Date: Saturday 13th February Distance: 10 miles Time: 26.50 Finish Position: 4th My first TT of the season, perfect day, reasonably warm and very little wind. Majority of riders were using this event as practise for the Berkeley TT, I … Continued
Hey team any 1 interest in this race registration is now open: http://www.sportsbaseonline.com/events/index.xhtml?categoryId=22986 I’m signed up for the 45+ (Bill)
This was the most technical course for me to date. The course was wet and dangerous. The make up of the course was 7 turns including a hairpin and and a chicane in 6/10 of a mile. This was a … Continued
Don’t under estimate the hills. This race seemed to be 90% climbing. It was 16 miles of grinding the entire time. Painful.
Registration for the 2010 Altamont TTT on Sat April 3 has opened. See here for more information.
Going into this race my goal was to stay in the top 20 spots for the first 20 mins of the race. I have been doing primarily base and strength training so far, and just now adding intensity. Also, the race was after one of my peak volume training weeks (13hrs). So I wanted this race (plus M35+ 4/5 following) to be my intensity training for the week, and to kick-off getting back into racing for 2010.
Primarily, I was able to stay in the front half of the pack for the first 21mins, and mostly in the top 20. I would slip back on the back side as the pack would swell up and start passing after the course’s first R90 turn after the hill. Goal achieved so far. As we received the word “5 laps to go”, 2 things happened: (1) I realized I still felt really good, surprisingly ready to mix it up for the finish, and (2) the pack started getting very jumpy. In fact, there were no crashes until this “5 to go”…and during that one lap there were 2 crashes! The second crash ended with a guy falling into my leg, knocking my foot and chain. By the time I recovered the peleton was split and I was last guy in the chase group.
Our chase caught the main group during the 4th lap, and I moved up to ~25th. At the 3rd lap, I was 15th. Then 10th. Then with 1 to go, I was 6th. I was concerned that the pack would swell again at the bottom of the hill after the R90, so I hammered down the hill to accelerate up into the slipstream of the front guys and keep the pace high. I think I entered the corner at 35mph, with my rear wheel sliding. I entered a slide twice and recovered twice before I ended up hitting the curb, slamming me down into the hard dirt. The net is a broken collarbone and 2 or 3 cracked ribs. Bike looks fine, still pending a detailed inspection. Several lessons learned on bike handling.
Meeting with the doc on Friday. Expect that I can get on my trainer this weekend with easy spinng. Racing by late May `10.
I had about 15 minutes to recover from the first race… In this race I was the young guy. In this category I felt pretty safe and just hung out in the back of the pack until there was about 5 laps to … Continued
This race was with the young and the old. The road was like lumpy oatmeal. The course is completely flat L-shaped. There was a bunch of sketchy riders it was fast and scarry. First race of the day and I … Continued