Fayetteville Stage Race

I woke up at 4am on Saturday to drive to Fayetteville (TX) for the Fayetteville Stage Race. For the Masters 35+ Cat 4/5 group I was in, this consisted of a 46-mile road race Saturday morning, a 6.6-mile time trial Saturday afternoon, and a 49-mile road race Sunday morning. I arrived at the race venue much earlier than I had expected, so I grabbed about 20 minutes of snooze.

I pinned on my numbers, warmed up on my rollers, and headed over to the starting line, where I found Richie. We discussed whether or not the Tegaderm wound dressings in our goody bags were an omen.

Stage 1

This morning's race was 2 laps of a 22-mile circuit. There was only one hill of any significance; its grade maxed out at 10%, but it wasn't very long. The first lap was pretty uneventful. There were about 70 in our group, and the roads along the rear of the course were pretty narrow, so I tried to stay near the front of the pack. At one point on this narrow section, I was struggling to stay to the right of the centerline of the road, to avoid getting penalized. The winds were coming from the right, so people were trying to stay to the left of each other, to hide from the wind. The guy on my right was just about on the centerline (which meant I was just about over the centerline), and there was no one to his right. I also noticed that the right side of the road was pretty clear, so I slowed a bit, moved over to the right side of the road, and was able to gain several positions before nestling back into the safety of the pack.

Going up the hill at the beginning of the second lap, Richie is to my left. I notice that he and I are the only riders still seated, everyone else is out of the saddle. I tell him that Robert would be proud of us. Just at that point, the guy in front of me slows suddenly, and I have to pretty much go off the right side of the road to get around him. I had to get out of the saddle to manage this maneuver (sorry, Robert), but don't have a problem. The pace picks up right after the top of the hill, as a group attempts to break away. I'm able to stay with them, as is the rest of the pack.

Or so I think. It's really hard to see what's going on behind, so if 20 guys get shelled off by this acceleration, I don't know it. The important thing is that I am not one of them. :-)

Things soon settle down, and Richie is again to my left. Just for fun, I tell him, in a voice loud enough for others to hear, "Hey! I haven't crashed,yet! This may be a record for me!" I'm hoping that this will convince the other riders to give me some room. Heh.

Then I consider that may have jinxed myself...

Not too long after this thought, the two guys I'm riding between veer in toward each other, pinching me off. I make contact with one of them, but we all stay upright. Not too long after that, I get tangled up with a rider on my right, and we lean into each other for a while before we are able to separate. Again, no damage.

We get into a headwind section, about 15 miles from the end, and two Team TBi guys are on the front of the pack, and I'm in third position. They keep looking back, for someone to get in front on front of them, but I had better things to do at the time, like enjoy their draft. We were going less than 14 mph at the time. A third TBi guy comes to the front, and the three of them are pulling us along for a bit. Then the third TBi guy heads up the road, gapping us by about 20 yards. The original two TBi guys stay on the front, still going slow.

Although it seems early for someone to be trying a move like this, I think that maybe the two TBi guys are blocking for their teammate, so that he can attempt a breakaway. I wonder if they'll also be block for the two of us, so I take off and bridge up to their buddy, before he gets too far away. When I catch him, I look over my shoulder and see that his buddies suck at blocking. :-D I had just pulled the entire peloton up to him. Oh, well...

I did get stuck pulling the pack for a short while after that, but I certainly wasn't working hard.

About 4 miles from the finish, we hit another hill, which I didn't remember from the first lap. This isn't as big as the earlier hill, but my legs may beg to differ that point, as they decided that they had had enough. I quickly got spit out the back of the pack, and I also had to dodge a guy whose chain had come off. After cresting the hill, I did all I could to catch the disappearing pack, but we were still heading into the wind, and my heartrate is in the red. After a couple of times of almost running off the road, I decide to just let them go, figuring that at least I'll beat the chain-dropping guy.

