Ken Woods Memorial Road Race 2009

Race Date: April 25, 2009

This would be my third Category 5 race, but my first long distance road race (as opposed to the previous criterium races).

I showed up plenty early for registration for the Wave 2 starters, about an hour and 15 minute prior to the planned starting time of about 1:30 for the Cat 5er's. Big line for registration, but it moved quickly enough to get back to the car and have plenty of time to get ready.

Something that I've noticed among us new riders is the complete inability to pin a race number/bib on our jerseys so they don't flap in the wind as you ride. In my first two races, I placed it lower on my jersey, right along the under arm seam, about halfway down the jersey. Each time, I still had flapping, and when actually sitting on the bike, it really restricted the stretch of the jersey and got all folded up and goofy by the end of the race.

This time, I placed it a little higher, basically on the lower part of my shoulder. I also used 7 or 8 safety pins placed both around the edge and a couple in the middle of the bib, and really got that thing pinned down. It actually worked much better this time, and will keep the placement up higher.

I was able to get ready to go pretty quickly and decided to take a small ride out to warm up. There was a pretty significant wind blowing from North to South, so it made for a direct crosswind when riding East-West. The sky was overcast, but it wasn't raining like the weather terrorists were saying all week, and it was around 45 to 50 deg F, so it was a really nice day to be out and riding, even with the wind.

Turns out, all the start times had been pushed back, so we didn't actually start the Cat 5 until after 2:00. There was a lot of sitting around, and we actually started about 100 yards from the actual starting line, coming right out of the church parking lot.

My goal for this race was to hang with the pack as long as I could, so I put myself right in the middle at the start. As we took off, we got up to the upper 20's mph pretty quickly, and before I knew it, I was at the very back of the pack, but comfortably hanging on, so I didn't panic. I tried to creep up a little in the middle before our first turn, but only made it 3 or 4 spots then just held.

Held until the corner anyway. At the turn, we turned right so the wind was at our backs. The leaders caught the wind before anyone, and kicked it down right away, causing us at the back to start the accordion right away to sprint to catch up, but we all made it. I put myself near the centerline of the road to try to push up the side, and made some progress back to the middle and held it for the whole stretch with the wind. There was a lot of braking actually as we went over the slow rolling molehills at about 32-34 mph, and there was a lot of moving around too.

Leading into the second turn, we all slowed quite a bit as it was at the bottom of another roller, and people seemed to be pretty white-knuckled heading into it. As soon as we hit the apex of the turn, everyone stood to sprint up the hill and there was an immediate stringing out and everyone was trying to catch up and reform.

We all reformed, but word came up that a guy went down coming out of the corner. Someone said his pedal broke and he went down, but I didn't see nor hear it. On the back side, the wind was coming from right to left, and I got trapped on the right side by accident. I tried to swerve into the pack to recover from the uphill sprint, but couldn't make my move, and found myself hanging on the back after about 2 miles. There seemed to be an attack at the front as it felt like we just kept gaining speed, and I lost it right away and couldn't hold the back.

Went solo with the pack just out of reach until the next turn - back into the wind - when I lost them as they slowly creeped away.

I wasn't the first to fall off the back and was soon reunited with a guy from the IC3 team. He said "Let's go catch 'em," and I gladly took his invite to take turns pulling. The two of us soon caught another straggler in a Rock Racing replica jersey and invited him to join. After a couple rotations in the pace line, and teaching the third guy not to sprint when it's his turn to pull, we formed a nice group and held a very nice pace through the rest of the first lap. When we hit the big 1-mile climb before the finish line, it was kind of every-man-for-himself, but we regrouped pretty quickly at the top and kept working it around the first turn.

We were passed by 2 of the leaders of the Women's 1/2/3 group and their support car right at the turn, and they cruised well ahead of us in no time.

We held the group together through the third turn up into the wind and twisted and turned through the way back, battling the cross and head winds the entire way. Our third Rock guy fell off for a while, but rejoined us after about a mile. We were soon passed by two more women, but then started to encounter a couple Cat 5 men stragglers again. The first was a Tonka Cycle guy. He was sitting up, just spinning slowly, and showed no interest in joining up. The second was another IC3 guy, and he gladly joined saying that the guy he was previously working with (the Tonka guy) gave up. Turns out he was a junior and wanted to try the Cat 5's today for a challenge. As he gave up, I guess he told the IC3 guy he wished he had stuck with the juniors, as they were only doing one 21-mile lap.

