Yeah. We had a short climb at about 1.5k to go and it popped me and and a teammate, which put us in 10th and 11th and hopeless to be in contention for the sprint (not that I would have had anything - but you always scrape together something if there’s a chance of a better finish)
Thankfully we still had a strong teammate in who led out our sprinter for 2nd, but felt bad that i couldn’t help in any way.
that’s totally legit, amy! way to crush the weather, roundo!
i raced canada’s spring classic today. the thing covers 70km of roads, trails and dirt in my area and is a pretty big deal 'round here (2350 starters) so i was kinda planning my spring around it.
i went all-out on the first stretch of dirt to make it into a small chase that quickly caught up to the lead group with clark, driscoll, nat cx champ. bounced around a lot as the group kept getting torn up and reforming every time there was an off-road section, which was pretty much constantly.
nearly an hour in, we hit a trail with a bunch of fallen trees forcing everyone to dismount and crawl beneath one at a time. by the time i get back on, most of the group is out of sight, so i ride with a few guys.
about 20km from the end, we get caught by a j-pow led group. i catch a breath in the pack, and with 10 to go, attack on a hill and ride the last technical section solo. caught a pair of dudes before the finish. super stoked to be 17th place overall. 6th among my 30-39 cohort.
nice work, jacques
HY Jacques, that’s rad. Some serious talent in that field and you beat most of them! Sounds like an awesome race.
thanks, guys. yeah, i had a blast. i’ve done a lot of races with better results, but i think this was the best i’ve ever raced.
yeah, that’s friggan awesome, great work
i did my first stage race this weekend. it was overall great and i’ll share more but right now i’m really tired and have done two races without a shower beer so i need to take care of that stuff first
HY! nice work!
so this weekend i did the tour of page county in a 75 rider 3/4 field. it had all the stages in an appalacian mountain valley between the george washington national forest and shenandoah national park. it was an excellent setting for some road racing, lots of nice views and good courses, plus probably the strongest 3/4 field i’ve been in (probably cause destination stage race).
road race was 65mi and 3k’ on an 11mi lap of rolling farm roads. halfway through i ended up in a solo effort after chasing a guy who looked strong going off the front but popped as soon as i bridged to him. it took 5 miles of not so hard riding to get sucked back in so i enjoyed the view and relaxed. right away a teammate went off the front and after a lap solo was joined by two more so i stayed near the front with my other teammate and we tried to manage the pace a bit. they were still off the front when on the beginning of the last lap i got caught up in a crash.
didn’t hit the deck but a bike tangle broke my valve extender and ended my race. rider in front of me was a strong 16 year old kid who broke the fuck out of his arm when he went down, like arm bent at a 20* angle between elbow and wrist. he was amazingly composed and i stayed with him and a few other crashed riders while we waited for the ambulance. turned out it was the second season in a row he’s broken that arm in an early season crash, feel super bad for him. so considering i couldn’t feel too disappointed to miss the chance to contest the field sprint. apparently my teammate’s break was the winning one, but he ran out of juice before the finish and lost the other two riders and got swallowed by the pack.
time trial was the next morning, which was a rolling 8.5mi out and back that went down to a riverbank from the luray caverns and then up back. it was a super fun effort, i loved that it had some elevation and that they did our field merckx style. ended up 20th which i was OK with, a teammate smashed it and got in the top 10 which was great because he happens to be a really stong crit rider.
then we toured the caverns which were awesome and beautiful
the crit was a technical figure 8 downtown course with mountain vistas and a steep two block climb as the finish, definitely the best course i’ve ever raced on (1,200’ in a 45 min crit!). separation in the field happened almost immediately and the pace at the front was very hard for the first 4 laps. i survived about 3, then rode solo for a few more before getting swept by a strong chase group of 8 or so who i finished the race with. we stayed motivated the whole race but only managed to keep the gap with the front group from growing from 20s to any more than a minute by the end, which had whittled itself down to no more than 10 riders. cornering into the finishing climb the rider in front of me rolled his rear tire and i had to use some brake to get around him. emptied it and pulled in all but two of my group by the finish, which i was content with.
