Race Report # 7

Tour de Walla Walla by the numbers

# of miles driven (each way) from Seattle to Walla Walla……………………280
# of months ago that I pre-registered for this race……………………………...2
# of times I had to email the race director to change my category (upgrade)…..2
# of acts of God during road race………………………………………………1
# of teammates who sought shelter in liquor store during said act of God…….5
# of bottles of Jaegermeister consumed while there…………………………....1
# of crashes in the criteriums (that I am aware of)……………………………..5
# of riders who went into seizures after crashing………………………………1
# of times the ambulance came to the crit before deciding to just stay..……….4
# of riders permanently injured ………………………………………………..0

So I had been looking forward to this race for quite some time, from all accounts an excellent race. The schedule called for a 5 mile time trial Saturday morning followed by a 93 mile road race Saturday afternoon and a crit on Sunday. This was a stage race (albeit a very short one) meaning that in addition to awards for the top finishers in each race, there is the GC (General Classification) which is the cumulative time for all of the events.

The time trial was a short, but deceptively difficult course. There were a few small rolling hills and a very strange wind pattern that tended to swirl around and act as either a headwind or crosswind depending on course location and time of day. There isn’t much to report about time trials; the guy in front of you goes off , you roll up to the start line, they hold you at the start line, 30 seconds after the guy before you, you are off. There are different approaches to time trialling, some like to pretend they are the only ones on the road and make it a very solitary event pushing their bodies as hard as they think it can take, others use an analytical approach involving power and heartrate monitors. As for myself, I just pretend that the guy who started in front of me stole my wallet and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him get away with it. What happens when I catch him you ask—well I could try to run him off the road and get my wallet back, but I generally just pretend that the next guy has it. In this fashion I managed to catch both my 30 second and minute men (the riders who started 30 seconds and one minute ahead of me), and I was closing on my 1:30 man, but he crossed the finish line about 15 seconds before me. My goal was to get in the top ten. I knew that it was an aggressive goal, I also thought that it was a reachable one. When the results were posted I was 11th out of 82. It left me with a mixture of feelings, excitement that I am in the neighborhood of where I want to be, but disappointment that I haven’t made it there yet.

Time trials are all about maintaining the highest possible power output while reducing the amount of drag you receive from wind resistance. The first part of that (power) is training and to a certain extent genetics, no quick fix available there. The second part, (reducing wind resistance) is mostly equipment, and a little bit of technique. I’m part way there, I have a pretty sweet time trial bike and a skin suit (as tight as you think that bike clothes are to start with, these are tighter), what I lack and the ten people who placed above me all have is aero wheels, aero helmet, and maybe even time spent in a wind tunnel fine tuning their position to get the least possible drag. Conventional wisdom says that a top notch set of aero wheels can yield as much as 40 seconds over 10 miles. This course was 5 miles which would chop that down to 20 seconds. Just to be conservative I’ll say it would only be worth 10 seconds. If I had been 10 seconds faster I would have made the top ten easily, and I think it would have been good enough for me to get into the top five. I’m not complaining here, I’m excited. This means that I’m already competitive in the power department, and I know that I’ve got plenty of room for improvement in both training and equipment.

After the time trial it was ‘hang out in the parking lot until the road race starts’ time. A few hours later 1:30 rolls around and we started the road race. Eastern Washington is quite beautiful in that stark rolling hills of yellows and green as far as the eye can see sort of way. With so few trees and buildings to break up the landscape it just seems larger than life. Of course I don’t have much time to take it in because I’m staring at the spandex clad bootie in front of me making sure that I don’t run into it. The race starts off easy enough with some small rolling hills and one or two riders attacking to test the waters, but nothing that stays away for more than a few minutes. As we were riding up one of the slight inclines one rider in front of me starts gesturing for everyone on the right side of the road behind him to move left while his teammate beside him starts pushing him up the hill. In my experience such a gesture has indicated a car, pothole, or other obstacle approaching on the side of the road indicated. I was already on the left side of the road but was momentarily confused when I noticed that the rider signaling for everyone to move over wasn’t moving over himself. It all became clear a second later when a steady stream of liquid and a very contented groaning started emanating from the rider in question. I recall a tear coming to my eye and thinking
“Wow…I’ve made it to the big time, people are peeing off their bikes…wait, that was a tear in my eye, right?”
Just kidding about the tear thing. Back to the road race. A few small to midsize climbs later we were heading through the town of Waitsburg. My teammates had told me to move to the front going through this town because the big climb of the course was just after, so that is what I tried to do. I managed to get into the top twenty five or so when we made a right turn onto what I correctly assumed to be “the climb.”