At one point on the back stretch, there was a curve in the road that turned us heading east for a mile or two, making for another cross wind from the left. After taking my pull, I dropped back on the right side, out of the wind, then grabbed onto the back. Because of the wind direction, we really had to overlap wheels quite a bit to make the draft worth it. We were pretty much riding 3-abreast, with each others' handlebars right behind each others' hips. As I was grabbing onto the back, I had to spin a little faster to get into the draft. I'm not really sure what happened, but I think the crosswind grabbed my front wheel and pushed my body off-balance to the point where I felt the need to turn left to catch it. Well, I couldn't turn left due to the wheel-crossing, so I had to pull up and actually brake. As soon as I cleared his wheel, I was able to swerve and catch my balance, but felt like I was almost going down. My wheels actually skipped a little as I swerved. Yep, I was almost that guy that took out the back of a three-man paceline. But I didn't, and I caught back up without any harm done, aside from my bruised ego.

The four of us worked pretty well up the back stretch until we hit the last couple miles. At that point, we started to approach the last big climb, and the fourth guy decided to drop us, and did so quite quickly. At that point, we all went for ourselves again up the hill, and at the top, it was just me and Rock together. He latched on behind me for a bit, and I then dropped back to make him take a turn. As soon as we crested the last little false flat, the finish line came into sight. Rock dropped back to pull a draft off of me, so I hit it a little harder as I didn't want to pull him all the way in.

He did as I thought, and jumped with about 100 yards to go, but I held and stole 41st place from him. There was no standing sprint or arms in the air, but it did feel good to have that little competition at the end. We both sat up as we crossed and pounded fists. Pretty sure we both felt the same way: it's time to train harder.

So, 41st out of 50 starters. 42 miles in 2 hours, 4 minutes. About 21 mph average.

I completed my goal of finishing, but really wish I could have held onto the pack longer. I'm learning more and more the importance of being up front. Had I been closer to the front, I would have avoided a lot of the braking-and-sprinting accordion effect at the back, and been able to ride steadier and save a lot more for later. I didn't need to sprint as hard as I did up the hill out of the second turn either. I would have been better off saving a little more and hammering down after the top of the hill to catch up.

I learned a lot by being in an actual race paceline, as small as it was anyway. All three/four of us learned how to communicate to each other, and had a great chemistry going for the majority of the race.

I think the game breaker was the fact that I rode with my saddle bag the entire race (sarcasm/vanity alert). As we lined up at the start, I noticed that I completely forgot about my bag under my saddle. I then looked around to see if, by chance, anyone else felt the need to keep theirs on. I did see one other, and it was actually bigger than the one I had on, but it was just the two of us. In hindsight, I had plenty of time to ride back to the car to drop it off, but I wasn't sure how long we actually had, and I didn't feel like it anyway. Probably didn't make much of a difference, aside from making my experience level that much more obvious as I got spit out of the back, but there really wasn't a need for it in this race.

It was a successful race for me overall, but I'm really getting a gauge of my cycling fitness ability relative to other local racers. I have a lot of work to do to get competitive, but I'm definitely not getting discouraged. With a little more fitness, and a lot more knowledge on when and where to use it, I think I'll be able to hang a lot more.

I missed the LSC Crit series this week (didn't think that the pregnant wife would appreciate watching a bike race on our second wedding anniversary), and probably won't make it to the Marty Road Race or the LaCrosse Criterium this weekend due to my wife's work schedule and kid duty.

I might head up to SJU to watch the UMLL playoffs on Saturday, but that will be a spur of the moment decision. It sounds like the LSC Crits are getting pretty rough already, so I'm not sure if I'm going to risk it again, but as of right now, my next race would be next Tuesday at OPUS. I'm thinking I'll just show up at the starting line and hang at the back to get my 4th start on the books, then just get a good few laps at the back to avoid the wrecks.

The wife and I are expecting baby boy #2 any day now, so that will also play a factor in which races I sign up for.