures, I have struggled with a good blog title. I've changed it a number of times and it has never been particularly creative. I think I finally have a good one, it even has a story. After the most recent thursday night Driveway Series race, my teammate Ian Dille semi-jokingly remarked that he thinks he needs faster wheels for the Driveway. I immediately asked if he was using latex tubes to which he said something along the lines of, 'I guess I should'. And I remarked without hesitation 'That's 6 watts.' Everyone around kinda chuckled, and my teammate Jake noted "That's gonna be on your tombstone bro. Underneath your name it's gonna say 'That's 6 watts.'" The statement accentuates both my passion for cycling (some might call it an obsession), and care for the technical intricacies of the sport. Put simply, I'm a cycling nerd. In a sport which tends to involve a lot of romanticism, this can often make me 'that guy (freak) who likes numbers'. Thus, my blog title. Very little romanticism here.

About that bike racing stuff: I haven't stopped doing it I just haven't written a blog post about it all yet. Sharing and writing blog posts about races is a fun and exciting experience when everything goes well. Who doesn't want to share with the world about how awesome they are? I have been decidedly un-awesome early on this season. Through a combo of tactical blunders, illness, flat tires, and simply not being fit enough, I have been able to get none of the results I have wanted yet this year (although it is looking up). Since my last post I have raced at Fayetteville, Corsicana, and Joe Martin. I'll break each one down very briefly.

Fayetteville Stage Race (Texas)
I went into the this one really excited to do it for the first time. One of Texas' premiere stage race, with a nice long TT and two hard road races. Traditionally, in the 2's at least, decided by the TT. Something I tend to be good at. This year it was very rainy affair (as were most of the spring races), and with rain at Fayetteville come flats. I raced in the 2/3, and was hoping to get my first top result (spoiler alert, that didn't happen). We (Super Squadra) started with 4 guys in the race, in the first 10 miles of the race Alec and Connor flatted out leaving Jake and myself in the race. It changed plans quite a bit. Coming into our last lap of the race, Jake and I were talking about plans for the finale when 2 bikes in front of us someone went down for no reason (grabbed a fist full of brakes when brakes where unnecessary on a very slick turn). I went left and Jake went right. I chased like hell and was one of the very few to make it back to the group. Jake apparently ran into the grass and a fence and never made it back. I was pretty tanked after chasing back on and just hunk onto the field for the last lap, moved up a bit to make sure gaps didn't open on the finishing section and came in 18th. There was a time trial later that day which I was looking forward to, test of pure fitness and skill against the clock. I forgot about another important factor in this TT, fatigue. I had lots of it, I fell 20w (230w, instead of 250w) short of the power I had planned on as a target. When you start the TT and have no bliss period, just pain, you know it will be long.I finished 21st on the day, well behind where I wanted to be, and maintained 18th. My goals then readjusted, finish the next day, aim for top 15. That didn't happen, third race in 24 hours and I simply had no legs left. We turned left into a tailwind and people hit the accelerator in our extremely diminished group (20 guys, maybe) and I was off the back for a 4th time, and not coming back. I was absolutely tanked, and cold (it was raining).

Corsiscana
After Fayetteville, I got sick (perhaps had to do with my bad performance). Corsicana came as I was starting to swing up from that. On the drive up there, Dave noted that I still sounded awful and should take the TT and crit easy the first day so I could be strong the second day (road race which would most likely decide the overall). I did just that on the TT, just shy of 10 minute TT at just under 20 minute power. Still got a decent time though landing me 19th in the P12 which made me very happy.

