Summary, First in my age division 40-44, but more importantly, first OVER ALL!!! Time 54:46, was also the fastest time recorded for that event since they've been doing it, and was nearly 3 minutes faster than the old record, so I am one happy camper. 🙂
I don't do much racing, based on where I live, and really only get to do 1 real race a year. BUT, that said, it's my personal Tour de' France, so to speak, and I'm dang proud of it. 🙂 It's a victory for all of us guys with jobs only putting in about 2500-3000 miles a year.
Here's the story. It's our "State Games". It's 20 miles, 700 feet of climbing, 3900 feet in elevation. I ended up losing a chain at the 2004 games with 6 miles to go, lost my break away group, and that was that, I finished alone about 3 minutes out of the hunt, for a final position of 13th over all and 3rd in my age division. I was running in the lead group when the bike dropped the chain, and I'd been thinking, "what if" for the last year.
This summer I trained harder, ate better, lost a few pounds and had a plan. I REALLY wanted to win. I was familiar with the course, it's distances, how far I could sprint, and at what intensities, the whole she-bang... I was ready this year.
Here's the race:
It's a mass start, with 3 total groups. The 20, 40, 60 mile groups. We ride up the road about 2 miles, we hang a right, go down this deep valley, and the long mileage guys go on a different course. I knew I wanted to be one of the first riders to the corner so I could see where everybody was and keep track of who went by. I got in with a group of about 10-12 riders that started to seperate from the rest of the pack. I did my fair share of pace making and we had a good line going. There was one large guy that decended like a rocket, I wasted a lot of energy catching him the first time. Then realized he slowed on the flats and we caught him everytime, so I quit trying to go after him.
We got to the bottom of the hills, at the turnaround. There are still about 10-12 of us in the lead group. I'm trying to stay in the front 5 in case somebody cracks or breaks away, you'd have time to react. I look back, and the second group is a fair distance back, not likely to catch us. We hit the first 5% and before it's over, we lost 2 riders. Second bit of 5% we lost a few more. By the 3rd bit of 4-5% I looked back and we lost everybody but me and 2 other riders. Just the 3 of us. We worked together pretty hard to keep the lead. some of the stuff we went up last year at 10.8-11mph we were going up at 15 mph this year. I felt pretty strong. Legs were good. I did feel like I was short on air a few times, and came really close on one climb to falling off the back. That's when I started to pay attention to how much work I should be doing up front, so I've got enough left to still hang on to the back and recover a bit. I stayed on the front a few times to 165-170hr, and then decided that I should stop about 160-165 instead. Blow up on the front, and it seems as though you got nothing left to hang onto the back when it's your turn to recover.
The 3 of us get out of the valley hit the flatter stuff and averaged 23.5mph to the finish line for the last 4 miles. We continued to work together right up until I decided it was time for the sprint. I had been training more than usual, and new I could crush it for over a mile if I had to. BUT if the other 2 guys worked together, they might have caught me. I waited until we were 1/2 mile out, and I went for it. I'd have rather gone and failed than sat there watching somebody else go.
My pulse was 160 when I started the sprint, and I'd been holding that for about the last 5 minutes. I'm in third on the road, the guy in front finishes his pull at the front, as he comes back past me, I open it up, it's a half mile now to go. I don't mean that I just make an acceleration, I mean harder than I had ever opened it up ever, EVER! I lost last year because of a mechanical difficulty, and I wanted this pretty bad to prove to myself I could do it. I'd had a year to sulk and wallow, and I was NOT going to give up. As I go by to take the lead, the guy in front of me reacts, and I look back and keep an eye on his shadow every 5 seconds or so. He's back about 3 lengths. I'm flailing side to side, I got sweat all over my glasses, I can hardly see i'm all over the bike doing 116-130 cadence, my lungs are on fire as I pass the 200 meters to go sign. I have no idea how fast I'm going, HR, nothing. Just peddaling like my whole body is on fire, and it was. I remember thinking about the 200 meter sign, and thinking, [censored], I went to soon, I'm dying, I have no more acceleration left. Mercifully, at 30+mph (max in my sprint was 35) 200 meters ticked by in like 8-10 seconds. I was out of the saddle for the last 200 meters, legs burning, begging me to stop. I crossed the line for the win in my age group, but more importantly, the win over all !!! I'd come back from last year and got this demon off my back. 😄 Looking at my HRM, the sprint was about 50 seconds long (seemed like an eternity) and I hit 177hr on the meter. That's the highest I'd seen this year. And if you're gonna do it, that would be the time to pull it off. I'd done some watt testing, and could only get to 170, so figured 170 was my maxx.... I guess not 🙂
I beat the old record of 57:10 with a time of 54:46 (a 2:44 pace, and I was very happy with that). I was understandably elated. Truth be known though, I can't say enough about the other 2 guys. None of us could have done it without the other 2. We all worked hard, pulled our weight, and shared the work, right up until the bitter end. The other 2 guys finished back about 4 seconds for second and the other guy about 8 seconds further back. All 3 of us beat the old record. That was pretty cool.
I ended hanging out with the second place guy for a while, and now we are buds, that's cool too. We all knew it was like a team thing, we all tried and the 3 of us beat everybody else.
I also learned some important race things. NEVER judge a book by it's cover. You have NO idea who's fast or who isn't (unless you know some of the people or have raced with them before). The shine on their bike or hole in an old jersey is NO indicator of anything... Huge legs, small calves, beer belly, all are practically meaningless. I found that to be pretty cool.
Good racing to all, and thanks to all my riding buddies on the forums. You guys are my only riding buddys. 🙂