Andy STi

He just wanted to make sure you read the whole report.

Nice Job Tavish! Those juniors were a couple kids from Bend. Nice job beating up on them. I'll make sure to give them crap about it.

tetonrider

love it!

Tavish

Thanks everyone. I just realized at the top it said cascade it was actually mt hood cycling classic, haha

grolby

WTFG Tavish!

rdubbz

awesome race results, Tavish. keep it up kid, you're going places.

chasm54

Tavish, you're an animal. Terrific stuff.

mattm

That, and something tells me his actual Cascade report will read similarly..

tetonrider

awesome, tavish. had a number of friends in your field (including one who was crashed out by a junior with 6-8k to go on stage 1, then run over by the peloton....and STILL finished the stage. he still rode the TT hard and finished in the top 20.)

awesome riding.

way to go, andySTI, too! you were in a tough field. did the top rider wind up taking himself out in that corner on the crit? such a shame.

5th place in the GC in our field took himself out in the crit. he didn't show for stage 4. i was told he messed up his wheel and didn't have another. i was bummed to learn this as i would have personally given him a nice race wheel to ride. such a shame.

echappist

+1

At this rate, he could be out of the 2's in no time. Remember that one guy who posted about wanting to turn pro? Well, that guy has veracity issues, but i think we are looking at a real deal here.

Racer Ex 

Oh, you raced too?

gsteinb

Lot of bumping at the end of Exeter. Took the easy way out and gave up mark mccormacks wheel. Cost me a shot at the win. Fourth. Felt strong though.

Jandro 

globecanvas

Well, it's no stage race glory, but I finally won a race after knocking at the door all season.

Sussex fairgrounds crit, 4/5 field. Took a prime, became a marked man, followed some breaks that didn't seem to want me along and deflated quickly when they saw I was there (hmm, that happens in real life sometimes too ), took off at about 800m, couldn't believe the size of the gap I got and crossed the line sitting up with at least 100m of air behind me.

beatlebee 

Nice!

UmneyDurak

As I said I try to stay in top 10-15 this time I started from the back, and couldn't move up fast enough.

Yep, Yep. I try to do that as much as possible. A side affect of that is I tend to ride between wheels, not overlapping, and have a tendency get squeezed out when surges happen. I am working on fixing it.

Anyway a clip of first 11 minutes. In the beginning I expanded a lot of energy trying to move up as fast as I could, then tried to use others to bridge.
.be

mattm

Awesome! Congrats.

mattm

Man that course looked like fun! Wish I'd done it..

Anyway yeah I think your biggest problem was starting on the back, then on a course with so many close turns, and the 180, it got strung out quick and you were pretty much doomed. But it's an easy fix at least, just line up earlier.

Also, thank you for not putting crappy music in the vid!!

UmneyDurak

Yep. Thought I had enough time, but things happened. When I showed up and saw everyone lined up I knew I was screwed.

And yeah course was super fan. Although I prefer the old one, since it didn't have U turn. Plus I won a pair of Oakleys on it last year.

rkwaki

Nice.
Racing thugs for someone's wheel? Makes for a tough race.

echappist

what i don't see is a lot of drafting (CDR will have a field day with this). The pack is rarely likely to break up in the first few laps, as evidenced by the fact that there were quite a few riders around you in the first five minutes. You were either too far behind their wheels or sitting off of the wheels. At one point (somewhere after the 2min mark), the gap between you and the rider in front was large enough that another rider was able to easily squeeze in. These sort of skills can usually be masked in non technical courses, but they become quite apparent in a course like this. The moments you were able to get on a wheel, you decided to blast past the rider as opposed to sitting on it for even 5 seconds so you can recover.

Also, you need to learn to take a U-turn. In the first few laps, you went diving for the inside, except you had to slow down so much that it was hard for you to reaccelerate back to speed. After the 5-min mark, you were never more than 3-5 seconds from the back of the pack, and you had the line of your choice to go through the corner, but again you went for the diving to the inside route when it wasn't even necessary. The road seems to be 3-4 lanes wide, and a solo rider should be able to take that turn at 18-20mph (just don't pedal as you will clip your pedal) and carry quite a bit of speed through that. At that point, it's almost better for you to be a few bike length behind the last person in the pack as you can carry more speed through the corner than the last person in the pack. That's one of the "skills" of tail-gunning.

gsteinb

Another course I probably win that battle. Tight technical race with loads of craters. Four hours from home with a kid that doesn't drive a trip to the er seemed ill advised.

shovelhd

You know I would have driven you.

I had a tough race. I felt pretty bad about it until the last lap, and after I saw my power file. Oof. I don't think I've ever spent that much time over 500w.

waterrockets 

The video is helpful. It's true that starting further forward would have helped, but starting as early as :08, you let a guy in front of you b/c you weren't closely following the wheel in front of you. Then both of those guys jumped up the side with plenty of room, and you didn't go with them. Learn to adapt your pace to take advantage of the work of others as much as possible. A hard jump at :11 would have had you in a better position to avoid all the hard work you were doing at 4:00 and beyond. Learn to hitch rides, don't be shy about it, and realize that spending a bit more energy for that couple of seconds will pay off later.

In the first time through the turnaround, I'm not sure why the guy in blue gets away from you before the turn is over, but there's some sort of a cornering issue there. It may just be similar to :11, where you just didn't want to jump then. The point being that the guy in front of you and the guy next to you both took off and you didn't follow. Every time someone goes by you, make a mental note that you probably have to recover two positions (for those next to him you didn't see). Get those spots back, and then some more so you can stay in a good place in the pack.

