I've never done a stage race and I don't know how I feel about them, because Collegiate racing demands that you can race hard one day and race hard again the following day. Make that 5 or 6 days in a row, then you've got a decent stage race. Make that 21 days, and I'll shoot myself.
This is what makes me glad that I don't have the genes to be that good. Racing at a low volume is really fun at my ability, but this weekend my racing volume was really high and I went hard for each of the races because I was so excited to be back (and surprised).
Men's B Race Start
How the heck do you spell "Men's B?" Uhh anyways I'm glad I'm not doing this as a school paper or something.
Our race started fairly on time, but we got there early when it was cold foggy and slightly wet. To make matters worse, the Porta Potties didn't arrive on time. Thankfully they arrived well enough before our race. The sun was coming out as the fog burned away, and I did a slightly-okay warm-up of about 20 minutes with one threshold interval and one 10 second sprint. My warm-up ended perfectly, right when the awaiting B riders were allowed to get on the field to warm up.
I got right into the moment when we started, despite not having our teammate Yao with us because he missed the start (he still took awesome photos & did the E4 race). The pace was comfortable, lots of chit-chat again. I was wondering when I should make a move. There were little attacks here and there, but not much response from the pack.
When you notice that pack isn't responding to attacks and moves, you should use it to your advantage. However, I stayed with the pack for a good amount of time in the start. There was a prime bell on the second lap! Hmm...was the official trying to summon me out already? Nope. I finally joined an attack, when a rider who I marked as a strong rider went off the front alone.
The Peloton is a Scary Place
The course is actually fairly safe--at least to me. Very good pavement, minimal bot dots that were easy to avoid with a clean line, and wide roads to accommodate the squirrely guys. With that said, this race was not very sketchy, but when the attack that I wanted to join went off, I didn't know much after that because for the majority of the race I was spending time in a bunch of different breaks.
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| Photo taken by Yao Saeturn |
I joined the UC Irvine rider and we gave each other the "I don't know you, you don't know me, but let's work together" look and so we did. Half a lap later, a UC Davis rider who I also understood as a really strong rider joined the break, and finally a UCSB rider who I didn't know also joined.
At this point I actually thought the break would stay, mainly because these guys were strong, and also because I knew there were a lot of UCSB riders and Davis riders, and I thought they'd block the pack. But they didn't, and for around 4 laps we had a decent-sized gap and we were trading pulls evenly. Eventually the UC Irvine rider lost faith in us and retreated back into the pack so I was only working with the UC Davis Guy and I forgot what happened to the UCSB guy.
Next a UCSC guy attacked and bridged up to me and the Davis guy, and we traded pulls again for a couple of laps. THEN a UCSB guy bridges and does a bunch of long pulls and drops the other two guys. I was rotating with him and he was really pushing me, saying that we had a good gap and he was telling me to go faster. Ah man. He had a lot of legs in him so he attacked me and went off solo.
The Race End
Toward the middle of the race when I was up front, there was a rider lying on the side who stayed in that position for a long time. It turns out he was okay but the EMTs were called out and the race was neutralized.
This gave the UCSB rider, who was 15 seconds ahead, a great advantage because I knew nobody in the pack wanted to work before the field sprint. At first I was debating whether I should bridge up but I decided against it, slightly because my legs didn't really want to do that.
So I went ahead and contested the field sprint, the UCSB rider won 3 seconds ahead of us. I ended up taking 5th in the field sprint for 6th place, and that was a surprise after spending plenty of time in breaks and what not! Looks like my criterium fitness is pretty established, so I can't wait to expand on it!
Mens E4 Race
About 2 hours later Yao, Eric, and I did the Men's E4 race. This race was pretty uneventful, apart from a few attacks that Yao made. I used this race to learn a little more about myself, but the pace was so easy that it didn't even seem like a race. The wind direction had also changed, there was now a tailwind on the backside and a headwind on the finish line side and the final corner. For most of this race, I stayed in the very back where I was comfortable and actually safe. There was a lot of braking in the corners and even in the headwind, because I guess people up at the front didn't want to pull hard so they feathered their cadence a bit.
This race was also more sketchier than the Men's B race because a lot of riders were making out-of-line shifts and sudden jerks. Luckily, people must have been paying plenty of attention to avoid a crash.
I looked at my time and it was approaching 20 minutes. I decided that I would make a move soon. Our race was 40 minutes and I knew that I could decently hold a 10 minute effort. Or well I at least estimated that I could, so I attacked when it hit 28 minutes which was the 6-laps-to go point.
I had a decent gap but they caught me with 3-to-go, and I sat in before the final sprint. I actually had enough energy to move up for the final sprint, but I took a bad line before the final corner, and when the final corner hit, the headwind was so strong that I couldn't firmly choose a gear to sprint with.
After all that, I ended up 16th, which wasn't too bad despite yesterday and today's race.
Racing 3 races sure made me tired though. I'm taking two days off because I have a lot of fatigue and also an irritated throat, probably due to all of the heavy breathing I did haha. I'm hoping I don't need to take 3 days off but I'm way over my planned training hours (about 3 hours ahead) so I have a cushion, but I don't want to lose 3 days of training or else I'd have to re-do my training plan.
Stay tuned for the Stanford Race Reports which will be my next race(s).
-DB
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
― Mother Teresa
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