spectastic

the jersey mann. commemorative memorabilia, street cred. bragging rights.

globecanvas

Got racing stuff together last night, woke up at 3am, ate some eggs, drove to NJ, carefully scheduled the coffee and bathroom needs with the thruway rest stops, sat in my van in the dark pinning on my number, lined up at dawn with 74 other guys including some ex pros, spent a half hour in the first 10 wheels feeling pretty good, front tire detonated in close quarters, didn't crash, rolled into the grass, no free lap, drove home.

rubiksoval

That sucks so much.

revchuck 

@globecanvas- That does suck, but considering what might have happened, not a terminally bad way to end the race.

Doge

Glad you are OK and sorry about that. Would you mind sharing technical details/how it happened?

aaronmcd

Obviously the competition installed a tiny explosive on the valve stem.

globecanvas

Technical details? I was elbowing gsteinb off a wheel (false) at 28 mph (true) and something sliced the side of the front tire and it went bang. Luckily it was (a) a tubular and (b) a masters field. I stuck my hand up and 75 guys rode around me without comment.

aaronmcd

Drove 2 hours to and 3 hours from a 1 hour climby circuit race to see if I can hang with a 2/3 field with this much elevation. 3500 feet in the 5 laps. Each lap has a a few various bumps, a 45-50 mph descent, and 5 minutes of progressively steeper rollers/stairstep with the finish 2/3 of the way up.

20 guys lined up and about half the field consisted of 2 teams. Both teams had black kits. In fact, only 3 guys in the race weren't wearing black kits. The big teams started sending guys up the road early and consistently. I wasn't sure anything would stick even with the teams due to the nature of the course. First time up the climb was crazy fast, I think many of the guys didn't realize how long the climb is. We shed a large chunk of guys who had to chase back on.

Later, 1 guy on each of the big 2 got away and built a 40 second gap. Damn! 4th time up the climb, 2 guys attack hard and I can't follow. They bridged on that single climb, and the pack splits into fragments, I was near the lead non-break group. However I saw a decent sized group behind charging hard and waited. I'd probably beat them at the finish anyway.

11 of us hit the final rollers/climb racing for 5th, but the pace was too slow and no one was willing to keep it hard. I was 3rd wheel coming into the sprint but waited too long (and not a sprinter) still got 3rd in the field for 7th overall. Not bad for me+all that climbing! It helped that I just got over a bit of a cold and so have been resting since tuesday.

Also, 125 TSS in only 1:04. Damn!

Edit:
Hmm, that's 335 NP. I should probably bump my FTP up from 310 but I doubt if it's any higher than 315. Maaaybe 320. Maybe. If I kid myself.

hack

Same race as @aaronmcd , but I'd hardly call what I did racing. 5 laps on a 4.4 mile course lots of up and down, but a great course if you have some climbing ability. It's a local race, so our team supports it even though it only favors a couple of us. We had 7 of the 20 racers in the field and I REALLY tried to get some color in our kits this year, but got shot down. So, between our 7, Williams' 4, and 1 ThirstyBear, there were a lot of black kits.

I threw in an early attack to shake things up. Thirsty Bear and Williams came with, but not the ones I wanted, so I sat up. Couple of other moves went before the big descent. All was good until we hit the first climb through the finish line A lot more zip than I expected and I got popped off. Did a few more laps joining up with other dropped riders before pulling out after lap 4 to watch the finish.

Teammate got second losing to local superstar mtb kid, we were ok with that. Did a team loop in the hills afterward and then spent three hours at the brewery.

UmneyDurak

3/4 was one by a guy who was cat 5 that morning.
Yep...
295 NP for 4/5 laps with TSS of 111.
Clearly good time was had by all.

aaronmcd

Yeah that race is crazy on the TSS. Last year I did 2/3 then 3/4, and 3/4 was way harder because fatigue. So I opted out of getting my ass handed to me in an 8 man P12 race with 2 pros lol. How was this guy cat 5 this morning? He call the upgrade guy and get approved over the phone or what? Oh and how'd you do?

UmneyDurak

Yeah apparently he requested upgrade from 5 to 4 with less then 10 races was approved. Raced 4s won that, raced 3/4 won that. Dude can descent fast and has a kick. Field also under estimated him.

Meh top ten out of 13 starters. Legs cracked on final climb to the finish line. Need to work on repeated high intensity efforts. Teammate got 5th so I live vicariously though him.

Sounds like you kicked some ass too.

aaronmcd

"Top ten out of 13 starters" lol!!
I'm sure it felt like an epic battle though, that's one thing I like about racing. You can get tired, dropped, catch some guys, and end up "midpack" cuz the race is just that hard.
I think I'm finally getting the repeated effort thing nailed down. Sure I didn't make the break, but I kicked butt at repeated efforts and carefully conserving by following the bigger guys at the end of descents! I really wanted to win my field sprint. Simon won it for 5th, I thought he might be too tired cuz he put in a good number of short lived attacks. But he still had a good kick at the finish and probably would have beaten me even if I jumped early like I should have. The other guy that beat me in the field sprint totally should have been behind me. If I/we made the final climb a bit harder I would have had him. But whatever, all the upgrade points were up the road. That's where I made the mistake, letting those guys get away and betting on them working their way back to the pack.

mike868y

tfw you set new power records for everything from 5 to 15 minutes and still get dropped on the climb on the first lap.

hack

The winning pro also stacked about 65 miles and 6,000 feet of climbing to get to the start of the race:

https://www.strava.com/activities/914526347/overview

globecanvas

I think I remember you recently saying you had been setting power records in training and it almost felt too easy. Maybe I am misremembering but -- is there any chance your power meter is just reading too high? :/

aaronmcd

Ha my teammate called it, when Evan wasn't there yet like 40 minutes before the race.

aaronmcd

Holy smokes. 13 minutes of Santa Cruz Classic Criterium at 350 NP, and dropped. I can only sprint so many times with a few seconds rest. Teammate got 5th somehow. A crapload of DNFs today.

topflightpro

I had to google TFW to find out what it meant.

TMonk

today was the final stage of SDSR - the crit. I didn't have the legs or the head for it today so I tailgunned it and having fun with the corners. my teammate got 3rd (!!!) and lost to a solo rider OTF for 5+ laps and the one and only Alonso Tal, who divebombed him on the last corner.

fixiekids man, why?

eventually he'll upgrade to the P/1/2 level and learn that people who do that get curbed. that kind of superman big ego riding kinda pisses me off

TMonk

sounds like a gnarly race!

TMonk

kids these days and their "feels"

aaronmcd

Yeah. Brutal. My only solace was seeing that some seriously strong riders even blew up before me. One of those races that requires either very narrow abilities (very good sprint 40+ times) or just crazy strong threshold to recover while still pushing 250-300 watts.

UmneyDurak

Yeah, SC classic is like San Rafael on crack.

UmneyDurak

Well that's why I put total number of riders.
I need to figure out how to push through mental blocks. I think it's holding my training back, and impacts racing.
Once the hurting starts having hard time concentrating and pushing harder. Although lap 4 was an improvement in that department.