Mike's Bike Blog

I started the morning with a good breakfast of red curry chicken, rice and eggs. The race didn't start till 11:20 so I had more than the 3 hour window to digest and build my glycogen stores. I also got to Walburg, which is only 32 miles from my house with plenty of time to pin on my numbers and warm up. I wanted to ensure I was ready to go from the start so I warmed up for 30 minutes getting about 267 kJ out of my system. Moving forward with other races I think I'm going to employ this warm up strategy of warming up with a 250 - 270 kJ effort. In true Walburg fashion it was pouring rain while I drove over and while I warmed up. However there was hardly any wind, that was something new.

This was probably the biggest field I've ridden with, according to BikeReg there were 84 racers signed up for the race. I'm not sure how many showed up for the start but we were packed in 4 across and plenty deep. From the moment we started to roll my position went from bad to worse. The rain did stop when we started to roll but the roads were still wet and in some sections someone had a little to much fun 4 wheeling their truck in the fields as there was mud tracks across the road. To make matters worse there was one area where the tracks were coming from a barn so guess what, that wasn't mud being kicked up. Anyway the entire first lap I spent at the back of the field just fighting to stay on and riding my breaks. It was a yo yo fest, go a little and then hit the breaks. Finally as we were nearing the end of the first lap guys were starting to get dropped and the field was starting to split. I found myself with a large gap between me and the leaders but I had to navigate my way through the mass of guys. Luckily for me rider #132 started to motor up to the lead group. Another guy grabbed his wheel and I grabbed his. #132 Graciously pulled us both up to the tail end of the lead group. Once we got up there I thanked him for the hard effort of getting us up there.

Not sure how many were in this group, probably 30 guys I vowed to get better positioning so I worked up to mid pack. It was good to see Enrique Varela (NWCC), a frequent commenter here in the main group. The problem with being so far back in the pack there was no way I could try and make it into any breaks. In fact I couldn't even see the breaks happening I was so far back. It wasn't until Enrique made the comment that there goes the winning break, I could see riders and the follow car a good 2 minutes up the road and the pack was not chasing it down. I said we should try to bridge up. He said he'd go if I go. So I threw caution to the wind and started to maneuvered my way up to the front. It took a little bit being so far back but I made my way up and then just took off laying out a blistering 3 minute effort to bridge up to 2 riders from Rockwall Cycling.  Those 3 minutes while trying to get away I was at 125% of FTP.

The 3 of us formed an echelon and picked up a few riders that were getting dropped from the breakaway group. I think at the largest our group got was 5 riders, but guys would get dropped from our group as well. We were getting reports from the motos that we had a 1 minute gap on the field and the breakaway was 1 minute ahead of us. On the final stretch leading into Walburg there was 4 of us. So far I was feeling pretty good, but a couple of my fellow riders were starting to struggle. There was one rider that was really strong and it was causing a problem with our group as he was causing guys to miss their pull as they couldn't pull through. This would leave me to close the gap and fill in so the other could rest and catch back on. This went on for a few miles but it took a toll on me and after I did a double pull nobody pulled through and I needed to recover and the strong rider pulled away. At first I wasn't too worried I thought we would catch him. It was appearing we were cutting into the breakaway group, it looked like we were catching a few riders but it turned out to be the junior field. This was a little demoralizing as we thought we were catching the leaders.

The final word from the moto was the main field had shut down and was not putting out a chasing effort, but there was a small group hot on our tails that had broken off from the main field and were a minute or so back. The 3 of us worked together and again I'd have to take a shorter rest to pull through for someone. Not sure if it was a good idea or not but I did not miss any of my pulls.

On the final 1km climb into Walburg I was hurting, I could feel the burn in my legs as I stood for the final climb. My bold move to ditch the main field paid off as I placed 7th. It looks like I was almost 2 minutes up on the main field and 1:30 behind the winner.

Anybody know how mixed Cat 4/5 fields are scored? Do I get the 3 points for my 7th place finish?