mike868y

i'm still collegiate-ing this weekend. 5 laps attempting to follow cat 1s around the bear mountain course awwwww yeah.

FFJ

Make sure you come back in May for the real thing.

mike868y

i will but i'd be a lot more excited about it if they moved the finish to not be a downhill sprint.

TheKillerPenguin

Get OTF and you won't have to worry about the sprint

nycphotography

Yeah, they should run at least one of them in the opposite direction with an uphill finish.

mike868y

no CRCA should put the finish in the spot where Army puts it which is a slightly uphill drag about 1km out (totally guessing with that) from where CRCA puts it.they also put the feed zone there which is 10000x better than the spot CRCA puts it. maybe there's a reason crca has the finish by the parking lot (beyond just "convenience") but everyone I've talked to who has done it both ways prefers Army's version.

nycphotography

Crash today in the feed zone, I think collegiate A, but might have been B.

Not having seen the CRCA finish yet, but seeing the downhill run following today's finish, I'd have to agree.

FFJ

How does the Army finish work with traffic coming from opposite direction? Do they close off Lake Welch Parkway for west-bound traffic so racers can use both sides of the road for the finish?

mike868y

yeah we had full use of the road "if you're finishing in a group."

TheKillerPenguin

Have they filled in those gigantic potholes on the parkway yet?

mike868y

Pavement seemed the same as last thing but I also don't remember anything too bad? Idk I was bleeding out of my eyeballs the entire race so pot holes were the last thing on my mind.

nycphotography

No lie there.

I achieved every single goal I had set for myself for fitness... climbed tiorati brook at 4.1 w/kg. And still got dropped over the top. And that was the SLOW lap. Unbelievable fitness for 4's and 5's.

I was completely demoralized. Then I kinda did a reset and realized I had met my own fitness goals which were fairly aggressive when I started training for real this winter. So we'll regroup see how Monson goes.

globecanvas

Just got forwarded a request from the Woodstock women's cycling grand prix ... looking for somebody with race experience to be a pace car driver. The event is Saturday May 6, in Woodstock. PM me for info.

Harlan

Just saw that Quabbin has 106 (!) riders reg'd for the 4s. That's more than I've seen or raced against. I guess there might be more chances for splits to happen, and plenty of shelter to go around.

nycphotography

Monson went better than Army Spring Classic. I still got de-selected, but was able to chase back on and was with the lead pack at the last climb.

Quabbin looks considerably more selective on paper. We will see.

TheKillerPenguin

I think Monson's hilly section is more selective than anything on the Quabbin course, but Quabbin will be a lot more draggy tempo type climbing that burns through a ton of calories. I would wager it will be a race of attrition vs selection.

Harlan

I was going to say Quabbin last year was a walk in the park compared to this year's Monson. However chances are high the same people show up and pull the same stuff as last week.

nycphotography

So it's just my dumb luck that my first year back on the bike and back to racing has me facing beastly fields? So my 4.1 should have been sufficient, except this year, 20+ guys showed up with bigger engines? Go figure.

TheKillerPenguin

I don't know about that, it's just a different kind of course. It's less punchy, more draggy. Plays out in different ways.

mike868y

i've done quabbin as a 3 and a 4 and it's not really a selective course. which is not to say it's "easy," but it aint hilltowns or tokeneke.

and ffs please don't fall into the "i'm just racing a harder field than everyone else when they were a 4" trap.

nycphotography

lol no trap. I just go out and do what I can do. The rest is just Monday morning quarterbacking.

Having done several competitive hobbies, I find that the reality is that although the winners get slightly faster as you move up from group to group, the real difference is the range of the group.

Just the way it is. By the time you're good enough to be finishing on the podium in the beginners class of almost any kind of (amateur) racing, you're mid pack in the intermediate and back of the pack in the advanced.

The pros a whole 'nother level. Or two even. Local / domestic pro vs world class / championship pro.

Something like this:

C: X..........................................................................................X
B: ..................................X.............................................................X
A: .......................................................................X............................ .X
P1: .................................................................................................... X.......X
P2: .................................................................................................... ........X.......X

TheKillerPenguin

Just eat more than you think you need to eat and you should be fine. It's a long race for a 4 and the low gradient climbing will suck up more energy than you think.

Harlan

As a tangent: last year at Quabbin I saw people with literally pounds and pounds of snacks bulging from their sagging pockets. It was absurd. Way more than I would take on an all day ride for a group of 5 people. Maybe they rode to the race. I don't even think a feed is necessary in a race that short but understand it for the P12 race length. And obviously for neutral water on hot days.

On the other foot: I tried to drink calories (Skratch) at the end of Monson and it just wasn't enough. I was fading by the finale.

Also I recall shovel saying that Quabbin is all about the sag climbing. Start up front and slide back each climb to save energy.

nycphotography

65 miles racing I think is over distance for me.

I do 70 mile training rides w/o touching a bottle, but 65 miles racing is equiv to like 90ish miles riding in terms of calories, and a lot more of those calories are in Z4/Z5, which means a lot more sugar burn.

I think Monson left me dangerously close on sugar. I couldn't really drink w/o choking and spewing, and I was maybe bonkish at the end. For Quabbin, finishing both bottles is going to be mandatory, both for water and for sugar.

mike868y

eh i'm not sure i agree with that math. you'll do the 65 miles in significantly less time than your 70 mile training ride. i did a hard 65 mile race last week and only did somewhere around 2,000kj (ftp ~280). just bring enough food for 3 hours.