Usually the labor day weekend consists of heading up to the Detroit area for the big money Tour di Via Italia, which the team I've been on has podium-ed at every edition. Unfortunately after something like a 50 year run the race was canceled. So instead of heading north I went west to St. Louis for the Gateway Cup.
Gateway was a series of 4 criteriums starting Friday night running through Monday. I missed Friday night's race due to work, but drove up with Erik Hamilton on Saturday morning. We were running super late thanks to a late start on my part and terrible traffic around Bloomington, but with a little NASCAR skills I got up my sleeve we made up the 2 hours we needed to get there in time. After a strong storm blew through the womens race was delayed and we even had an extra half hour.
Saturday's race was about a gigantic 4 corner crit with 4 lane roads all the way around. It was a total NASCAR track (those two months in the south really rubbed off on me). Believe it or not there can be races that are super fast but super easy at the same time. Sitting in the field you could click along like an easy ride, but as soon as you hit the wind your quickly realized the speed in the field was like 30 mph at it's slowest. People pretty much continuously smashed themselves to try and make the race hard but I'm sure every single one of the 130 riders was totally fresh at the finish. I even went on the attack a few times but we never really got anywhere.
At one point the Panther boys had just about the most legit leadout ever seen...for a prime. A full 5 person leadout for me to get a $200 prime. I got the prime, and we damn near split the field in the process: the counter attack took a few solid laps to bring back. Anyway the sprint was super chaotic as expected, Hamilton went off the front solo with a few laps to go so we kind of chilled with our lead-out and had to fight the swarms. I can break down every meter, but the gist is that we got jumped on the second to last straight. I had a leaf in my cassette which prevented me using my 11-12-or-13 gears so basically coasted from the last corner to the finish (still in 17th!) Ryan A ended up 6th place, and Ryan K was 12th.
Sunday's race was "The Hill" which had a smaller hill than the previous day's race. It was another 4 corner ordeal that would probably end with a 400 meter downhill sprint to the finish at probably 90 mph. We decided to try and just follow attacks for the race since it was likely nothing would get away. So of course, the one time I attack I got into a breakaway, but I obviously wasn't too happy with it:
Anyway we had 2 Mercy guys and me in a group of 4, not very good odds considering there were a few P-R-O's (you read right, those are capital letters) in the field. So we got brought back after 5 laps, but then the race announcer called a prime...which was pretty shitty of him in my opinion so I decided to go for it. I followed Alder Martz's attack up the hill, tailed by Brad Huff and Nick Frey. Huff went for the prime on the downhill but I was on his wheel the whole way and was able to get around him. When we got around the first 2 corners the field was GONE, so we kept it rolling. For the next 30 minutes we had just about the most perfect rotation in the history of breakaways. We didn't utter a single word except for when Brad Huff got a flat tire, then it was back to norm. No one broke the rotation until the last lap, even though we had a good 20 seconds on the field going into the final. Brad Huff lead out the sprint, I thought I had a good jump, came around Huff, but Alder was just too fast and inched up on my left and got me by a wheel's length.
Most of the team left Monday to do the Debates-Devos Criterium up in Michigan. Ryan K got taken out by some dubious racing on Sunday's final lap and broke his bike, so salvaged his losses and went home as well. That left Erik and I for what was supposedly the hardest race of the weekend. A 1.77 mile course with something like 10 turns I thought it would suit my technical riding, plus Erik was feeling good for the day so I thought our chances were pretty good.
Thanks to a call up I started at the front and tried to stay up front knowing that things would be getting ugly behind. I must have been a little too far up because I ended up in ANOTHER breakaway and this time I was definitely the wrong guy to be in the move. Here's the HR file
I know it's not a real 'Power' file but I added about what I thought my power output was for the race. Based on my off the cuff normalized power calculation I probably had about 5734.1 watts of normalized power (JJ said he only averaged 310 for the races.....pfffffffffffffffff weak)
I think my real problem was the fact that our 6 person rotation had me pulling through after David Williams of Bissell and Jonathan Jacob from NUVO. Apparently pulling through after the guy who got 10th at US Pro TT and the guy who won the Elite TT title isn't too good for the legs. If I was thinking I would have tried to shift it up, or take shorter pulls than the soft ball ones I was already taking. But my brain wasn't really getting enough O2, as evident by the fact that after one of my pulls I full-on plowed into a shrub that was hanging into the course.
That was even a couple laps before I got dropped, I started sitting on, but that just really made things worse since I had to accelerate with every guy getting onto the back of the train. With 2 to go I had a full on nuclear detonation when the first acceleration came. I managed to hold off the field that was 30 seconds back for a full half lap. I was pedaling the squarest squares you've ever seen. The 15 person chase group just blew past me like I was standing still. I even almost got caught by the field that was another half lap (three quarters of a mile) behind. I still finished 20th and made a whole $15! Erik got crashed out in the final lap by another airhead dive-bombing a corner. Needless to say it was a bad day.
What's next?
Univest baby
1 comments:
I like the point at 116 minutes where you utilize quantum tunneling to allow your legs to produce two wattages simultaneously. Essentially this gives you four legs of power to work with, just another example of outstanding race craft.
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