Going into the crit (second of three stages) I had an assortment of technical bike issues, turned out my derailleur cable was fraying in the shifter (took it all apart when I got home), and at one point hit a pothole on course which jarred my wheel lose and significantly rubbed my brake (I realized this was happening after the race when I could hear it, when I opened my brake my power went down 30w at the same speed . At one point my shifter cassette combo had worked like a 14-21 seven speed cassette got up to a 13-23 before the race started.  Was nervous about it all race but never caused problems. My technical abilities did. I was constantly moving up when it was hard because I kept losing spaces when i should have been moving up (when it was easy). Got stuck behind the same guy that kept opening gaps. It was a mess. Supposedly I finished 8 seconds behind the field, I thought that was BS as there was no gaps I could see, but that was the GC finding. I sat in the same place rolling into the RR with teammates in 4th and 6th.

Then the road race, it was super windy. Was going to be a hard race, which WOULD split up. I was as careful as I know how to be with position and when things started to get really hard into the headwind I was sitting about 10th wheel right at the end of the echelon on the front. Then I saw Grant, up ahead of me, fall back with a flat. He was sitting 4th overall so I automatically peeled off to give him my wheel. Gave him my wheel told him to take off and that I would catch up.  I got a wheel from the wheel truck which was adequate to get me home but not to seriously try and race on (woo hoo armadillo tires and thornproof tubes, that's not six watts. More like 30.). I really wanted to finish and rode a solid tempo for another lap (out of 4) rolling through the second time I was 25 minutes off the field/leaders though. I was on pace to be lapped on a 21 mile loop. Which besides being embarrassing would have left me as a DNF due to time cut anyways. I packed it in, disappointing that I couldn't have done more in the RR and it played out the way it did, but happy with what I was able to do in the earlier races despite some adversity.

Joe Martin Stage Race
At the beginning of the year, I had outlined this as one of my big races of the year. Coming into it, I knew I wasn't where I had wanted to be fitness wise (power not high enough for weight), but hopeful about what I could do. In the first 2.5 mile uphill TT, I hit a personal best power for 10 minutes, but weight has also gone up a lot since March. Power up, weight up more. Not the time I had hoped for here (10:18 instead of the 9:30 I had been hoping for at one point). The next stage was a 110 mile road race with a long climb coming from mile 73 to 84 with multiple ramps with flat sections in between. 6%... flat... 6%.... flat. I positioned myself well throughout the early section of the stage, ate, drank. All things I have been historically bad at and have cost me races, I did them because that wasn't going to be why I failed on this big stage. I made it over the early rises feeling pretty confident, strong within the group. Just before we hit the big climb things started to go wrong though. We had turned into a tailwind and were on a wide highway with no shade on a warm day. After the first two rises on the climb I was done, cooked. I went back from group to group to group. I simply had nothing left in my legs, felt hot. I had to stop up top as my stoaoch just seized up, my stomach had shut down, hamstrings were cramping. After a couple minutes I started soft pedalling and then finally could push the pedals after about 20 minutes. I barely made time cut, finishing over 30 minutes back. I couldn't come back from it the next day either, despite my best intentions, eating, drinking ect.... I just flopped. I had nothing from the go and got dropped on the first hill.

I learned a lot from Joe Martin, I positioned myself well did all that right, but I think hydration coming into the weekend was off. Since starting at Starbucks, I have not drank as much water. Partially because of the job, we aren't allowed to have drinks on the floor and work was where I drank the most at my previous job. I think this sort of chronic dehydration coming into the race lead to both my overheating and bonking (can't store glycogen without water!!!). In addition, I simply don't think I had enough miles/hours in the legs in the couple of month previous to handle the hard back to back to back days. I can correct for both of these issues and come back stronger.

Lago Vista: Bipolar weather and more tactical errors

Lago Vista, as everyone calls it, or "La Primavera" as it has been listed on the TXBRA calendar since I started racing (a source of confusion for me when I first started riding, and for some others I'm sure), is another one of Texas' oldest races. On Saturday, there was a piece of paper on display listing the winners since the early 90's. It is also the only road race on the Texas calendar which I have competed in three times now. I first competed in the juniors race in 2010, half a year after I had started racing. I recall being severly over dressed and dying halfway through that race. A year later, I also race at Lago Vista, that year both days. I did the juniors race on Saturday, where I lasted only a lap. It was 35 degrees outside, a quarter of a lap in it started pouring rain on us, and eventually that turned into hail. Coming down the steep fast descent I recall fearing for my life and I pulled out, frozen to the bone after one lap. The next day I overslept my alarm and called the promoter to get switched into the 34 field from the 45 field. I lasted as many laps as the 45 race would have been, which I considered a success at the time. Fun times.... but back to this year.