we’re still waiting on final results but my teammate hung with the front group the whole race and may have cracked top 5 in the GC. i probably finished top 20 but not sure. it was tons of fun regardless, rode hard all weekend and ate ice cream on my birthday and had a good time with teammates.
sounds like a great race!
i was willing to accept getting dropped cuz of some trees on the course, yeah should have been at the front in the trails. but fuck some sabotage shit!
i now hold the saboteur entirely responsible for my not winning.
woah, that’s pretty crazy
people get so butthurt about stuff, what a bunch of babies
results came in, looks like i got 15th thanks to getting a pack finishing time in the road race
this video also landed in my inbox, you can see my man ezra take second wheel off the start like a champ (he ended up 6th in the GC.) i lined up directly behind the cameraman and remember thinking “shit, i gotta get around this dude asap.” i did at the :30 mark. gives you a good look at the course and how blown up the race was immediately
damn, that crit looks painful.
I’ve been training for ~6 weeks now and my FTP is back to where I remember it being, more or less, when I quit racing 5 years ago. Just did a 20 minute test and averaged 284w… so ~270w ftp.
I’ve been trying to get a lot of sweet spot and threshold intervals during the week and a few weekday crits for intensity. Going to start upping the mileage a bit and also add a bit more structured Vo2 stuff.
How are the weekday crits in your area? Official or unsanctioned? Did the local unsanctioned crit twice this week to try to get better at reading a race and finishing well. Got 6th on Tuesday and 5th on Thursday. I was so close on thurs though! http://m.pinkbike.com/video/443538/. I’m the one that gets on camerabikes wheel just after 2:00
In pdx, you can race Mon and Tuesday (if over 30) for weeknight stuff… then later in the year there’s 6 weeks of wed night racing (and thursday night track all summer for people who wanna get anaerobic).
I miss that, not nearly as much of it here.
Trying to get my interval game dialed in since i’m fairing poorly when it comes to anaerobic stuff or anything above lactic threshold. Tried to build 3 x 10 of 15s over unders in trainer road but i somehow counted wrong and did 3 x 8 minutes. Whoops. Went okay though. Was just doing 95/105%
I did 2 x 10 of more drastic over unders (80%/120%) in 30/30s last week and it went alright. NP was 259 and 260, so super consistent.
Thinking tomorrow i’ll go for some more intensity, maybe 1 min on/offs, the most brutal…
Got talked into a road race tomorrow, 6x 6 mile laps with one 2-3 minute climb per lap… My legs are pretty worn out from the week and climbs of any length aren’t my friend… so we’ll see what happens.
That climb can be tough. Montinore is sort of like a long Tabor race. I went into it one year with super low TSB. so good fitness, but super overloaded and needed a rest week. We had 7 laps I think and i got dropped up the climb on the 4th time, spent a lap chasing, didnt quite make it back on, then did a cool down lap and quit. People were absolutely hammering that climb (i was going into z6 every time).
did my first 1-2 crit in a while. only 25 dudes on a pretty sketchy course, part of which was on a footpath, two off-camber turns, a chicane. things stayed pretty strung out throughout.
it was my first race with my new teamates after spending the last 3 years as the sole representative of my “team” in my category, so that was something new. went out against my better judgement to try and catch a 2-dude breakaway. i got a pretty good gap, but no one joined me and it quickly became clear i wasn’t gonna catch those dudes. decided to stay away (because vanity?) for as long as i could anyways.
breakaway got reeled-in. dude went with 10 to go. i came in 8th. racing with teammates is fun but i do dumb stuff in the spirit of “contributing”
Montinore kicked my ass. I needed a day or two off and it showed instantly. I felt great with positioning on the first lap, stayed in the front 5-10 guys. First climb went better than expected, we were going hard and I ended the climb with the pack, though near the rear. It was super strung out, but I thought we’d all bunch back up at the bottom of the descent. whelp… I got dropped on the descent without even noticing that the guys in front of me had totally lost the pack. spent the rest of the lap chasing, got close… but was blown up when I made it to the base of the climb. Hit it to the top and called it a day.
Next time I’ll give it 100% until I’m soft-pedaling in the group… never again will I assume it’s coming back together.