Or maybe not, as the chain-dropping guy soon catches me, suggesting that we work together so that the other guy behind us doesn't catch up. I tell him that we're only about a half mile from the finish, and he heads on. I then see that the other guy is gaining on me, and decide to not let him, so I go as hard as I can to the finish, my legs cramping about a hundred yards from the line.
I'm able to hold him off, finishing in 46th place, about 2 minutes behind the pack.

I have lunch with Richie and his wife Emily, then hang out with Tom (who was racing in a different category) while we wait for...

Stage 2

I was going to warm up on my rollers, as I did in the morning, but the rear roller seems to have warped as it sat in the bed of my truck, so I readied the time trial bike and hit the road. I'm still pretty tired from the morning's race, and I can't get my heartrate up into the 173-175 range, where I'll want it in the time trial. After about 20 minutes, I head to the start line.

The guy who's supposed to start 30 seconds in front of me doesn't show up, so I don't have anyone to chase. I'll just have to try to stay ahead of the guy who starts 30 seconds (and 60 seconds, and 90 seconds...) behind me. Last year, I was passed by the time I got to the turn at 2.5 miles, and later by one or two other riders. My goal for this time trial is to not let Richie beat me like he did last year (by almost 2 minutes!), since he's on his road bike, and I'm on my "lo-tech" time trial bike.

My time comes up, and I start. My heartrate goes right up to 175 and stays there:



I get to the first turn, and I haven't been passed yet! I look behind me and don't even see anyone gaining, so I'm feeling pretty good. I'm probably geared a bit too high for the hills, but I manage to get up them okay. I get to the 4.5-mile turn, still having not been passed. Only two more miles to go, and the end won't come fast enough. Under a half mile to go, and I look behind, and see someone approaching! He does pass me, but doesn't get to the line too far ahead of me, so he only beat me by 32 seconds. My average speed for this time trial is 21.1mph, which was also my average for the morning's road race.

Richie completed the course 12 seconds faster than I did.

Grrrrrr...

Stage 3

Sunday's 49-mile road race isn't until 11:20am, so I can sleep in until 7am. I wake up, still tired, and re-check the schedule, halfway hoping that I misread the schedule and it's an 8:30am start, and I can then go back to bed, but no such luck.

I get to Fayetteville at about 10:30am, unload the bike, and go out on the road to warm up. I get to the starting line, and the group is much smaller than yesterday (about 20 fewer). The wind is blowing hard, and I'm not looking forward to it.

The race starts, and it's not too bad at the beginning. I've decided to stay farther in the back of the pack today, to better stay out of the wind. This works for awhile, and I have a chance to chat with the guy who started behind me (and passed me) in yesterday's time trial. Nice guy.

We get to the hill at 5 miles. Last year, after cresting this hill, I had difficulty in getting my chain back onto the big ring, and could not keep the pace as the pack accelerated, and watched them go off into the wind. I was in no mood to chase them in the wind for 45 miles, so I just turned around and went home.

Today, however, the front derailleur works fine, and I'm able to stay with the pack after the hill. It's still hard work, though, going into the wind, and we eventually get strung out, making it more difficult to find solace from the wind. Finally, after about 8 miles, I can no longer hold on, and I drift back from the front half of the pack. Eventually, the rest of the pack comes around me to catch back up.

Well, I lasted a little bit longer this year, but now my plan is to ride to the feed zone, to see if Richie needs my bottle when he comes around on his second lap. The pack is much smaller as they come by on their second lap, and Richie is still there, looking pretty good. He waves off the bottle. I head to the finish line to watch the end of the race.

As the pack nears the finish line, a couple of riders on the left side go down as the sprint begins. The winner has a couple of seconds on the pack. I can't see Richie. Wait! There he is! Can he do it? Oh, he just misses out on getting 3rd place, but 4th is still quite impressive, and it goes well with his 8th-place finish from Saturday's road race.

It wasn't a great weekend for me, results-wise, but I improved over last year, in every event, so I was happy with that.

Next up: Fort Davis Stage race.