The day wasn’t particularly hot for eastern Washington, but it had been warm and largely sunny all day long. After making the turn we were slammed with a wall of wind and the temperature dropped by five or ten degrees instantly. More imposing than that though was the top of the climb. It was black. How a giant thunderhead like that sneaks up on you I may never fully understand, but none-the-less, there it was. At this point the effort has picked up on the climb and I’m thing to myself that this could really be getting interesting when lighting strikes start going off on either side of the hill we’re climbing. The effect was a very strange one, almost a sense of vertigo as it felt like we were ascending into the abyss…contradictions aside it was very cool. Halfway up the hill (~2 miles total) I had moved up to the top 15 or so and was working hard, but feeling comfortable and ready to pick up the pace if the need called for it. I was focusing on the front of the race but I found out later that on that climb we were shedding riders off the back of the pack at a steady rate leaving them to suffer up the hill in the wind by themselves. Half a mile from the crest of the hill the skies opened up dumping pea sized rain onto us that developed into hail as we approached the crest of the climb. The lightning flashes had picked up and the crashing of thunder could be felt in the cavity of your chest. At the top of the climb was the feed zone which is typically a chaotic mess of racers trying to grab bottles on the go, with the addition of hail and an electrical storm it was pretty much pandemonium. I finished off one of my bottles threw it into the feed zone and started the descent with the feeling that this was going to be a truly epic ride. Half a mile later the lead car pulled us over declaring the race cancelled due to the lightning.

I won’t say that they made the wrong decision or that I don’t understand it, but I was disappointed. The day seemed tailor made for me to do well. The climb was long and grueling and just steep enough (5%) to be cause trouble without penalizing my size too much. The head wind made it very difficult for the really light true climbers to get away off the front and it would have been impossible for them to stay away once the descent started. The weather was bad but I firmly believe that it was worse for everyone else. After commuting on bike to work all winter long in the Pacific Northwest there is very little weather that can phase me.

The race was officially cancelled so I figured that I would ride back to the start line, but they wouldn’t let us do that and sent us back to the top of the hill (probably the worst place to send us in a thunderstorm) so that we could catch rides from the feed zone back to the start line.

My teammates on the cat 4/5 squad were in the race behind us that had been stopped in the town at the bottom of the hill. Most teams sought shelter in the fire station, but my team (Whines of Washington, soon to be nicknamed Winos of Washington) found shelter in a liquor store, and one of them was carrying cash (unusual for a race) so they bought a bottle of Jaeger and went to town. It’s the first time that I’ve really regretted upgrading.

Sunday brought the crit which represented the final stage. Seeing as how there were no road race results I remained in 11th place overall. Crits very nearly always end in a pack finish unless there is some sort of hill on the course in order to break up the tempo. This course was six corners and dead flat. My race was the last one of the day and by the time I showed up and put my bike on the trainer to warm up there had already been three big crashes with three people sent to the hospital, not a good omen. After the women’s pro-1-2-3 race was over it was time for the men’s pro-1-2. I took my bike off the trainer and headed towards the start line when I noticed that the tire I had pumped up just over an hour ago was 80% flat. I didn’t have time to do anything but pump up the tire and get to the start line where I was already in the very back. Not a good thing as this is a course that gets very strung out and is notoriously difficult to move up on. Despite being in the back I manage to start better than most of the field and get to the midpoint of the pack before the first corner. The first few laps are brutal averaging well over 30 mph, but I maintain my position and settle into a rhythm of sorts. About 10 minutes into the hour long race there is a big crash that takes out five riders, I get hit but don’t go down though it’s enough to mess up my front derailer. My chain is now grinding incessantly against my derailer. I’m not sure if this qualifies as a malfunction that qualifies one for a pit stop, but the referees have neutralized the race so I figure that I can pull over for a lap and have the mechanic take a look at it. I do and he does, but he can’t do anything and I’m back in the race with the chain problem a slow leak in my rear tire and (unbeknownst to me at the time) a rear wheel that has been knocked out of true and is rubbing on the breakpad every revolution. The race progresses with me growing more and more anxious about the wheel below me but there is nothing I can do short of dropping out of the race which I am unwilling to do. I move forward and backward in the pack from lap to lap but the general trend is forward. Coming across the start/finish line I hear that there are eight laps to go and no more pit stops will be allowed. I haven’t crashed yet and I’m feeling relatively strong so I figure I should try and get myself to the front to see if I can place. Over the next four laps I work myself up to the top ten riders—both a very good place to be with four laps to go and a far easier thing said than done. With two and a half laps to go I feel my rear tire starting to slide underneath me on the turns and looking down I can see that it is soft. If I want to try and place I’m going to have to take the corners sharper and faster than I have all race, and it just doesn’t sound like a good idea on such a sketchy tire. All I need to do to guarantee an 11th place finish is finish the race so I sit up, start taking the corners easy and finish the race in the pack with a bike that needs some TLC, but remains, like my body, in one piece.

I’m bummed that my equipment crapped out on me to a certain extent, but once again I’m excited that the power looks like it is there to start getting some top ten finishes and the technique is progressing though it definitely still needs work. I don’t think that I will be racing next weekend, but I should be the following.

-James

P.S. Special thanks go out to Debi and Jim (the 69th and 70th members of the distribution list) for hosting my teammate and I over the weekend. You ROCK!