For 3 years now I've opened the road season at the Twin Bing Classic.
For 2011 it was the start of the new year. Once again I'm racing on a team with good friends for the squad at the Trek Bike Stores of Omaha with the Midwest Cycling Community. On Sunday, BR, EOB, Mod, MM, Brady Murphy, RF, and I piled into the MWCC sprinter and rolled out for climbing hill.
On Sunday winds were out of the WSW and were expected to be picking up right about time for our second lap. With an already fun/tough course, the wind was going to make things interesting. That said, I should also note it always windy there, its just a matter of what direction it would come from (two years ago South West wind, last year South East).
At roughly 11:10 the race started. Mike and I lined up 2nd row but I slipped a pedal on the start and had to wait for opportunities to move up. That said with the WSW wind things were much more tame over the first hill. I could see mike up front marking Kaos and a few others. The race got frisky about mid way headed north and when we made our turn east to the rollers the pace picked up and the peloton accelerated. I made moves to stay up front in case a split formed so that I could be in contact to work for Mike when the time came. The break didnt' happen though. The pace remained hard over the rollers but we just couldn't shell anyone to form a break with the tailwind. I did my work to cover a couple of short moves by Kaos while mike recovered.
Lap 2 began we were still altogether. With not many teams working I told Mike to not work as much as possible and sure enough in the crosswinds we must have been doing about 10 mph at one point. On the rollers little splits finally started to form and some riders got shelled but not enough. MWCC and Kaos did alot of work it seemd but it cost us. When we turned south all the teams that had been sitting in holding on accelerated and attacked. Mike was having stomach cramps. I jumped to try and catch the attacks but cramped myself (note to self drink and eat more in a 40 mile RR).
Long story short lots of work done and no dividends. Finished 32 out of 70ish. I made some mistakes in my nutrition but I'm riding well hopefully next weekend will be better.
On a positive note, I've been training with a powertap for a few months now but I also decided this year racing would be done based on feel alone, no computer, HR nothing. I mean in all honesty when do you have time to look down during a crit anyways. The goal though with power was to learn how efforts feel and to build myself up to be able to work harder. This was the second weekend of doing it and so far so good. I could tell when I was burning matches but also gauge how much was left in the tank. My issue this weekend was all nutrition/hydration.
So with a another Twin Bing in the bag my 2011 road season is underway.
2 comments:
I'm with you on racing with no computer. It was nice not to have to deal with any distractions or any psyching myself out yesterday. Nice race, you guys worked really hard.
I did the same thing in the swanson marathong. it was going well till my mechanicals. It's one less thing to worry about. the post race data is nice. But i was more engaged in the race action not worried that i spent too much time in z4 or whatever.
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