Course
Lago Vista is one of only two races on the TXBRA calendar that give an advantage to lightweights, like myself. Both Saturday and Sunday use the same 5.5 mile loop out in Lago Vista with the highest point being , one day is clockwise, the other counter clockwise. Going clockwise, as we did provides a much steadier climb and a much faster, twistier descent. Going clockwise you have a short downhill to a right hand turn from the start/finish line, then 2km @ 3% average grade, after which you get another 3km of rolling terrain. After this there are two right hand turns and the rest of the course goes mostly downhill, with multiple steep pitches hitting 14-15% along the way, and a couple little risers as well. Running into the start finish there is a fast downhill, and a steep upwards pitch. Sunday is exactly backwards, a number of steep sharp pitches on the way out and then a steady fast descent back down.

Saturday
Lago was going to be different from the last couple of races I had done, in that we were starting with only 2 guys. Kevin would be racing with the big boys in the P12 and Grant was in college station crushing souls at his collegiate race weekend. This left Alec and I, and naturally changed our tactics a bit. We no longer had strength in numbers and both needed to race to put ourselves into positions to win, Alec is great at positioning and timing in a sprint, so if it came down to a sprint he would be the guy to go.Me being a skinny rail, and having a skillset more suited to a breakaway would try to get into a break that would get away.

On the start line, Dark horse racing had 9 guys, all on the front as they had just finished posing for a nice team picture. As soon as we hit the first pitch two of their guys went up the road, two others went with and then the collect mass of darkhorse guys sat up, effectively creating a huge road block. The break took time out of us very very quickly. By the end of the first climb, I think they had a minute. I knew based on the make up of the group, with the sheer force of numbers darkhorse had in our race that the move was a dangerous one. I got myself up front to watch for things that would go. On the descent, however, I found myself quickly losing places. I'm not the best bike handler or descender, but even more so I don't trust others to do it well. I move backwards very quickly as I avoided getting close to people while going 50mph downhill. Each time I was able to get back up front before turning onto the climb again. During our 4th of 11 laps, I was sitting top 15 or so when we hit the base of the steady climb. This time it really strung out, we were starting to hit it hard to try and pull back the break. At times I could see the break for brief periods of time. When we hit the flat rolling section Kevin Kimbell of Blur racing was a little ways of the front, I looked around saw people were gassed and sensed the opportunity for a bridge. I put in a dig and quickly made it across. I sat on Kevin's wheel for a second and then pulled through to try and lift the pace and get us up to the leader. I'm not exactly sure how long I spent on the front other than "too long at too high of an effort." I was making headway on the group ahead quickly and then boom... Mason Quintana and Carla Villareal bolted past me. Kevin was quick to jump on their wheel... but I didn't have enough at that moment left for a hard jump. I tried but did not grap the wheel. I sat down and kept digging. Maybe I could claw my way back onto their wheel, but the power was starting to fade.... but I was still making headway on the break. Keep digging. I look over my shoulder and see the field gaining on me, I'm gaining on the break... look over again. It looked like the field was gaining on me faster than me on the break, I decided to sit up.

