John L. and I ventured out to Hood River on Thursday to try out the crit. John had raced last week and did pretty well, but this was my first crit of the year and the only crit I’ve ever raced other than the Courthouse Crit. Specialized/River City had 8 guys there and the race was pretty much dominated by them. I hung out near the front for most of the race figuring that I’d try to get into a break that looked good. The break finally came and I went for it too late. Four of us went, but not at the same time, so we basically had 2 chase groups of 2 with about 50 feet in between us. I was in the second of those and just couldn’t close the gap. Consequently, we rode hard for a couple of laps and then got caught with about 4 laps to go. I spent 3 of those laps trying not to hurl. I pretty much had nothing left on the last lap, but made a go of it anyway. I was third wheel until just before the last tight right hand turn to the finish when half the field pulled up next to and past me. A few guys were looking to take really bad lines going into that turn, so I backed off a bit since I didn’t want to die sprinting for 20th.
John had a good race and finished 13th. I ended up 20th.
Also: Welcome to our newest team member Justin Griffeth! He’ll be racing cat 4.
Dean
Five of us made the trip to King’s Valley for what turned out to be a beautiful day of racing. Ronny, Bruce, Steve, Allen and I all showed up and raced in the Master 40+ / 50+ race. When we lined up to start, there were about 80 guys ready to roll. Steve was the only one who managed to line up near the front and it took about half a lap for the rest of us to get up there. In all honesty, my goal was to finish with the pack. This was the first road race I’ve done with cat 3’s in it and looking at the guys in the results, most of the pack were 3’s. About half way around the first lap, a break went off the front. Steve whipped around me and gave chase. Unfortunately, he got stuck about half way between the break and the pack. After a bit, Bruce shot up to him, hoping to take the peloton with him and get Steve out of no-man’s land. No one went, so Bruce got up there and pulled hard for Steve. From the tucked in saftey of the pack, I could see Bruce’s book of matches flaming away…… After a while of that, the pack brought them in and Bruce drifted to the back and off. The brightness of his burning splendor slowly fading to a shadow as I blinked the sweat from my eyes…. As I looked around, I could see Allen and Steve staying consistently near the front. Ronny would take forays up there while I tried to maintain my spot in the front third. I was continually amazed at how quickly you could get cycled to the back. I used these times as opportunities to practice moving up. We were pretty jammed from the yellow line to the fog stripe, so I worked on moving up through the middle. We strung out going up the hills, so I used those times as opportunities to get by some folks.
The second lap came around and guys started getting serious about pulling in the break. The pace picked up and we started moving at a pretty good clip. We got them pretty much rolled in by the end of the lap, but the guys in front let ‘em hang for a bit. Eventually everyone was brought back together. As we were rolling down from the finish line, I drank the rest of my 20 oz. bottle of Cytomax and ate my Cliff Shot. I had already consumed my Cliff bar and half a bottle of water. When we started to hit the hills, the surges started and my left leg was beginning to thighten and feel crampy. I finished off the water and just hoped for the best. At this point, I’m not sure where Steve was, but Ronny was around me somewhere and Allen was up in the front driving the pace. He was up there until he burned up… Allen eventually drifted toward the back, but never dropped off. Fortunately for me, when we hit a flat stretch about 6 miles out, the group slowed to around 17 mph, so that gave my legs a chance to settle down. About this time, I found myself packed in with 2 rows of guys ahead of me. I didn’t think this would really last and eventually some guys got around and went up the road. We never really got strung out and we hit the hill to the finish as a pack. I was on the yellow line with Ronny behind me when it started to accelerate up the hill. I went to drop into the little chainring and in my pain induced fog wasn’t paying attention. I ended up dropping the chain. I heard Ronny calmly say “Wow, that sucks”, and I tried to get it back on. By the time I did, most of the group was pulling away and I didn’t have enough in the tank to even think about catching back on. So I put it into grind mode and tried to pick a couple of people off. Ronny came by me looking as fresh as a daisy and finished 22nd. I managed to pick off a couple of guys and finished 32nd. I’m not sure what the finish line folks were doing, but Allen was just two guys behind me and actually finished 34th. He most certainly did not DNF…. Bruce finished off the race 41st. Steve had the best finish of all of us, he had a nice 6th in the 50+.
All in all, I feel pretty good with how I personally did. My goal was to finish with the pack. I didn’t actually do much of anything other than stay upright, but I wasn’t trying to, so I’m okay with that. The weirdest thing was how much my lower back hurt at the end. I leaned over to put my bike on the ground and I couldn’t stand back up. My back muscles just hurt too much to pull me upright, so I stood there with my hands on my knees until the pain subsided enough to let me stand. This is the first time my back has hurt this much, so I don’t know. I do know that I had a great time and it was a lot of fun to be able to look around the pack and see NRR jersey’s scattered here and there. Very Cool…
Dean
We had a decent showing of NRR folks at Estacada. I had high hopes of a “good” time but it didn’t turn out all that “good” in the end.
Weather was sunny and reasonably warm but the wind was gusty with a headwind on the out leg. I originally had my 90mm HED front wheel but after nearly getting blown off the road while warming up, I quickly changed to a 46mm which was a good move. The wind wasn’t as gusty on the course thankfully.
I’m new to the HRM thing, having just used PE in the past. This is the first race I’ve tried staying right at or below LT (159-160 for me) and got pretty close, average 156. While I may have been able to improve the pace slightly based on the HR, I felt like I gave it my best.
I had an approximate time of 26:30 so I went home really bummed about my performance. The actual results were slightly better, showing a 25:51. Still, I’ve got more work to do. Pacing and guaging effort in TT’s is an ongoing learning experience.
Estacada TT has been put on for some years I believe but will say that the organization was rather sloppy. The biggest error was the turnaround being placed at 10 miles out instead of 5 miles for many of the earlier starters, including young juniors. That must have really been a surprise/confusion to the riders. I realize that promoters are volunteer and do many of these races out of love for the sport but still….
Results were very late in coming due a mixup on where the printouts were. Then there were multiple errors in placing etc. Hopefully, it’s better next time.