ldesfor1@ithaca

nice! cant wait go get out in the wind... you make me jealous.

waterrockets 

Tough break there, but at least you can use your steak knives to open your brand new beer.

MDcatV

saturday - walkersville road race, RR on rolling windy terrain. my role was to be in early stuff so that our stronger guys could be fresh when things really counted. after the neurtral rollout, someone attacked so i went with. when they sat up, i attacked with an 1100 W 5" effort, some guys went with, then a few more attacks (all in the 1st 2 miles of a road race), then another surge that i missed but the guy my team wanted in the days move was there, along with strong representation from the other big teams. so, in about 4 miles, a break is up the road that everyone liked. turned into a 60 mile group ride. our guy in the break, who is a TTer, ended up 7th out of a 7 man break. oh well.

sunday - tysons circuit race/crit, 75 mins. of hill repeats. i was on the right side of splits, and on the back of a breakaway at one point. all came together for a big and scary field sprint. me, no idea, team mate finsihed 8th.

lessons learned: at the 1/2 level, i can hang onto the back of breakaways, but am not strong enough to initiate and hang, pulling through (for me) is a surefire way to get dropped, not pulling through is a surefire way to get yelled at, field sprints at the P12 level are just as scary as lower levels, just faster.

ZeCanon

You get used to the finishes. Guys are less likely to randomly fall over when they touch each other so things can look sketchy but actually be pretty safe.

And yeah, you're going to get yelled at if you don't pull. And if you continue to not pull, they're going to get rid of you. The "go back where you belong" (ie hidden in the field) idea is prevalent. Skipping some pulls is fine though, particularly if you make it obvious that you're not going to be much of a threat near the finish.

timster

Hit the deck pretty hard at Mt. Joy Road Race about 300m from the finish line. Thought I was in a good position for the sprint, then two guys in front of me bumped and went down, and I couldn't avoid them.

It's been a pretty discouraging start to the season. Power and form are both there, just some bad luck in the first two races.

Grumpy McTrumpy

^

they crashed out my teammate who had the W in the bag coming over that line. one kid hit him from the right, another kid hit him from the left.

I stopped to help him when I saw him on the floor.

The officials didn't even give us a finish. No help from the promoter. I am not pleased.

timster

Yeah I didn't see or hear from anyone in charge of the race after it happened.

The EMTs were very helpful though.

jwible

Was it manual scoring or chip timing?

Grumpy McTrumpy

The thing happened in the last 100m. I got back on my bike and crossed the line (so did he). We are totally absent from the results though.

kind of expensive race to have lousy officiating and no corners swept.

Grumpy McTrumpy

manual. I don't know if there was a camera.

Racer Ex 

If you drink the sixer in one sitting, you feel no pain when you slash your wrists with the knives.

EKO

Spring Fling Crit Cat 5 ≤ 34. Lawrence, KS:
Last race in a series in which I'm 2nd, 2 points back. Guy in 1st has 4 teammates in the race, I have 0. My strategy is use his team for my benefit, and sit on his wheel. The sprint lap comes around and I take it pretty easily. Apparently they wanted to let me go and burn my matches on the sprint so they could take the finish (sprint lap and finishing place are used to calculate overall place). I recover, and make my way to 3rd wheel for the bell lap and jump after the final turn ~200m from the line and take it by about a bike length. Other guy finishes 6th, so I take the series. Sweet.

Bazaar Road Race Cat 4/5. Bazaar, KS:
48 mi road race, slightly hilly. We have ~7 people in the 4/5 field. Three 5's and four 4's. Field was around 30. Pace starts out comical. After a few miles, one of our 4's attacks. Two guys go into panic mode and pull the whole field. After about 10 miles, he gets pulled back in. Then the surges start. After about 20 miles of this, I'm about cooked and go OTB. I recover for a few minutes, and realize the field isn't really pulling away. Maybe I can get back on? Well, isn't like I had anything else planned for the day. I get into IAB and go into chase mode. For about 10 miles, it seems like the surging continued. I kept passing guys that were falling OTB. It was frustrating because the lead group was anywhere from 100m to 1/2 mile away. Finally, I get back on. The field is down to about 10, of which we have 5. Looking good. At about mile 35 or so, I get dropped again going up a hill (my limiter). However, I spin out on the downhill and catch back on. Right about here, our other 5 attacks and one other goes with him. I think about trying to bridge, but the legs convince me otherwise. I sit in until the finish and go early. Not much left for the sprint and I finish 7th overall, and 4th (I think) in the 5's.