Bad move. As soon as I sat up the whole field did two, and the break never came back. My mistake here was putting in so much effort that I had no jump left. I should have pulled off earlier, worked with Kevin and kept and eye on activity behind us so I could have reacted to the move. If I had done less work, I would have made the break of the day... but I hadn't. Back in the field I sat in, I still had something left in the tank, and was going to need to use it at some time if I wanted to get back into that lead move. A half lap later, near the start finish I heard the moto say that the lead group had 2 minutes on us. On the steady climb, we hit it at a decent effort but not hard enough, I decided to go again. I got off and looked back, no reaction at all from the field. I decided to keep going, see what kind of headway I could make and perhaps someone else would decide to come play. A couple minutes later I looked over my shoulder and the field was out of sight. At this point I became antiquated with pain in my legs, and kept an eye on the power meter to make sure I didn't over cook anything, still lots of racing to be done, I kept it pegged at 260w, 2 minutes was going to take a while to bridge. When I hit the highest point I got a time report from the moto: 1 minute to each group. Making progress, and quicker than I had expected to. I decided that for the descent the best approach would be to go fast, but not try and make up any gaps. I wanted to keep those gaps steady, save a little bit of energy if I could and pull it back when we got back to the uphill where I had an advantage. Unfortunately, I eased off too much. When I hit to bottom it was 30 seconds back and 1:15 up the road. I didn't think I had the legs left for another 1.5 laps (looking at 20+ minutes) of bridge attempt. I kept it threshold as I hit the climb again but was caught by the field. Time to sit in till other people came out to play again.

Somewhere along the lines I had either used too much energy or not taken on enough food. I was fading fast. (probably the latter, as I'm getting better with food but still have a long ways to go. Not very comfortable taking in food on the group when going hard, like when we were climbing, or on flying fast descents) I sank back towards the back of the field. And the next couple laps were a blur, at 3 laps to go there was a split in the field and I was on the wrong side of it. Now racing for something like 25th, not something I was happy with. at 2 to go, I decided I needed to either get the two groups to come back together or to get across to the other group. I put in a 'all or nothing' type of effort. Trying to get every last ounce out of my legs and hopefully get across. The legs died far, far to quickly and I was done at that point. I finished up the lap and then my race was over.

Sunday
While Saturday was a gorgeous, sunny day with 80 degree temperatures, Sunday was 36 with scattered rain on the start line. On the way up to the race I had watched the temperature fall from 72 to 45, pretty incredible. I had seen a race start and finish with many, many people pulling out due to ttemperature issues (cold everything, shivering, inability to brake or shift). I lined up in a mish mash of winter gear, trying to stay away from flappy raing jackets while keeping myself warm and dry. Clothing all set to go, it was time to race. They shortened our race a whole lap due to the conditions (which I thought was really numb, make the race significantly shorter or don't). Anyways, without further ado we took off. The first lap was (thankfully) pretty tame, giving us all a lap to warm up, and for many to take off rain jackets once they had.

The next lap is when racing started to really happen. I saw Brendan Sharpe, a strong climber roll off the front along with three others (a dark horse and a DNA racing guy) on the steepest pitch of the day. I was positioned poorly, I could see things happening but not get out and go with it. I knew this was a dangerous move, 4 guys had just gone who were all clearly strong climbers (based on Brendan's strava hero status I had him picked as a guy to seriously watch), as well as guys from the three biggest teams in the race. My teammate Alec must have known too, without us talking he had gone to the front and drilled it on the descent. When we started to hit the climbs again, right as he peeled off I came out with some efforts at about 60% to see how the field reacted and who followed. I'd sit up and then go again... then the race really lit up. Attack after attack after attack. I followed 1, 2 ,3 moves. None of them went and then the 4th one that came was big, and I didn't have enough left to follow it. On the steepest slope of the course I did 12w/kg for 20seconds, and barely couldn't grasp to the move. 1/3 of the field was up the road, 1/3 turned around and said "some other day" which left a third of us just sitting at the back, 15 or so guys at first, with all but 3 of us with multiple teammates up the road. Race was over. I rode a couple more laps and worked the the other guys up the road... but really we just kept attacking each other and not working together which was getting us nowhere. Then a nice hard rainstorm hit us while we were headed downhill, I started to get really cold. 1/3 of the way up the climb, still cold, I turned around and headed down. I made it 5 laps in before calling it.

