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What Matt I. saw:
Category: 4
Result: Off the back
I have one word for this race:
BONK!
It was by far the worst race I've done. I got hit with a double whammy,
losing two gels while taking out one to eat. 3/4ths of the way through
the race I was out of sports drink. I couldn't believe it. The last 1/4
of the race was mostly all uphill so it hurt bad. I could barely turn
over the cranks, and was muttering to myself the whole time what a great
race I could have had. Well, shit happens.
The race started out about 15-20 mins late, as usual. Right when we
started, it began to rain a bit. The roads were wet, and air was wet
from the fog, and the cow guards were super slick.
I played very conservatively on the decents, giving myself plenty of
room. There wasn't any attacks at all, I think people were concerned
with the wet weather and the climbs that would come later. There were a
few close calls, and some guy nearly took himself out on the cattle
guards. A crash happened on a corner just before the last climb, and the
pack took advantage of it but accelerating ahead.
At this point I was
feeling good, but was wondering why my legs were a bit tight. I thought
there was supposed to be a nuetral feed zone with water (velo promo
normally does this ) but there was nothing. I know I didn't miss it
because I looked and looked for it. I didn't wear my hearing aid for
this race because it was all wet and I'd end up with a broken one by the
end of the race, so I didn't bother asking anyone about the feedzone. I
hate trying to read lips during a wet and techincal course.
On approach
to the major climb was when I ran out of gas. It couldn't come at a
worse time with the major climb and then the run up to the finish. I
crawled my way up and saw Chris, who looked to be in good position.
Bonking is the worst, man, next time I'm gonna put a carton of power gel
in different places in my shirt, so if I grab one and loose it, I've got
another place to get one. Geez.
So the last 200m hurt like hell, and there are Richard and Chris waiting
for me at the top. Richard gave me a GU gel, and let me tell you, that
was the best tasting gel I've ever had. My body was so depleted.
We all rode back to thhe car, another 7 miles, and I was fine.
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What Richard saw:
Category: 3
Result: Off the back - 22nd
I hope you appreciate Matt's up-to-the-minute race report. He sent it
whilst we were driving back from the race!
So, Pine Flat RR, or Pine "The only flat bit of land now has a reservoir
on it" Road Race as it really should be known.
Matt, Chris and I drove down last night to stay in Fresno with lights
our at around 10:45pm. Reveille was at 5:30 for departure at around 6am.
Before we left, we made sure that Fernando and Luis were up, but as they
had later start times than us, were not is as much of a hurry.
We had been naturally concerned about the weather after driving through
steady rain a lot of the way down, but it was dry when we left the
hotel. As we approached the race HQ it became clear that this was going
to be lumpier than we were expecting. We had to negotiate a steep
descent to get to the campground.
I had time for a short warm-up before spinning around waiting for the
start. As I joined the 3's group it started to rain. The initial
roll-out is neutralised up the steep climb to the road. From then it is
north on Trimmer Springs Road for about 11.5 miles to a turn-around,
back past the HQ and then on to do the loop. Trimmer Springs Road is
lumpy - long rollers abound with not much level ground to be found.
A group attacked as soon as we were racing and got a gap. I think it
started with 5, but we saw when we approached the turn that it was down
to 3. The moto ref was watching for centre-line violations and I saw one
rider who made a blatant move penalised - his effort to start to bridge
to the breakaway was completely wasted as his penalty was to drop to the back of the group. Appropriate.
Once past the HQ the first serious question was asked of the legs up a
sustained incline by people driving at the front. Several people were
put into difficulty, but I had the legs. At the top of this incline, we
were up in mist and with the rain that was falling, we had an
interesting descent onto the central valley floor.
There was a general regroup at the bottom and we rode sub-tempo until we
turned north and began to climb back into the foothills. The weather
began to lift around this time. Once onto the main climb things got
hard. This is a 1000' climb over 4 miles or so, but there are some
really steep sections in places. Relatively early on I found myself at
the back struggling to hang on. I fought for a while, but as there was
clearly a long way still to go, I paced myself and had to let them go. I
wasn't the only one.
For the longest time, the bunch were in sight, so I wasn't that much
slower than them, but I had a hard time on the really steep sections. By
this time, a warm sun was shining. The descent was fun and then it was
time to recuperate a little for the finishing climb. Much to my
surprise, the 1km to go sign appeared, far earlier than I expected.
I think I passed 4 riders in the last km who had obviously blown up
big-time. The last 500m were interminable, but finally I was there,
finishing in what ended up to be 22nd place out of 40+ starters. Not a
bad result for my fist road race as a 3. In a break with tradition, the
referee was reporting time gaps. I was about 8 minutes down on the winner.
The Pine Flat RR course is well worth making the trek for. It has a bit
of everything and the scenery is spectacular which we appreciated as
Matt, Chris and I rode back to the HQ from the finish on what turned
into a warm sunny day.
And what happened to the break? They were caught, I think on the big climb.
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What Chris saw:
Category: 5
Result: 5th
No report, but we had to record the result - good ride dude!
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