2014 UC Berkeley (Crockett) Mens B Road Race Report

This race report was made possible by Noli at Putnam Toyota in Burlingame.

*Thanks to Craig Huffman for shooting all of these awesome photos across almost all categories at this Race! Be sure to check out & support his work at www.craighuffman.com!*

I just changed my bandages from the aftermath of the UC Berkeley Criterium, but I'm feeling really good! This past weekend was a bit bizarre. I'll say the good news, which was that I've earned some more upgrade points making me one-fourth Cat 3. My result at the road race helped me stay positive throughout the weekend despite all the incidences. I also had a wonderful time seeing other SFSU Cyclists compete for their first time or improve upon last year. We are such a great team :)

The Cal, Crockett Road Race is tied as my favorite with UCSC's. I did fairly well last year and was looking forward to repeating that. However, my form was very bad--after coming from hard consecutive workouts integrated with 3-race weekends. I was definitely fatigued during the week, and so I took two easy days and did an unstructured ride with some hills to tune up for the race.

Eric, Christian, and I warmed up by going up & down Cummings Skyway and turning around before it descended. I felt pretty good during the warm-up so I was looking even more forward to how things would turn out.

Lap 1
We left the start line and within 30 seconds someone had flatted! Yikes! We went up Cummings Skyway, which isn't much of a climb compared to McEwen, but it was fun. The descent was great! I forgot to mention, I put on a new Cassette with 11-28T for a) descending and b) climbing (with high RPMs!). I had no problem keeping up on the descent unlike in previous races. We cruised through the really short climb after the descent, then we made our way to the twisty Paradise-Loop like rollers. Yada yada yada we arrived at McEwen, made the right turn and I was already grinding the 34t-28t!!! Although I was able to spin over 90rpm, it was still a grind! I was also in the back, which made me work harder to not lost contact with the lead group. From the back, I could already see that someone had attacked. Like most people, I predicted that he wouldn't stay away (we had 4 laps to do), so nobody responded. I was already maxed out, and due to my form I couldn't do anything. After the climb, everything was fine. I was feeling good, and I moved up almost effortlessly to the front of the pack, and we can see the soloist, who had about 30 seconds on us.

Lap 2
The second time around was pretty much the same. The soloist was still in our view so we felt like we had no reason to go too hard. Felt okay on the rollers, terrible on McEwen. I was afraid I wasn't going to keep up by the 3rd or even the 4th lap, but I fought hard. Moved up again on Franklin Canyon, but we couldn't see the guy from UCSB off the front anymore. The feed zone told us he had over 1 minute on us!

Lap 3
Lap 3 would've had to be the determining lap, but nobody really wanted to work. Mark from UCSC had surged up a few times but no one wanted to rotate. This was especially annoying because a teammate from the UCSB would always get the front when nobody worked (good tactic on his part.) I tried to attack on Cummings Skyway, but I only got the group to surge along with me. I dropped back and noticed that it was again the UCSB guy behind me. On the descent, I was moving pretty quicker than others even without pedaling, so I was able to get to the front effortlessly to trade off with Christian. Next thing I know, Eric comes around me and tells me not to work so he takes a pull leading into the right turn.

Thank you to Craig Huffman for this photo.

We did go a little harder on the rolling sections, and even harder on McEwen. In fact, this was the race determining moment because the strong UCSB guy (not the one in the break) and a UCLA guy attacked and went off together. The field had exploded and the chase group consisted of 5 guys including me and Christian, but Eric had gotten dropped on McEwen. We went through the rollers of McEwen pretty hard to chase the break fighting for 2nd.

Lap 4
On the final lap my mental game which had been missing at Stanford had kicked in! My goal was to settle for 4th if it came down to that; ie. not catching the two guys and the guy OTF (we didn't). In the group of 5, Christian and Mark were working the most. I tried working too but I knew I if I went too hard, there'd be a high chance I'd get dropped on McEwen. So, I stayed in the back of the group for most of the time.

Me behind Christian, thank you again to Craig Huffman.

On McEwen, I had to do a lot just to stay in the group. I didn't want to be the one who got dropped from the chase group...yikes! During the climb, I was hoping nobody would attack. We actually saw the two guys off of the front, so I was expecting it. However, I told the group we were going at a good pace (according to my power numbers =p) and that would've enabled us (or me) to go harder at the end of the climb where it would matter most. If Christian did (like last year) that would've been awesome, but even he was working just enough to maintain a good position. With nobody attacking, I was able to focus on potentially taking the small field (uphill) sprint.

It was very awkward since it would be my first time contesting a high-placing (considering there were upgrade points for grabs still) in such a small group, but my seasonal goal depended on this, and so it was a good time to truly test if the hard work I put in to training would pay off!

The finishing effort started early in the flat-ish part. Uphill finishes were something I practiced quite a bit back when training neuromuscular power, but I felt confident so I went along with an early move, not quite at max, but hard enough! There was enough road for all 5 of us to contest it, so I went hard once I felt good enough and didn't look back. Once I saw SFSU cheering I dialed to a maximum effort & was completely exhausted just short of the finish line, but was indeed able to grab 4th place!

My overall performance wasn't the best, due to the regression in my form, but thanks to my hard work, I was able to maintain a baseline fitness which allowed me to stay on the climbs and win the uphill field sprint. I am getting closer to my peak fitness so I am definitely looking forward to seeing how I'll be then, but first I need to take care of some minor crash aftermath for a few days. Hopefully it doesn't push me back by too far, but either way I'm really satisfied with this present season.

-- DB