The Course: A half mile totally flat, smooth rectangle on perfect pavement.
The Plan: After cramping really bad the day before and racing on limited training my goal was to finish and help out JD if I could.
Man, 72 laps around a rectangle surrounded by ~80 other guys seems like a boring time, but I actually enjoyed it. I started out on Eric Wahlberg’s wheel knowing that he wouldn’t lose the race in the first few laps and it taught me the best line through all the turns, which is important when you have 288 of them. After 10-15 laps of doing nothing but sitting in, the pace picked up and I was hanging on for dear life. I could see JD a little further up perhaps trying to get in a break or just saving energy for later.
At the halfway point I really couldn’t believe that we still had 36 laps to go. The pace was fine, but my legs were really starting to fatigue. Between 25 to go and 10 to go I was in the top 10 trying to keep it together when I noticed Wahlberg and two other fast guys up the road. I thought they had a good chance of staying away so I put the hammer down and pulled back half the gap hoping JD would be ready to finish it strong. The bad news was that JD dropped out about halfway through the race so my work was for nothing and it took too much out of me to finish strong. I sat on the back the final 10 laps and cruised in near the back happy to be healthy and feeling good. I wish the race would have been 15 laps shorter because again it wasn’t too fast, it was just too long for my fitness right now.
My hamstrings are still letting me know how much they enjoyed the racing.
Results: Not quite DFL, but close.
Notes: Average speed was 26.5 with a max (for me) of 32.6.
I think its too late in the season to pour on the miles and have it do any good. No matter, I like putting the miles in so I'll ride them anyway. I should be a little better by the Giro. Hopefully I'll be able to be competitive for the whole 5 million laps of that race or whatever crazy amount it is.
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