RACE REPORT #1
Friends, family, random people that I met in traveling and have in my address book;
First of all a quick update for those of you that I haven’t spoken to in a really long time. I’m back in Seattle got a job working at Boeing and generally having a good time. Back in late October I joined a cycling team (Wines of Washinton/Rauxa) and we just had our first race weekend which means this is the first of (hopefully) many successful race reports.
Actually it’s just a good way for me to waste my lunch break.
I know that many of you aren’t interested/have A.D.D. so the quick version is that on the Saturday road race I got 3rd out of 52 and on the Sunday time trial I got 1st out of 59. More details are below, but if you don’t care and never want to receive another race report just let me know (the more expletives that you cram into the title and body of the email, the faster that I will get you off of the list.)
Saturday was the first race in the Mason Lake series, a set of three races over three weekends. The course is a pretty flat 12 mile loop around (you guessed it) Mason Lake, last weekend the race was three laps, next weekend it will be three laps and then the final weekend it will be four laps. This weekend I started out farther back in the pack than I should have because it was incredibly difficult to move forward in the pack. It took me 18 miles to get from the middle of the pack up to the front. It wasn’t because the pace was terribly fast, but it was just so crowded on this little road and there weren’t any hills to spread things out and move people around. Early in the last lap before I got to the front a few riders broke away. Two of them were quickly swallowed by the peloton, but the third was stronger and stayed out. When I did get to the front I tried to bridge to the rider up the road. I was steadily gaining on him for about six or seven miles when the pack started turning up the screws and I started getting pretty tired so they reeled me back in. Unfortunately when they caught me they just stopped chasing even though the other guy was less than 40 meters up the road. Not long after we passed the 1000 meters to go sign things started getting really squirrelly, one guy two rows up from me freaked out when someone touched his shoulder and swerved across traffic clipping the front wheel of one of my teammates (right in front of me) sending him and at least 10 or 15 other people into the ground. I managed to swerve left and avoid going down. No one was chasing because they were all saving themselves for the sprint, so I decided to get up front and try to start something (I didn’t want him to get away if I couldn’t). Unfortunately while they were perfectly happy to let me pull them all towards the finish line no one else was willing to take a pull that late in the game. With about 200-250 meters left my teammate Guy made an early break for the sprint and I caught his wheel to tag along. I was pretty gassed from my solo breakaway attempt earlier in the race and it was a really long sprint with me expecting the whole time that someone was about to come around me, but they never did. So Guy took second, I took third, another teammate took 4th and another 6th. All in all, a very good showing from our team for the first race.
The time trial was substantially less exciting as it is an individual race against the clock instead of a big pack event, but then again I did quite a bit better which was cool. It was a ten mile course, five miles out, and five back. Other than when my rear tire slid out from underneath me at the turnaround it was uneventful. The cool part is that not only did I win, but I beat second place (a teammate, and my minute man) by 1:41 seconds. For those of you not familiar with time trials they are usually decided by seconds or fractions of seconds, 30 seconds is a thrashing and 1:41 is ridiculous especially over a course that short.
Hopefully I’ll upgrade fairly quickly, at least that’s the goal. Those of you that I haven't talked to in a while, drop me a line and say hi.
More next week
Friends, family, random people that I met in traveling and have in my address book;
First of all a quick update for those of you that I haven’t spoken to in a really long time. I’m back in Seattle got a job working at Boeing and generally having a good time. Back in late October I joined a cycling team (Wines of Washinton/Rauxa) and we just had our first race weekend which means this is the first of (hopefully) many successful race reports.
Actually it’s just a good way for me to waste my lunch break.
I know that many of you aren’t interested/have A.D.D. so the quick version is that on the Saturday road race I got 3rd out of 52 and on the Sunday time trial I got 1st out of 59. More details are below, but if you don’t care and never want to receive another race report just let me know (the more expletives that you cram into the title and body of the email, the faster that I will get you off of the list.)
Saturday was the first race in the Mason Lake series, a set of three races over three weekends. The course is a pretty flat 12 mile loop around (you guessed it) Mason Lake, last weekend the race was three laps, next weekend it will be three laps and then the final weekend it will be four laps. This weekend I started out farther back in the pack than I should have because it was incredibly difficult to move forward in the pack. It took me 18 miles to get from the middle of the pack up to the front. It wasn’t because the pace was terribly fast, but it was just so crowded on this little road and there weren’t any hills to spread things out and move people around. Early in the last lap before I got to the front a few riders broke away. Two of them were quickly swallowed by the peloton, but the third was stronger and stayed out. When I did get to the front I tried to bridge to the rider up the road. I was steadily gaining on him for about six or seven miles when the pack started turning up the screws and I started getting pretty tired so they reeled me back in. Unfortunately when they caught me they just stopped chasing even though the other guy was less than 40 meters up the road. Not long after we passed the 1000 meters to go sign things started getting really squirrelly, one guy two rows up from me freaked out when someone touched his shoulder and swerved across traffic clipping the front wheel of one of my teammates (right in front of me) sending him and at least 10 or 15 other people into the ground. I managed to swerve left and avoid going down. No one was chasing because they were all saving themselves for the sprint, so I decided to get up front and try to start something (I didn’t want him to get away if I couldn’t). Unfortunately while they were perfectly happy to let me pull them all towards the finish line no one else was willing to take a pull that late in the game. With about 200-250 meters left my teammate Guy made an early break for the sprint and I caught his wheel to tag along. I was pretty gassed from my solo breakaway attempt earlier in the race and it was a really long sprint with me expecting the whole time that someone was about to come around me, but they never did. So Guy took second, I took third, another teammate took 4th and another 6th. All in all, a very good showing from our team for the first race.
The time trial was substantially less exciting as it is an individual race against the clock instead of a big pack event, but then again I did quite a bit better which was cool. It was a ten mile course, five miles out, and five back. Other than when my rear tire slid out from underneath me at the turnaround it was uneventful. The cool part is that not only did I win, but I beat second place (a teammate, and my minute man) by 1:41 seconds. For those of you not familiar with time trials they are usually decided by seconds or fractions of seconds, 30 seconds is a thrashing and 1:41 is ridiculous especially over a course that short.
Hopefully I’ll upgrade fairly quickly, at least that’s the goal. Those of you that I haven't talked to in a while, drop me a line and say hi.
More next week
posted by Jamie Stangeland at Monday, March 07, 2005
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