After 5:00, you demonstrated that you have the fitness to ride in that pack, because you held 3-5 seconds for a very very long time without much shelter. As Tyrell said above, find more ways to not pedal in there. Do as little lung work as possible, but keep your brain engaged to always be trying to find one of those spots in ~10-15, defend it, and recover it when lost.

Then start planning your next attack That course would be great for a break of 3-5.

carpediemracing 

I think you know where you need to improve. The biggest thing is to get closer to the wheels in front, and to choose to draft/rest when it's not productive to be in the wind. It's pretty apparent that you're uncomfortable sitting close to a wheel.

I don't know the reason but another thing that struck me was that you didn't go fast between corners. You let gaps sort of hang there, even in the beginning when you're trying hard to move up. The best time to move up is when everyone else isn't trying to move up. That doesn't apply in the beginning because everyone is trying to move up. The next best time to move up is when there's some decent line of shelter in front of you. Use the shelter, move up hard, and then try and recover. Instead of letting the gaps just dangle there you should be snapping them shut, sitting on, then hitting the next gap.

For example the 180 - you know that everyone will be slowing hard for it. Therefore, unless you have a gazillion matches to burn or you think it's absolutely critical to move up, you shouldn't force moves just before the 180. Instead you can make moves after everyone finishes their acceleration after the turn.

Going inside is usually inefficient, meaning diving inside of everyone else's line (or, in general, off of the overall line). You can gain spots, yes, but you end up braking a lot and therefore you need to accelerate much harder. For me when someone pulls an inside move on me and then chickens out it might mean the difference between a 600w acceleration and a 1200w acceleration. That's substantial since in one race my biggest effort was in such a corner, when someone went inside, chickened out, and braked hard.

btw diving inside and chickening out sort of belong together - many riders that dive inside do so because they're uncomfortable in the field, but when they get squeezed against the curb they don't take their lane (because they're uncomfortable in the field), brake, and screw things up. It's okay to dive inside if you can then slot into a spot and everyone around you can corner normally (and I do this). It's not good if you create a lane that shouldn't be there and then force people to adjust to what is essentially a bad move (I've done that too).

It's hard to tell where you're looking since the camera is on the bike. In the 180 you should have been looking way to the left, with maybe a glance down just before the turn to make sure you're in the right gear for accelerating out of the turn. You should be on the drops so you can accelerate super hard (the drops let you recruit your glutes more, gives you better balance, and more control if you have to take evasive action).

If you looked down at all during the corner then that may be part of the reason you're uncomfortable staying on a wheel - if you're looking down then you're not riding proactively. It's like driving while staring at the pavement just in front of your car. Keep your head up, look forward a few riders (or more) and it'll help your pack riding immensely. To check this you can try riding with the camera on your helmet. This is why I do a helmet cam and not a bike cam (I've tried a cam on the bike). The helmet cam tells a much more comprehensive story because it shows the viewer where you're looking.

The fact that you last any length of time behind the field means that you're plenty strong. I might have lasted half a lap, if I got shelled on a course like that. The thing though is that I would have been burying myself to stay on a wheel so I'd have been more tired when I got shelled.

There's a similar kind of course locally, full of turns, no 180 but a hill instead. In 2010 I killed myself to stay in the group and ended up placing highly. In 2012 I was a little less fit and instead of hanging on to the finish I got shelled. I was out of the race in about half a lap because I couldn't get back on in that time. If you come off the back you should be 99.9% exhausted from trying to stay on wheels. If you have anything left then you weren't trying hard enough to stay on wheels.

For a course like that I prefer to be near the front. It gives you the most tactical options, you can dictate some stuff, you can go with moves, etc. Since that's hard for me (being not very strong) I'm forced to sit in. The best for me is to sit in at the tail end of the fluent racers, meaning the front clump. It's usually 30-40 racers. In a large field that would be the front third or so. In a small field it would be the back of the field. If I'm unable to hang with the comet head then I'll drift into the tail to try and buy myself some recovery time. Since I'm usually suffering I'm inevitably dropping back to try and recover (I'll ease for a bit to recover - if I'm recovering okay I might need to let 15-20 riders pass me before I can start working again, and if I'm 5 riders from the back then I'm off the back). Tailgunning through need.

Curiously enough if you tailgun in the Cat 3s around here you'll be surrounded by many former Cat 1s. It's like a meeting group back there of M45+ and up racers. Olympians, 20-30 time national champions, etc. Tailgunning in that kind of company means that they believe the race will be manageable and so it's probably okay. When those guys suddenly disappear then something is happening or about to happen.

I'm making a guess but if that race averaged 26 mph then I'd probably be in the 170-180 watt range, 600-1000w spikes out of the 180, going hard for the last 3-5 laps (it would take more than a lap to move up to the front). I'd need to average about 170 watts to be in with a chance at the sprint. If I do 180 watts avg then I'll be hard pressed to sprint - I might have decent position going into the sprint but I won't be able to do anything once everyone jumps. 160 watts and I'd be looking forward to the sprint. 200 watts and I'd probably be off the back.

Fields usually resemble comets - a very dense front end with a tail that scatters behind. You don't want to be in the scattered area - that's where riders who can't draft well are riding. The field resembles a group ride leaving a parking lot in the tail. Up front it looks like a Tour stage coming to the sprint (well sort of). Closer together, more fluent, etc.

waterrockets 

Dude, comets have two tails




well said, as usual