La Primavera: Well, I didn't miss a turn

At last year's edition of this race, I got spit out the back of the pack on the long, steady climb at the beginning of the first lap. I then proceeded to miss a right hand turn, helped only by the yells of riders behind me, but not the corner marshal. On the second lap, I was determined to not miss the turn again, so I turned when I saw the corner marshal sitting in their chair. When I got to the end of that road, I saw the start/finish line to my left, and the rest of the course to my right. I had turned too early and cut off half of the course. Disgusted, I finished the lap and quit the race.

My goal this year was to not get lost on the 4.4 mile course. Tom, my teammate who had the misfortune of following me through last year's mishaps, suggested that it may be a good plan to stay with the pack, so that I don't get lost. This sounded like a good strategy. For some reason, Tom decided to not participate in the race this year.

My sister Patti was in town for her granddaughter's birthday, so I picked her up on my way to the race. We got there in plenty of time for me to register and warm up. Since there were no racers yet on the course, I chose to ride the course instead of my rollers. This was the first time I had ridden these roads since last year's ill-fated race, and I wanted to make sure I knew where to turn. I finished my 30-minute warmup and had 5 minutes left until the start of my Cat 5A race.

My goal for the race is quickly achieved as I arrive at the top of the initial climb near the front of the pack. In fact, it seems that most of the 40-odd rider pack also achieves this goal. We spread out a bit as we headed down the 40+mph hill, which was a good thing, because I saw the bike of one rider ahead and to my right go into a furious high-speed wobble. Not only was the front wheel vibrating left to right like crazy, but the back wheel was also in serious distress. Somehow, he managed to pull it out and not crash, though I don't remember seeing him again.

Here's the finish of the first lap, courtesy of Patti (who also supplied the photo at the top of this entry):



The second lap goes pretty well. The pace seems to pick up a bit near the top of the long opening climb, but I'm able to hold on, still near the front of the pack. I do have one brief scary moment when the guy in front of me throws his bike backward as he gets out of the saddle. I'm able to avoid hitting him, and I now have a second rider to be wary of. I hear someone mention that the pack is starting to break up behind us. Things are looking pretty good, but it's still early.

Lap three sees the pack blown apart on the initial climb. I can no longer hang on, but I'm not alone and I manage to get into a small grupetto. As we're going down the hill before the lap's finishing climb, we can see deer crossing the road, from left to right, on the climb. There are women on the right side of the road, waving at the deer and yelling at us to slow down. I can see that there are more deer coming from the left as we begin the climb, but feel confident that I can navigate through them. However, the rest of the grupetto starts to slow, so I choose to do the same, and touch my brakes. I suddenly feel someone run into my rear wheel, and then hear him pay the price for doing so, as he goes down.

Aaaaargh.

Lap four is uneventful, as I pretty much ride it by myself. I do hear Richie call out to me and spot him as he drives in for his later race. After I finish the fourth lap, and ride through the parking area to begin the fifth and final lap, I look for Richie to see if he'd like to finish the race for me, but to no avail. As I shift down from my big ring for the last helping of long climb casserole, the chain comes off, and I can't get it back on using the derailleur, so I decide that this would be a good time for a short break. The Masters 35+ peloton passes as I'm putting my chain back on, and the two kids acting as corner marshal there refuse my offer to finish the race for me, so I soldier on.

I soon hear someone behind me, and as he comes beside me, I see that it's another Cat 5 rider. "Oh, I didn't realize there was anyone left behind me," I say.

"Yeah, there are a few back there. Some who had flats and stuff," he replied.

"And the guy who ran into my back wheel on lap 3 and crashed," I added.

He asked me if the rider was wearing the same Power Pedal jersey that he was wearing, and I reminded him that the rider was behind me, so I didn't see him.

We continued on for the rest of the lap, and as we got near the end, I was on his wheel, and he kept looking back at me. "Don't worry," I said, "I'm not going to try to outsprint you for 25th place." "Aw, it's all fun," he replied. Staying true to my word, however, I let him finish ahead of me.

