QCW Cycling — Winner of the 2011 PA BAR Team Competition

Friday’s road race:

Lovely weather (in stark contrast to last year). Temps started off in the mid 50s, maybe higher– it felt very warm in the sun. I actually tossed my base layer at the start, about 30 seconds before we got the whistle. Turned out to be a very good decision, as temps climbed toward 70 degrees. We rolled out neutral from the top of Blue Mound to the official start line preceding the long descent we were scheduled to do every lap. Got the whistle there and rolled out. The opening descent was more technical than people gave it credit for (obviously). A couple other riders went down near (and independently of) Eric, a CU Boulder rider almost went down, and I saw another rider miss a turn and ride off into a field. It was initially pretty difficult to move up from my mid-pack position, as the roads were somewhat narrow. Things loosened up throughout the first lap, however. After the descent, there was a flat section, followed by a brief kick up, then more flat, then the first climb of the day, a very steep, but short climb, followed by a false flat. The whole ordeal, including false flat, was probably less than 90 seconds. There was some dirt and gravel on the edges of the road, which reduced traction a bit there, requiring seated climbing. I still saw several people almost go down, however, when they stood up in the dirt to mash up the climb. This was followed by a descent, then
rolling terrain that led into the second climb of the lap, another short, steep kick around 60 to 90 seconds. This was followed by a descent that led into some more windy, rolling terrain, which preceded the final climb of the lap– roughly five minutes in length. Max had advised us all to sag climb the hell out of it, at least in the early going. I managed to get close to the front by the start of the climb, and did just that. I sagged to mid-pack, and felt fine going over the top. Ross’s parents and Max’s parents were awesome feeders– I never missed a bottle. We cruised along the second lap; there was probably a break, but I didn’t know the composition, and didn’t really care– the course did not favor long, suicide breaks. One of our friends from the University of Vermont, Tristan Baldwin, eventually got away and built up a considerable advantage over the second and third laps, around two minutes. The second time over the long climb was harder than the first, but still not all-out. The pack was reduced somewhat, however, making moving around much easier. The third time over the climb, the pack splintered into three groups– a very elite group of maybe twenty riders, followed by a similarly-sized chase group, which was in turn followed by a group of ten or so riders, including myself. We eventually caught back on on the descent– this was the only time that I would have preferred an 11-26 over my 12-27, as I was spinning out on my pulls on the descent. On the first climb of the fourth lap, a Fort Lewis rider (I think) pushed the pace considerably, and shed a lot of the people who had chased back on after the third lap. I was hurting considerably, but managed to tack on to the very back of the pack over the false flat. By the time we got to the second climb of the fourth lap, I was at the very front of the pack, which was nice– I got to dictate the pace of the climb to suit my tired legs, and hopefully got some TV-time for the sponsors :-p. I was sure that I would be popped the fourth time up the main climb, after needing to chase back on after the third lap, but the pace was thankfully very relaxed. On the last lap, Max got away with Jackie Simes and a couple others guys. I think Alister Ratcliff, of Bikereg and Fort Lewis, bridged up. The gap was pretty small for most of the lap, but eventually grew to about 30 seconds (still not enough considering the extra finishing climb tacked on to the end of the race, bringing the finishing climb from five to nine or ten minutes). I was popped from the pack on the second climb of the last lap, shortly before the final climb. I stayed relaxed in our chase group 15 seconds behind the main pack, and dropped them all on the finishing climb. I felt surprisingly good; I don’t think I was passed by anyone, and I passed several riders from the main pack, ending up 41st, 2:55 back of the winner. Alister attacked the break on the climb and powered away for the win. His teammate, Rotem Ishay, ended up second. Max was passed by a chase
group motoring up the climb, and ended up 10th. Charlie missed that split, but beat out his chase group for 15th.