Cat 5 complete. Cat 4 here we come.

ijunes

Dana Point Grand Prix Cat 4

4 crashes. Got stuck behind every single one of them, and was chasing after each of them. Each chase was at least 1 lap. and I went solo for 2 laps and won 2 primes. I remember scratching my knees on the hay bales a few times on the inside of turn 2. turn 1 got closer and closer each lap. field started with 106, but i can't imagine more than 40 finished. And there were tons of close calls but they didn't bother me much. I've come to accept that as a part of racing now. I'm pretty sure I was in the top 20 but didn't stick around for the results. I'd love to see a recorded rebroadcast of the race coverage on the local cable tv station.

challaday

I was there too. Decided to race in the Cat5 pack (I'm still there, although I may have more starts than any cat 5 in history) and help out a couple of team mates racing in their first race.

Pretty non-eventful race although I attempted (way to late) to bridge to a 2 man break and ended up spending almost a full lap in no-man's land. Finally decided to give up the ghost, get some rest in the pack and duke it out in the field sprint.

I told my team mates that I thought the descent of the "Cemetary Hill" would be a cluster if we didn't stretch it out, so I wanted to attack right before the climb up to the cemetary. That worked well. I crested first then descended as 2nd wheel, coming around that S curve onto the bridge.

The sprint featured an absolutely horrific crash that happened right next to me on the left. I could feel the little shock wave of the impact. But I got through OK, as did all my team mates. There were some very serious injuries to those involved though. One guy who got dropped from the pack and limped in about 5 minutes back said that there was a rider who had gone through the barbed wire fence on the side of the road, and another was bleeding out of their mouth and nostrils, with about 6-7 total riders involved.

Stats for the year: 8 races, 8 crashes in my fields. Last year: 22 races, 0 crashes. What's going on?

Obscene

I raced the 5s at Mt Joy on Saturday and was wondering about the gravel in the corners. It was my first time racing in Lancaster so I wasn't sure if that's normal. I saw a camera set up on a trailer at the finish line, but never saw anyone manning it.

The 5s race followed yours so we were waiting to line up when the crash happened. I saw the EMTs rush over but no one from the registration truck seemed to notice. Our race started off really sketchy with an awkwardly slow pace and lots of brake checks in the first few miles. We continued the accelerate, brake, yell, accelerate routine for a while and by the time we reached the climb I was toast. I tried to work with some of the other guys, but nothing really came of it. Overall pretty disappointing race.

Also, do any of you know who the photographers are that were there? I'd love to get a good suffering pic..

slynkie

wait, you've got 30 races as a 5? upgrade pending, at least??

Colonelmom

Langley Crit,

Women's combined field. Tried to help get my teammate up in a break.. didn'g get her there... hip cramped mid race... sat in and it finally loosed up... Didn't do what my team captain told me to do.. Thought I still had time with 5 to go to get on my teammates wheel.. WRONG... So I totally dorked up my own lead out....
managed to squeeze out a 3rd place finish in the Women's Master Field; which equated to a top 10 finish overall..
not too bad.. BUT I owe my teammate big time.. for not being on her wheel when I should have been.

roy5000x2

Ahh you'd be fine. I was able to keep with the pack in the crit, even though I've been off of the bike for the past 5 weeks. I got absolutely slaughtered in the hill ITT and the circuit race this past weekend. Serves me right for hating hills so much.

I should be at Army this upcoming weekend. I'll be the C rider in the WPI kit keeling over dead after the hill ITT. The circuit race might provide some problems for me as well. As long as it's not cold and I can get a decent warm up, I should be able to do alright in the crit and TTT.

carpediemracing 

Bethel ("Criterium de Bethel"), one more race left in the series (April 18th).

Cat 3-4: DNF
P-1-2-3: DNF

Technically in third place overall. Have to earn one point to get into second since second place guy upgraded to Cat 2. Leader was in the second group so overall unchanged.

cdr

mattm

Thought I saw you name in the results - well nice job on staying upright!

You should come join us in the 4's, where things are slightly smoother. We joked that the cemetery was from last year's 5's race... that downhill hairpin was sure interesting!

Saw the ambulances/fire truck coming after our race, had no idea injuries were that bad though... ouch, I hope they can race again.

Crash716

yes sir...the course was good...we were strung out the whole race, 38mph on the back straight at times. I was moving up good and my rear hopped hard on the gutter and the bike just felt wrong, so i started slipping back to almost last cause the rear felt like i was gonna roll the tubular, zero confidence in the corners and Dana is very corner heavy. I finally got some confidence with about 4 to go and started moving back up but it was too late, then the crash just broke my spirit.

training is coming around, FTP is back up a bit and my 5' power is up. My sprint is down almost 200w though..ouch.

bostongarden

That is awesome dude!!! Well done.

agoodale

Was that because you saw one 1/2 of our 2 man lead out train down on the ground?

I was somewhat relieved after the race. By crashing with 2 to go at low speed I didn't have to worry about trying to avoid the high speed last turn crash that was bound to happen (and did!).

EKO

Thanks!

robncircus

Nice! There were 47 finishers.