Mike's Bike Blog

The cat 4/5 race had a 8:05 am start time so I got up at 5 am, had a bowl of cereal and got everything ready and was out the door by 6:30. Manda was a short 31 miles from my house so I got there at 7am. It was pretty cold Sunday morning, I was not looking forward to getting out of the car let alone putting on my jersey. This was definitely an arm and leg warmer day. The only knock on the weather the entire day was how chilly it was in the morning. The weather completely cooperated, there was no wind, it was a perfect day to race a bike.

After getting my numbers pinned on I set out to try to get warmed up. As I was warming up on Manda Carlson Road I passed a rider going the opposite direction and it looked like a  Bike Barn kit. I do a double take and the rider does the same and says "Mike?". It was none other than Enrique, we both had our eyes out for each other and happened to spot each other out. We chatted a bit about the Saturday race at Belterra, I didn't participate but Enrique did.

At the start of the race the pace was set at about 22 mph and then it kicked up well above 24 mph as we entered the first of sharp right turns. What compounded this was right before one of the turns there was a rough patch of road. I was middle pack at this point and there was a big uplift in the road where the bridge met the road. This was a pinch flat waiting to happen, I couldn't move either direction to avoid it, the best I could do was bunny hop it, which I did, but I lost my water bottle in the process. The bottle will surely be missed as it had a gel bot top. I wasn't the only one to lose their bottle, a few riders ahead lost theirs as well. From this point on the pace just went up and in the back was not the place to be and the pack was strung out from that point on.

I caught on with a couple other riders and for the next 3 laps we would pick up more and more people. Whenever it was my turn I made sure to try to push the pace, I didn't just want to settle into a "let's just finish" mode", I wanted to keep the pace high and so I did. I tried to take longer pulls as well. I would get a bit of a rest when I'd fall back into the end of the paceline and a few riders would slow it down to 19 - 20 mph so that gave me ample time to catch my breath. We worked well together as a group, however there was one guy that made me nervous and I usually found myself right behind him. He would let a bike length or two gap get between him and the rider directly infront of him. This made me nervous as we were running the risk of losing contact with the front of our group. On a few occasions I would go around him and take his spot. He was persistent though I don't think he got dropped from our group till the very end.

On the last lap we came upon a group of 5 or 6 riders, we slowed as everybody chatted. I didn't want to wait and looking at this group there were some strong riders in it. So I didn't want to slow and get them integrated into our group so onward I pressed. Now our group was about 9 strong and it looked like the stronger of the other group had caught on so I knew the sprint to the end would be even more difficult. How did I know this group had some strong riders? Mainly by the fact that one of them was Scott (AT&T/Brain and Spine) that I ride with regularly with. I stuck to my plan of pressing the pace whenever it was my turn, but given we had 9 guys in our group that gave most everybody time to recover. Not sure if a better tactic would have been to sit in a bit and conserve for the end.

With 1 mile left I just got done with my pull at the front and moved to the side for the next rider to pull through, but there was nobody there. I looked back and I had a gap of a few bike lengths. I just got back at my pace and figured it was now or never. Not a few seconds later Scott and one other rider blew past me, I knew I had no chance to catch on and with a mile left I'd probably burn up. Then 2 more went past and I could feel the surge of the rest of the group. I hunkered down and tried my best to catch the other 2 and fend off the advances of everybody else. By the time we hit the 1K mark I had a good lead on the group, but I could never quite reel in the others. Not sure if my tactic of pushing the pace paid off, I know the final group besides the 4 that initially got away from me around the 1 mile left mark were able to stay away and had enough gas, but it would appear the rest of my riding companions might not have had enough in the tank to finish strong.

I'm not sure where I ended up placing, but from a power production it was my best race effort to date. Even considering I had the benefit of riding in a group I managed a normalized power of 273 watts, TSS of 159.4 and IF of .95 for the effort in 1'45" (38 miles).