Saturday’s crit:

My desire to write much more right now has diminished, so this will be a lot shorter. Also, there is just much less to say about a 75-minute crit, vs. a three hour road race. The course featured three non-technical turns, with curving portions in between. There were a couple of rises on the course. It reminded me of Greentree, a bit. I realized at the start line that I had a slow leak in my rear tube, so I had to run out of the crowd to the pit to get a replacement (carbon Dura-Ace) wheel. So, no power data for the crit, either. The crit was very fast (I think Ross said we averaged 28 mph) but never particularly difficult (I never felt any danger of being dropped). I followed a couple moves early, then rolled mid-pack for most of the race. A break containing Adam Leibovitz from Marian (pursuit national champ?) got away, and actually stuck it to the line, despite a spirited chase from Fort Lewis and Max. With the field strung out, it became very difficult to move up, especially from mid pack to the front. I was bummed that I couldn’t make it up to the front to lend a hand in the chase, but if Max and Alister Ratcliff couldn’t bring back the break…I probably would have been little help. There was a crash on the second-to-last lap, in the second turn, that took out Ross (he’s ok– went down at low speed). A Harvard rider went tangent to the curve in the turn, rather than following the curve, and washed out a large group of riders. Ironically, the Harvard rider did not go down. After that, I washed my hands of the race, and just rolled in mid-pack.

Saturday:

Saturday was a roughly 80 mile road race. Things started off very copacetic, there was no trouble staying in top 10 wheels. A Mt. Borah rider rolled off the front pretty early (near the end of the first of nine laps) and an ABRT rider, accompanied by John Hunter, rolled off soon after, and joined up with the Mt Borah rider. The pack was largely unconcerned, as the trio built up a 30 second lead. I rotated at the front a couple of times with a few other riders, but there was nothing organized. Later in the second lap Charlie came up behind me and we decided that I should try to bridge. Charlie let a gap open behind me, and I jumped; I looked back and saw another Mt Borah rider on my wheel, and the pack strung out, pretty close behind, so I sat up. We rolled along for a few more miles, and hit a particularly rough crosswind section. I started rotating at the front again, and after
pulling through a couple times, found myself with a gap. I drilled it through the rest of the section and was alone, slowly closing in on the group ahead. After a few minutes, Andy Seitz from GPOA and another guy I didn’t know bridged up to me, and we started taking turns, closing in on the break much quicker. Somehow Brendan Housler got up
to us as we were about make contact, giving Mt Borah three guys in the break…not very desirable. I was skipping about every other turn since Mt Borah was so well-represented– but I still showed my face so that no one got pissed and tried to drop me– I wanted to keep our representation in the break. We held a 45 second gap for another lap, at which point the fast guys apparently chased us down, splitting the field in the process. When we were caught, I thought it was the peloton, so I coasted to what I thought was mid-pack, only to realize that the group who caught us was pretty small, with all the fast guys.
I had to chase two seconds off the back for about thirty seconds…miserable times. I could see the other half of the pack maybe ten seconds back; they eventually caught back. Charlie had killed himself to make the split, and I was still gassed from riding
the break, so we recovered in the back of the pack. Everyone else was nowhere to be seen; we found out later that Nick had crashed, Brett had flatted five miles in, then taken a wrong turn chasing back on, and that Kyle and Colton were caught out in the first split. Near the end of the fourth or fifth lap, when Charlie and I were still in the back of the field, the decisive field split happened on the climb. Close to twenty guys got away, and with all the fast guys in the split, they quickly built up an un-bridgeable or -chaseable gap. With all the money and all but a couple GC points up the road, Charlie and
I sat in, as others attacked for the sake of pride? I guess? We tried to save our legs for the TT. I rolled in 32nd, and Charlie 34th or so out of 70ish riders. This was a much harder race than I expected– the hill was longer than it looked on the profile, and I had no idea as to the exposed, very windy nature of the course. It was surprisingly technical, as well, with several chicanes. Definitely a good course, just more difficult than anticipated (of course, the presence of Bobby Lea, two Bissell guys, Iggy Silva, Minturn, Farabaugh, Chauner, et al definitely ratcheted up the intensity).

Sunday:

The time trial (8 miles; 4 miles gently rolling, 2 miles of larger rollers, 2 miles uphill) was Sunday morning. Legs felt ok from the previous day, but I didn’t get in a great warmup. Went out a bit too hard, and was having trouble keeping a good position in the clip-ons with some of the turns and sharp bends in the road. Felt ok on the climb…but kinda flat overall. Unfocused, maybe? Regardless, it was a poor effort, to finish 29th out of 60ish riders, at 24:14. I probably had 5-10 seconds in miscues alone, as well…taking a while to clip in, nearly going into Tom Griffin’s corn field, and mistaking an official with a clipboard for the finish line, 20 meters ahead of the actual line. Charlie crushed it to finish fourth, at 22:13. Awesome ride. Brett was also strong, coming in the low 23′s to snag 14th place. Nick and Coltondid not race Sunday; Kyle elected to use the TT
as warmup for the crit, but still turned in a respectable 26:14.