Both days I put in good strong efforts, but not when I needed to and it counted. Goal for future races: go hard less often, go harder when I go hard. Make each effort count for something.

Walburg and Pace Bend

I was really excited heading into this weekend, first race on the new team bike, and first time at one of the longest running race weekends. Overall the weekend pretty well for the Cat 2's as a team, but not without it's flaws, and I definitely have some improvements to make myself.

Walburg
The day of the Walburg Road Race has a mythic ability to attract high winds and terrible weather. Fortunately this year, we missed out on it's terrible weather abilities but the winds were dialed up by the end of the first lap. Going into this race, I wasn't really sure what to expect from the course or the racing. I've heard so many things about the race over the years "hardest race in texas" "centerline rule ruins the race" "rough pavement" "windy" but never raced it myself. I went into the race, not expecting much from myself in terms of results, but with a teammate mentality. I wanted to race aggressive, and make sure I was in early moves so that Grant and Kevin could save their matches for when it would matter.

During our extra long and slow neutral roll out I worked my way up into top 5, and as soon as attacks started flying, I started marking them. Over the first half of the first lap not much of anything went away, wind was almost completely dead, but not entirely, and I floated around the front 20 in the field. After our first right turn into a headwind, my teammate Alec launched a little attack. After he floated out there for a little while, I saw Paul Carty start to make a move to go across and jumped on his wheel. We went right across and aAec sat up once we came past. Paul too seemed to sit up a bit, and then I put in a dig of my own. I road off the front, but not hard. Going hard solo was a recipe for disaster. I wanted to see who would react and come across. Carlo Villarreal came across looked at me and we non-verbally agreed, game on. The field seemed to be giving us some room, so we decided to see how much we could take.

We weren't out front for all that long, but it sapped my legs pretty well. When we were brought back into the fray 5-10 minutes later I was able to get a spot top 10, but all "snap" had gone from the legs. At the next jump I went hurtling backwards and barely caught onto the back of the field. A mile or so later we took a right hand turn and people went down. I had to chase again to catch back on (and honestly wouldn't have made it without a . I was mad at myself at this point, I had wanted to be up front for the new more technical, narrow section of the course to make a move. Instead I was at the back, closing gaps at every turn.

When we turned back onto the main road, I had been gapped and closed the gap probably 6 times at least. Wasted a ton of energy. I moved up in the tailwind section as quickly as I could. I needed to not be at the back. When we hit the crosswinds the shit really hit the fan. Most of the field decided "to hell with the centerline rule" and the moto hardly protested. Fortunately my teammates Grant and Alec had made their way up to a break up the road, unfortunately I was in a world of hurt. I refused to cross the centerline which left me with little to no draft with a very strung out pack. I eventually decided to forgo my place in the gutter and try to form a second echelon. No one followed me suit... so I decided to drill it and try and get up to the front echelon. Next thing I knew I was out the back.

Alec rode his heart out for Grant up the road, which paid off with a second place for Grant. Made me feel like a worse teammate knowing and seeing just how much Alec had given everything to make it happen for him. I need to get more out of myself in the future.

Things I did well: eating and hydrating, for a change, being agressive. Things I did poorly: too aggressive when it didn't matter, not able to be aggressive when it did.