Ok, I couldn't keep up with him on the finishing climb, but shhhhhhh!

I did, however, end up in 25th place. :-)

Epilogue:
As I was waiting for the results to be posted, Vic, the Power Pedal rider, found me and told me that it was his teammate that crashed behind me, but that he was ok. I later found him and told him that I was sorry that he went down, and he had no hard feelings. Those Power Pedal guys seem like a class act, and I look forward to riding with them at Fayetteville in two weeks.

PURE AUSTIN Pace Bend Road Race

When I unloaded the bike for hill repeats on Thursday night,
I noticed that my front tire was a bit low. After hill repeats,
it was low again. I patched the tube and pulled the bit of
glass out of the tire on Friday, but the tire was low on
Saturday morning. So, I decided to go against popular
wisdom and change both my front tire and tube the night
before the race. I thought about changing the back tire
and tube, but decided to not tempt fate. This Quick Stick
that I won at Warda works great for both taking tires off
and putting them on. Even new tires, which usually give
me problems on these rims. No swears were heard.

My Cat 4/5 35+ race was scheduled to get underway at 9:55am,
so I thought that if I left my house by 8am, that would give me
plenty of time to get there, pick up my packet, and warm up.

I left my house at 8:20am, and didn't take into account that I'd
be riding behind a pack of cyclists on the race course to get
to the parking area, where I arrived at about 9:30am. At least
I got a chance to see the course, since I haven't ridden out
there before.

I parked near Richie, who was warming up on his trainer. My
warmup consisted of running up to registration and back. At
least there wasn't a line. After pinning on my numbers, and
getting ready, I had about 15 minutes before the start, so
decided to pull out the rollers and get about 5 minutes of
warmup in, for whatever that would be worth, but the grass
was too tall. Heh.

As I was about to head to the line, a woman came up and
asked me if I thought that "they" would have a compressor
so that she could air up her car tire, which had gone flat. I
have an electric pump in the truck, so I lent it to her, and
asked her to put it into the bed of the truck when she was
done. I was hoping that I'd get some good karma for that...

And that brings us to the start of the race. Finally...

Richie and I line up together, and I tell him that, just like
last time, my goal was to stay with him, since he finishes
well. I take a Cliff Shot and drink a half bottle of water.
There was no roll-call this time, just "Go!"

The first lap goes well, the course is really nice, and people
have a tendency to stay on the right side of the road even
though we have the entire roadway to use (no center-line
rule). There are two hard right turns on the course, and
a couple of guys near the front took the first one too hot,
and ended up going straight (from the inside of the turn!).
Luckily, no one crashed, they just ended up off the road
for a bit. I was surprised by the speed of the pack down
the finishing straight, which was slightly downhill, since
it was just the first lap. It's not like there were primes,
or anything...

Not much exciting happened on the second lap.

As we're starting on our third lap, I'm starting to wonder
if this racing stuff is really for me, as I'm starting to get
tired. Luckily, those thought quickly left my head. The
bit of rest that I was getting at that point helped, too. :)

Going up the second hill on the this lap, I'm in the pack,
on the right side. Suddenly, I hear a "Pisssshhhhhh-
pish-pish-pish-pish." I take a quick assessment and
realize that it's coming from the bike on my right. Whew!
The rider of that bike soon sounded like me at Rocky
Hill. :-)

At the top of this hill, Richie gets into a breakaway with
about 5 other guys, but it doesn't last too long, unfortunately.

Flashback to Thursday...

During hill repeats, my knee started to bother me, so I
decided to quit after my third repeat (I was going to stop
after 2, but Kirk talked me into another). I was going to
take it pretty easy, though. David James started his
fourth repeat a bit after Tom and I started our third, and
I told Tom that we'd be David's rabbit. David proved me
right as he came up on us just as we're beginning the
last step of the hill. He worked a lot harder to catch
me than I did to get to that point, so I had some energy
left, and was able to re-pass David before the top. (I
must've forgotten about my knee :-} ).

