RACE REPORT #3

To the new folks I added to the list; This is a weekly waste of both my time and yours detailing the results of the weekends (bicycle) racing. Enjoy, delete, whatever.

This week’s race report brings both good and terrible results. It’s inevitable that racing involves crashing, and every year there are one or two truly nasty crashes…but first;

The official second edition of “Last week BY THE NUMBERS ”

Number of upgrades applied for and accepted…..……………1
Amount of prize money won……………………………….$75
Amount of money spent (YTD) on race entry fees……..….$123
Amount spent on cycling in general…………....…I plead the 5th
Number of teammates getting new titanium hip………...………1

Well I’ll start with the bad news, you read that last item correctly, right now as I type this my teammate Guy Browne is undergoing surgery to have a partial hip replacement. In the Saturday Mason Lake #3 race the field sprint was even more chaotic than normal because our race was passing the Masters A/B (fast guys over 30 as opposed to Masters C/D which is slow(er) guys over 30) field that started ahead of us right at the finish line on the final lap. I wasn’t there to see it but apparently the confusion resulted in some riders crashing into Guy and he went down hard causing a dislocated finger and broken hip. On the bright (well--slightly less dark) side he is expected to be back on the bike in five weeks. He won’t be racing in five weeks, but he can start his way back. It’s really a bummer because he’s a fun, friendly, strong guy…err…Guy.

The crash was largely due to bad officiating. The two fields should never have been within half a mile of each other at the finish. Normally the lead car would neutralize one of the fields so that the other could either get away or pass the slower depending on the case. Part of the problem was that the lead car was already ahead of the Masters A/B field which is where three other riders and I were. Eight of us had broken away early in lap two of four (48 miles total). Nearing the end of the final lap it was down to four of us in the breakaway, two riders I didn’t know and Phil; the rider that I broke away with last week at Mason Lake #2. In the dippity-doos (not actually a cycling term, but seems as good as anything to describe small rolling hills) before the finish we shed one of the final four when the pace started coming up. About two or three miles to the finish the other rider that I didn’t know dropped off with a flat tire. I felt really bad for him, he had been working for 30+ miles in this break away and only had a few left to go when through no fault of his own he was taken out of the race. As we approached the finish Phil and I both started letting up not wanting to pull the other into the sprint, which is exactly what I did and why I lost last week. We pulled into the sprint zone (200 meters to go) roughly even with me about half a length down but rolling relatively slow ~20mph. I started to pull even and Phil gunned it with 150 to go. This time I was on the ball and took off with him I was ahead by half a length with 100 to go and with about 50 meters to go I heard him yelling “nice sprint” and I finished about two lengths in front. It felt good. That all went away a few minutes later when the field sprint came in and I found out about Guy. I never actually saw him because he crashed at the finish line a little under a mile up the road from the parking lot where I was cooling down. He was in bad shape though. It had rained hard the entire race he (and everyone else) was exhausted from the effort, he was going into shock and lying on the cold wet pavement was making him shake uncontrollably. While I don’t doubt that hypothermia was getting ready to set in the team had driven a car down there and thrown a half dozen jackets on him until the ambulance arrived. The good news is he is as OK as can reasonably be expected and is in good spirits. We have a really supportive team; he has received at least a dozen visitors and tons of emails.

That’s all I’m going to say on Guy, I’m sure that my mother is already convinced that an 18 wheeler will land on my head if I even look at my bicycle again.

Sunday I used the seven points earned on Saturday combined with the 15 that I already had and upgraded to the cat 3 squad. The race was in Sequim (pronounced skwim for those of you not from the Northwest) and it was 72 miles over seven laps. Sequim is on the Olympic Peninsula in a flat but notoriously windy location, Sunday was certainly no exception. There was one portion of the course where the speed limit was 35 mph and I was having no problem breaking the speed limit. The first lap had a few people (myself included) testing the pack with some accelerations and little break away attempts, but nothing that stuck for long. Early in the second lap a group of five or six riders went off the front, but one of them was on my team so I sat on the front of the pack doing my best to block others from chasing the break down. Shortly thereafter one of my teammates yelled “James, why the %$&#* are you blocking?” which is when I noticed that my teammate along with several others had been dropped by the break. Seeing this I stepped on it and bridged up to them. Once I had bridged there were four of us working together fairly well for a few miles in which we managed to open up a gap of a few hundred meters. Then the two smaller riders in the group started crapping out and stopped pulling through. It’s more difficult for little riders in big winds, but they stopped pulling altogether which didn’t motivate me or the other big guy to keep pulling with them along for a free ride. All of us sat up and started riding easy when the other biggish rider took off. I let him get a ways out and then bridged up to join him leaving the two wheel suckers (cycling term for a person who will just draft off of you never taking their turn at the front) behind to get swallowed up by the pack. At this point we are only 15 miles or so into a 72 mile race, but what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The other rider (I never got his name) and I start taking thirty second pulls each and just as we are starting lap three the lead car pulls back and informs us that we have opened up a one minute fifteen second gap. We keep trucking and by the start of lap four we have opened up the gap to 2:05. This sounds real nice but we are still less than half way through the race. The next couple of laps were more of the same with one exciting little moment when I dropped my chain while climbing up one of the three small hills. My partner in crime was drafting at the time and was kind enough to give me a little push while I shifted the chain back on. After telling us that we had a 2:05 lead at the start of lap four we never heard from the lead car again so we were riding blind, only knowing that in these kinds of situations the breakaway tends to get slower as the race wears on while the peloton tends to speed up. Starting the final (seventh) lap I was willing the lead car to give us a gap report with all my might, but to no avail whatsoever. The start of the final lap also meant that we would be in the tailwind again which was a much welcome relief. After spending 50 miles off the front my legs were feeling it. Unfortunately the other guy’s legs were feeling it more. Towards the end of the sixth lap he had started taking shorter and shorter pulls, starting the final lap they were down to about 5 seconds which is just enough time for him to pull in front of me and pull off to the side which didn’t provide me with any rest. I stopped pulling off and just started pulling. Just after the start/finish line was the first hill of the loop. He dropped like a stone. I felt bad about it because we had been working hard and well together, but at the same time it’s every racer for himself, and he was blowing up big time. I put my head down and started time trialing like my life depended on it. I knew that I had to fly in the tailwind because the pack was sure to be moving faster than me once I got to the headwind. My legs were toast and they would definitely be ramping it up especially after swallowing up the last breakaway rider. With a little over three miles to go I looked back and I could see the flashing lights of the peloton’s lead car less than a mile behind me and I was still riding straight into the headwind. After that I just put my head down and went. I didn’t look back until the one kilometer to go sign when I looked back and I knew I had it. I pushed out the last thousand meters finishing a little under a minute in front of the field sprint. The officials in my lead and follow car stuck there heads out and said “that was awesome” at which point I told them Saturday I had been a cat 4 rider. They just stared at me. I felt like a total beast.

That being said it didn’t happen because I was stronger than the field. Breakaways only succeed when there is too much infighting and not enough cooperation in the pack to reel the break back in. I worked hard, but I got really lucky too. It also helped that I had six teammates in the pack breaking up the rhythm, and blocking to the best of their ability. It was a great race by all accounts.

To top it all off in the results I was listed as
1st place: James Strangelove

If only I had gotten my PhD…

-Strangelove