Pace Bend

A good race on Sunday can make up for a bad one on Saturday. It was hot and gorgeous outside. Plan for Pace Bend was to again make sure the team was represented in the early move, but to this time be more selective in what I followed and to not sell myself out into any move I went into. First lap, I again situated myself near the front and watched a couple moves go and come back. Nothing dangerous, not worth spending our efforts on. Next lap, for reasons unknown to me or my teammates at the time, Kevin Fish slow rolled off the front and took out a nice little gap on the field. A couple guys bridged up to him, but nothing insane. The gap went out to a max of about 30 seconds and came back a lap later, when I made sure to get myself up front to follow any counters. To my surprise nothing really started flying right away, as we hit the steepest climb on the backside of the course, the pace stayed pretty high. When we got over the steep part and onto the last, shallow pitches of the climb I put in a little kick. Next thing I knew there were 4 of us off the front. We worked well together in a good solid quick rotation with 30 second pulls. We dug in hard for one lap to open up the gap, and one lap in had a 55 second gap. At this point we slowed up a bit, and some disfunction started showing in our group. One of the riders (a think finance guy) was incapable of keeping a steady pace on the front. It was HARD uphill and soft pedalling down it.

Pulling our early break around a corner on a beautiful Texas day.

After two laps the gap was down to 45 seconds. At this point there was a question which wasn't really addressed within the group, did we want to try to maintain a gap or not. In accordenance with my pre-race strategy, I wasn't driving the group at all. I knew I had strong (resting) teammates behind me, and that if we came back one of them would be able to make something happen. half a lap later, 25 seconds. At this point we moved through the now open feedzone for the first time, this caused some nice disorder in our small breakaway. On the other side of the feed we heard 20 seconds. Group was not yet visible but we knew a catch was coming. Then we saw the group come over and a counter come across to us, Grant in tow. I had been largely expecting to try and fall into the top couple riders but immediately put in a dig to get up to their speed. If the 8 of us had started working together kept the pace up, it could have been awesome, but it wasn't meant to be. We kinda looked around for someone to set pace and then 1, 2, 5, 10 riders came across. Next thing we know whole field is back together.

I had made a big mistake off the front, not enough fluid intake. It was 85 degrees and sunny, hot when you consider how our winter has gone thus far this year. My mouth was dry, and as a teammate informed me I had crusty salt all over my jersey and bibs. I drank some from the bottles I had on my bike, but they were warm, and had a drink mix in them which at this point just made my mouth sticky. Next lap I looked for Ian who was feeding us, but didn't see where he was situated until it was too late. Next lap (7 laps in) I grabbed a bottle, I was in recovery mode/ hang on mode at this point. Grant had been lobbing attacks up front and gotten off with a group of 8 or so, I needed to be up front covering moves but I just felt like I was turning into a raisin.

It took some water over the head, back, hands, and lots of intake over the next couple laps for me to start to feel ok. Finally with 2 laps to go I was starting to feel like I was alive again. I saw attacks start to fly, but was too far back. I needed to get up there and match moves in case anything got across to Grant. I got up front too late though. A group of 20 ended up making it across and we had no teammates in it. By the time I got upfront the move had gone and anything else that attempted to go was getting shut down. At this point, Alec and I started discussing our end strategy. Alec said if he smelled the opportunity for a flyer he was going to go for it, I told him I though I could do well in the uphill sprint finish. At 3k to go, Alec made a move with two other which stuck until the line. I positioned myself terribly for the sprint (dead last wheel going into it out of the remenants of our field), but when I kicked at about 500m to go, the base of the finishing climb I quickly got up to the pointy end of affairs. I had to hit the brakes to get around someone who had gone early and died and then surged again and ended up 5th out of our field. Grant ended up getting 5th.

At the end of the race, I was happy with the win, extremely happy with my legs, but dissapointed in my execution. I had raced tactically smart early on, but failed to set myself up for success with my hydration and nutrition. Played catch up, not put myself in the moves that went across to a teammate up the road, and placed myself poorly for a finishing sprint which I could/should have won. I need to not be my own worst enemy. On the bright side: it was my first race finish in a race field with no one lower than a cat 2 in it, but I expect more of myself.

Big Picture life stuff, Off-Season, and first races of the season.

