Race Report for Fort Lee Crit 5/3/09
Despite some serious misgivings about the weather, I headed down to race the Ft. Lee Crit yesterday. It poured nearly all the way there, and apparently, had poured at the race earlier in the day, but for our Cat 4 race, the last of the slate, it was dry. This was a double blessing — I’m not a big fan of racing in the rain in general, but this particular course is in bad shape, with many holes and ruts. What it would have been like with 28 Cat 4s in the rain makes me shudder. The organizers helpfully marked the obstacles with orange paint, which transformed some parts of course, especially turn one, into a field of polka dots.
At the start, it was clear which team had the advantage — it seemed as if half the field were Team Nature’s Path (TNP). That determined the plan for the day — don’t let a break with a TNP rider go without me because they will block like crazy. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what happened (minus me, unfortunately, but more on that later). I started in the second row, but was still able to move up to top 8 by the first turn. I stayed up front without a problem, covering the occasional move. Not too long in, a prime was rung and a rider from Rostello (I think) jumped early. I sat on his wheel until the finishing straight when Oliver from TNP opened up the sprint. Fortunately for me, he went a bit early and I was able to come around. Prime in the bag, I had a small gap, so I settled down to ride just above threshold and see how long I could last. I was eventually joined by two others, but unfortunately, we were caught.
The race then settled into its predictable pattern of attack and mass chase, with nothing sticking. I surfed the front, taking only the shortest of pulls when I did percolate to the front, and generally staying out of trouble. With may be 10 laps to go, another prime rang out. Following my dictum of conserve, conserve, conserve, I did just enough to stay in contact with the front group. A TNP rider took the prime and kept going. And here I made my first mistake by not following or jumping across immediately because as expected, TNP covered every move and when there wasn’t a move on, they clogged the front. I tried a few times to get something going, but couldn’t get anything organized. It was just after one such attempt that another rider (from Hefler, I believe) jumped away .
And here was my second mistake as I watched him go; he was quickly out of range of my jump, the only way I’m going to bridge with my current level of fitness, and was off in pursuit of the TNP rider. I tried again to get a bridge organized, but every time I got a gap, the only riders who seemed to be with me were more TNP — chapeau to those guys for really controlling the race.
In the finale, a suicide prime was rung for a burrito and Jordan Whiley must have been hungry for he went after it, won it, and starting the bell lap had a bit of a gap. Seeing that, I jumped after him just before turn 1, got up to him, shouted what I meant as encouragement to get on, but god only knows what I actually said, and kept going. I had a decent gap, I thought, on the back stretch, through turns 3 and 4, but then coming into the finishing stretch, my legs really locked up. And here I made my final mistake — when I hit 200 m, I didn’t start sprinting. It wouldn’t have been much of a sprint and I suspect I would have been caught any way, but I wouldn’t have been swamped as I was, going from 3rd to finishing 13th.
As always, I try to learn a few things from every race. Some are obvious — sticking to the plan to mark all TNP breaks would have been a good one, but some not so. For one, I was able to talk myself off the podium. Part of me just couldn’t believe I would hold off the field on that last lap, and I didn’t turn myself inside out trying to sprint to the line. This point was hammered home when looking at the file in wko+. In that last 15″ or so after turn 4 and certainly after 200m, my power hovered around 300-350watts. I can and have hit much higher numbers at the end of an anaerobic interval, but I didn’t silence that voice of disbelief (the one muttering “what in the world are you doing up here”) effectively enough and wound up off the podium and out of the upgrade points on a day I had really good legs.