What's the point of all this, you may be asking. Well,
I thought that a good strategy for today's race would be
to go out a mile or so before the last hill, then rest on
the hill and let the pack catch up to me. I planned on
doing this for laps 3 and 4, if I could get away with it,
so that they would let me go on lap 5, assuming that
they would catch me on the hill again, but I would not
rest on the hill, and try to take it in a breakaway.

Best laid plans. Mice. Men.

However, I did do a version of this on the 4th lap,
though not necessarily on purpose. Leading up to
the hill, I was riding in 4th position. The guy on the
front decided to attack the hill, but I elected to let
those 3 go. Unfortunately, no one else did.

Oops.

By the top of the hill, I heard the chase motorcycle
on my wheel. I looked back and saw no one else.
I am able to hang onto the back of the pack, though.

We finally start the fifth and final lap, and I'm able
to get some rest here. I also use my small chain
ring for just about the whole lap, but am still able
to stay in the pack. I work my back up to the front
of the pack, and find Richie. We're near the
front when we hit the last hill, and some guy in
front of me swerves, making me touch my brakes.
When this happened in Bryan a couple years ago,
I lost momentum and got spit out the back. Today,
however, I picked a wheel that wasn't swerving, and
hung onto it, making it to the top of the hill in pretty
good position. Richie and I were in the top ten. All
that's left is a hard right turn and a slight downhill
finish.

Going into the turn, I'm on Richie's right hip, but I
have to scrub off speed since I'm trying to take it
too sharp. I should have faded out to the left as
Richie and the rest of the group did. I picked it
back up and sprinted as hard as I could for the
finish, even though there were others passing me.
I was able to nip one guy at the finish, and ended
up in 19th place, which I was quite happy with.
Richie ended up 9th.


What I was even happier with was that I had a
few opportunities to let negative thoughts rule me,
which has been a problem in the past. I worked
hard up to the very end.

Now if I could just work on setting up my turns
better....

Epilogue: As I was getting ready to leave, I saw a
note under my windshield. It was from the woman
to whom I had lent my pump. She thanked me for
it and said she hoped I had a good race. She
signed it, "A Single Mother with children on a
camping trip."

But no phone number. :-( Harrumph!

Chappell Hill Report

Today's race captain, David James, did Velocity proud, finishing towards the front of his first Cat 4 road race after 62 sweltering miles. As for me, I showed up, was dropped a quarter through the race and switched roles to feed zone support. There were at least 70 at the start. (I'm told that 80 started the 45+ race and the Cat 5 hit its ruled limit of 50 riders over a week ago, which is why I cat'd up.)

David got miscued and thought there would be neutral water at the feed zone and showed up to the start with only one bottle. It was easy going before we reached the circuit and the most challenging part was staying alert and ready to hit the brakes. Every few minutes a strong puller would swing off the front and drop the speed of the pack by several mph, making everybody behind the leaders hit the brakes. As I was starting to drag early on in the race I swapped with David my larger bottle for his smaller one. I'm satisfied I was max'd out as I was being dropped. It's a slow fade of only 1-2 mph, they seem so close ahead, drawing away ever so slowly, but drawing away nonetheless.

I was waiting ready at the feed zone at the end of the second lap of the circuit, and David heard me yelling "Velocity" but he wasn't expecting me and was on the far side of the pack. I hadn't seen him that loop but I caught him the next time around, he grateful to get his full bottle back. (I had already rehydrated with a kind cold offering from the Sugar Cycles team support.) At that end of the last circuit a breakaway of about a half-dozen riders had a two-minute gap on the main pack, which had no hope of closing it in the remaining 13 miles. By David's report, approaching the finish, another breakaway of another half-dozen or so riders split off and finished off the top 10. David led the remaining pack across the finish line.

I ambled back, passing tired, dehydrated racers and as I passed them I felt obligated to let them know that I was actually 24 miles behind them (having rested two laps in the feed zone).

All in all, a fine race day. I'm much happier to have raced than to not have raced.