Big Picture Stuff
I've had a number of people ask as I post and reach out to me about being in Texas still. I never really made a proclamation to the world, but I decided at the end of last school year to take a year off from school. I was enrolled in school, but not focused on my classes or school, not enjoying those aspects of what I was doing at all or the direction I was headed with them. I considered a bunch of different options with changing my major, changing schools, and ultimately decided to take time off from school for a year to think things through. I thought about where I wanted to spend that time for a while, I applied to jobs in various places around the US but ultimately decided staying home was best. Great riding weather, support of family, a great cycling community. By the end of the summer I knew I didn't want to go back to Rochester, I am now officially withdrawn. I plan on staying in state to finish up my undergraduate studies.... now onto the bike stuff.

Off-season
After a strong late season last year (which I posted plenty of blog posts about), I got my cat 2 upgrade, and was given the great opportunity of joining local awesome amateur team Super Squadra as a part of their 'Super JETS' (Super Junior Espoir Team Squadra). I had reached out to Dave around mid-summer, with far fetched dreams of making it happen, and alas dreams became reality. It is a great opportunity for me to race with and learn from some of the best riders in the state (these guys have more national titles than I have years racing bikes). I look forward to growing smarter and stronger with the team over the next couple of years. I also decided to start working with a coach for my training. I had, for the last season been self-coached and had great results. This certainly made the decision hard for me (if it ain't broke don't fix it right?). Ultimately though, with the right coach to hand things off to (Pat McCarty), I get on objective third party who can keep me from second guessing everything I do and help me with the mental part of racing I have always struggled with. Thus far I have been happy with the coaching and the feedback on race tactics, strategy and mental approaches has been helpful and will, I believe, be a huge part of success yet to come.



First weekend of the racing
I opened up my race season during the first weekend of February, at the Tour of New Braunfels. A small circuit and a road race. The crit on the first day was full of jitters, and tension being the first race of the season for most. It was my first start in a P12 field, and it was CRASH FILLED. Early on I started sliding backwards in the field, falling away from any sketchy behavior. After about 5 minutes I was reminded that I should be up front racing my bike, and moved up as quickly as I could. I followed a couple of attacks, fell back into the field. MAYBE 20 minutes into the race guy two wheels in front of me locked up his brakes, as did the guy in front of me... so on so forth. I didn't hit the guy in front of me but the guys behind me ran straight into me. Luckily I got a foot down  and didn't crash myself but my race was over.

The next days road race was on the same course as a TT I had started, gotten about 500m into and then crashed and flipped over a guardrail in November. Starting in a different place though and SUPER windy. Early on I worked my way from the middle where I had gotten stuck from the start due to some pedal fobbling, to the front. By the time I got there one of my teammates, Steven Wheeler had gone off the front straight into a STRONG headwind. I started doing the pack shuffle, move up, get pushed back, move up, get pushed back. As we got close to the corner which I had crashed on, the roads were getting damp and I started getting tentative again. Finally we crossed it, it was no big deal but I was near the back of the field in a twisty section with a tailwind. No bueno. I yo-yoed a bit off the back, a bunch of people got dropped. I wasn't one of them at the end of the road I got right back up to the front, where I was informed by Dave that I needed to either get up to the lead group or keep their lead in check. We were headed towards a headwind section, it wasn't a good place to attack but the front was soft-pedaling so we organized up front to keep a tempo going. There was lots of poor blocking tactics going on, which left huge gaps in the rotation and knowing my job was to sacrifice myself I filled a gap as soon as I saw it. At times giving me essentially 0 rest between pulls. I exploded by the end of the headwind section. It was hard, I wished I had positioned myself better earlier so I could have either been in the move or wasted less energy chasing back onto the group over and over. First time learning that position is more imperative than ever in the twos. Next up were Walburg and Pace Bend with cat 2 only fields (which have already happened I just need to make a write up about them)

Team bike: Scott Foil HMX Frameset, Mavic 80mm race wheels, Shimano Ultegra groupset, PRO bars and stem