The crit was Sunday afternoon, in downtown Ephrata– actually a very nice race venue. There were a decent number of spectators, plenty of vendors, places to eat, etc. Good MC. The course was four corners; only turn three was tight, there was often quite a bit of bunching there. Small kicker right after turn two, and a more gradual rise between turns three and four. Course was predominately downhill or flat otherwise. I lined up on the second row but had a crappy start, wasn’t aggressive enough, and got shuffled to the back pretty quickly, along with Kyle and Brett. Charlie had a pretty good start, and maintained the top 20 pretty much all race…very smooth up there, I hear. I was suffering in the back for quite a few laps before we hit a lull, at which point I clawed my way up to mid-pack. Everyone sprinted every lap over the small kicker after turn two– I have the blisters
on my palms to prove it. At one point I managed to get up to Charlie for a couple laps, but my focus/aggression weren’t adequate to stay up there, apparently, and I was shuffled back to mid-pack. Brett made his way to the front toward the end of the race, but did a bit too much work and got shuffled back as well. Charlie was our top finisher at 15th; the rest of us just rolled in.

Pretty disappointing weekend results-wise. Charlie was our top GC finisher at 11th. Good experience and training, however. Plenty of sun re-established the tan lines, too.

The real race was really to get toNew York.  The smurfmobile has been ill recently, eating batteries and failing to start for the past two weeks.  Thanks to some clutch help by Brett on Thursday, we were able to get the van to Carey Motors, Chris Carey’s auto shop in scenic Port Richmond.  Chris’ guys were great, and did a great job of getting a new ignition put into the car since the old one was malfunctioning.  Many thanks to our sponsor.

I stashed the car near my place in south philly and early Saturday morning went to pick up Ross.  While loading Ross’ bike, I noticed a sickly green stream dripping out from under the car.  By the time we got to Matt’s place 10 blocks away the van was veritably pissing out antifreeze.  A couple of calls to various auto-savvy teammates (Thanks again Chris!) I figured that we’d probably have to do some emergency surgery.

I spent the next 2 hours or so under the van in a rainsuit with scalding green jerry-curl juice squirting all over the place, but managed to saw apart the old line and jam the leak with a cork and some epoxy putty. We just made sure to keep 4-5 gallons of antifreeze and water in the car, and we headed out of town, making it toCambridgeNYat about 5:30 pm on Saturday.

We picked up our race packets and headed out to preview the last hill of the race. I really like riding my bike on crappy surfaces, partly because it makes me feel macho, and partly because I think that I do it well.  Bombing down dirt roads at 35-40 mph rocks (literally, they were flying left and right).  Climbing, that’s much harder.  I felt like hell after all the
stress of the week, and was not really very confident at all going into the race.  I’ve learned over the years that there are two kinds of ways to feel crappy before a race though: feel crappy at the start, and then do really well, and feel crappy at the start and fall apart.  I was hoping for the former, and it proved to be mostly the case.  Since I was worried about my fitness, I spent most (almost all) of the time hiding from the wind, and
staying upright.  This proved to be the optimum strategy, though honestly when Nick brought out the turkey gobbler at mile 12, I wondered if maybe he would stick it.

I’ve never been in a race where everyone was so consistently strong, and where there were not any teams really working to put someone up the road.  Maybe they knew more than we did, or maybe they were just a bunch of marys not willing to commit.  At any case, we ended up with about 35 guys making it over the Stage Road climb together.  I was feeling the twinges of pre-cramps in my legs, and by the top I was almost certain that I was going to vomit out parts of my quadriceps.  Nick came up and gave me one little
shove as I was dangling off of the back, and suddenly we were the last ones to make it over with the leaders.

I rested a bit and then tried my best to lead Nick out into the sprint. I did my leadout about as well as possible and bring him up to the dangling trio up at the front, but it didn’t really pan out as the field jammed up in the final two corners.  I rolled in for 32nd.  At the finish line I was mostly just happy to have finished, and happy to have made the final group, but also gutted after the extremely stressful 3.5 hours.  It was killer.  I
don’t know for sure if I’ll do it again, but it really was quite the experience.

I second the “hardest race I have ever done” sentiment. It was also a new experience racing with 149 other (very strong) guys, even though the yellow line was only very loosely enforced. I started near the front, but picked the wrong side of the peloton to hang out on, as people were flowing up the opposite side of the road constantly for
the first 5 miles. I actually hit the first dirt section near the back, and hit a pothole that rotated my bars down significantly, and slammed my saddle all the way back…so I went from riding a 54 to a 58, basically, for the next 75  miles. I managed to pick my way to the front, though, and didn’t see Nick around…but I saw a speck off in the distance that I was 95% sure was Nick, so I started disrupting the chase a bit and eventually got confirmation that Nick was, in fact, off the front. He was brought back after some very concerted chasing by Embrocation and BH Garneau. After that, the race basically settled
into a pattern of balls-to-the-wall on the climbs, and a nice Sunday ride in between. I was feeling pretty good halfway through the race, over the longest climb of the day, such that I went to the front and pushed the pace through the subsequent dirt section; a mistake,
definitely, I should have been conserving. After the long climb and descent, we rolled on for a bit, with Aaron and Ross taking fliers, then hit a very rolling section of dirt roads that had just been graded– super loose and covered with large rocks. That was my least
favorite part of the course by far; there was no traction to be had whatsoever when out of the saddle, and though short, the climbs were steep. The next decisive portion of the course was Mountain Road to Becker to Meetinghouse. I was hanging fine on the first two climbs, but I could feel the twinginess that precedes cramps. When we hit the
second kicker of three in Meetinghouse, the pace really picked up, and I was unhitched briefly. I found Aaron and a few other guys though, and we caught on quickly through the loamy, bike-drift-inducing descent…only to be riveted to the yellow line as a crosswind forced echelons at the front. I think at this point, I made my biggest mistake– mentally I was sure I was going to be dropped on Stage Road (the final climb) so my fire went out. I didn’t try to advance position before Stage Road to sag climb, which might have given me a shot at hanging with the selection. Stage Road claimed many victims…every 10 seconds you could hear someone scream as they stood up and cramps took hold. I went at my own pace, and close to the top, Ross and another guy caught up to me, with the selection already well up the road. We started working together on the descent, and another few people caught up to form the second group on the road. We started a rotating paceline, and at one point, one of the guys got a small gap with Ross on his wheel, so I soft pedaled to let the gap expand. That group hung out five or ten seconds in front of us all the way to the line. I didn’t feel like sprinting, so I made a halfhearted dig with 500m to go, but just ended up leading out the sprint for…40th? I finished 43rd, about a minute behind the selection.

Matt, Ross, Aaron and I headed up to Battenkill for the cat 2 race after one of the most stressful weeks/trips ever. Pretty much everything went wrong, but those are 3 great guys to plan/execute a terrible trip with, I think we salvaged the weekend with Sunday morning infomercials over breakfast!

So we grossly underestimated how hard this race and competition would be. I think we all felt like we were on great form, and I know I was targeting this race for a really big result. Turns out a lot of people want to do well here and get on good form… who knew? I am really amazed actually about how closely matched everyone in that field was.
It was hard the whole race but there was still a HUGE group until the very end, there wasn’t any real weaker pack fodder getting dropped. After all was said and done Aaron and I made the final selection of about 30, I finished 12th after Aaron set me up for the sprint. A little disappointing to say the least, but this was the hardest race I’ve personally ever done, so just putting everything out there and duking it out with guys when you’re at your limit was pretty cool.

After blowing my load early on what felt like a good move until the guy I was with dropped himself (which sucks, but I was out of sight with a minute+, so I felt like I had to ride it out. Turns out when he got brought back his teammates turned on the chase) I went into super survival mode for the rest of the race as I felt like total s-.

There is a series of pretty serious dirt rollers with about 10 or 15 miles to go which then leads into a descent and the last big steep dirt climb where s- goes nuts and then 4 flat miles to the finish.

Aaron and I made the selection on stage road (that last steep dirt climb where s- goes nuts), and then rode in with the lead group on the last 4 miles. Aaron and I found each other leading into the finish, and he did a great leadout, but coming into the last corner
was a bit of a mess as we were catching a dangling group of 3 right there and people were jumping all around me. As I took the corner a few ran into the barriers, the whole thing went nuts and I ended up 12th.

I feel bad I didn’t finish with a better result for Aaron’s great work at the end. It also sucks because I had great legs yesterday, and wish I held onto them for longer and raced smarter. Oh well, chalk it up to a learning experience in tough big road races.