cmyke

A very good point -- I warmed up for 20 minutes or so, but it wasn't as structured as it should have been. Good to remember for next time.

agoodale

My racing age is 40 so I still have another 5 years until I have to race against him & his team on a regular basis. Maybe he'll have lost interest in bike racing by then

swimmer88

Manhattan Beach GP - Cat 3

As usual I took my time getting to the starting line and started out the race towards the back. Honestly, that's not a bad place to be on this course. The course is wide with two hairpin turns, so there is typically a lot of people swarming to the front during the long straightaways. I just didn't feel like wasting my energy to hold a good position with so much time left in the race.

About 10 minutes into the race there were two guys with about 10 seconds on the field. Somehow, they both managed to crash in one of the hairpin turns. Never seen that before...

35 minutes in there were a few more attacks, but nothing too dangerous. There was an attack that stayed off the front for awhile, but it was only 2 guys and I knew they would never make it.

3 to go...things started getting crazy. My friend Anthony came up and told me good luck. We've sprinted against each other quite a few times, and we both knew the race was between us.

2 to go...I move up to the front and hold my position. Anyone who tried to take me off a wheel either got a shoulder or a "f*ck you!" (Normally I'm a nice guy...but when there's less than 5km to go, I turn into a jerk)

1 to go...I've never heard so much yelling and screaming before as guys were battling for position. I was still at the front, maybe 10th wheel with 800 meters to go. I knew I had to move up before the last hairpin, so I sprinted up to 4th wheel. We went through the corner hard and fast and I came out and immediately passed 2 guys. I'm in 2nd place with 200 meters to go. First place was two bike lengths ahead of me but I was closing in on him fast. I pulled out of the draft to pass him with 50 meters to go, I started to pull along side him, but it was too late...I got beat by 1/2 a bike length. Anthony, the guy who told me good luck, finished 3rd.

I think my one mistake was that I hesitated going into the last corner, I was carrying speed and could have moved up to 2nd or 3rd, but instead I slotted in at 4th. Coming out of the corner, there was just too much of a gap to close, even for a decent sprinter like me.

All in all, I was happy with my race. It is my 7th podium finish this year, and is most likely my last race as a Cat 3.

timster

I found this out the same way last year. The best crit I had was when I doubled up and already had a race in my legs. After that I started making my warmups more vigorous, and my racing has definitely improved since then.

agoodale

I've seen it happen several times as a race marshal for our team's race. Some guy in the break decides to sneak a peek at the field going around a turn. Head turns, bike swerves, catches the guy behind him by surprise, crash.

Man, I get no respect...no respect (see my previous race report). Seriously though we knew we wouldn't make it and were hoping that some guys would bridge. At least 4 or 5 were needed to make it stick.

Good job on the sprint! I saw the photo finish by the results and you almost had it.

umd

Congrats Swimmer, you're pretty strong and I think you will do well in the 2s. I still need to marinade in the 3s for a while.

badhat

dead dog GC is official: i pulled 7th in my first stage race

also my 5th place TT would have been top ten in every cat of the race except P12 (where it woulda been 15th)

admittedly the sm3 and P12 road course the day before was way way harder than ours, so i'm sure thier legs were heavier for the TT, but i'm really encouranged!

mike868y

Friggin' awesome badhat, congrats

Keep up the great work, you seem to be killing it this season.

carlosflanders

The winds on that course change rapidly by the hour and have a huge effect on TT times. Wouldn't read much into the times unless the starts were close. Good performance nonetheless.

badhat

well obviously thats true but otoh theres no reason to believe the winds were uncooperative all day but became favorable just for my race and then went back to being crappy. plus ive ridden TTs against a lot of these guys before, esp the FC guys.

also i was on clipons and box rims.

aicabsolut

Ouch!

Evo definitely rounds up a lot of great prizes for this race. Sigh, I miss the RTCGP. Couldn't even ride out there on Sunday to watch... was afraid I'd enter despite my nagging injuries.

Kris Flatlander

Good meeting you too! Sorry to hear that you crashed, I saw you bridging to that attack though.

The GP was a very fun race, it's too bad I didn't have the balls to get up there and race aggressively enough. I ended up in mid to back-pack for most of the race and the surges were pretty big on the back end of the course (especially the three downhill turns, hanging back there was brake-city, yuck). I really need to get used to the heat out here, the announcer was right, it was like racing in a hair dryer! Dropped in the end, but got some decent numbers out of the race (328 NP/275 AP) but I think a lot of that was working harder than I should have been being so near the back.

bdcheung

Holy cow. My NP was 260.

umd

Is that lower or higher than you would expect?

Edit: Oh I see, that was in response to Kris Flatlander's...

Kris Flatlander

Keep in mind that was for only about 20 minutes until I was dropped too

mattm

And do you guys weigh the same?

bdcheung

I weigh 140, Kris looks like he's maybe 150.

timster

Dang, I came in 5th and my AP and NP were 243 and 287. I'm just over 150 lbs.

Grumpy McTrumpy

you guys are missing the point.

try isolating your first 20 minutes and then see what your normalized wang is.

timster

Almost identical. First 20 minutes were 253 AP and 285 NP.

bdcheung

First 20 minutes were 227w average, 277w normalized (keep in mind that I attacked and bridged during this interval, too)

Kris Flatlander

BD, you gave me a bit of a laugh at work today! At 6'4 I'm a solid 182 lbs right now, if I'm to ever get really lean (9% BF or so) I'd probably be right around 170-172.

I would have to lose a whole lot of my leg muscle to get to 150 (I already don't have any upper body as it is imo)

So, I'd have to be somewhere around 346-356 NP/292-307 AP to match up with your guys' numbers. Probably a little lower than that in practice, seeing as the course was pretty well flat.

In the end, I think the big point my numbers show are that power output isn't everything if you're wasting all of your matches and kick by having to close stupid gaps and not flowing with the peloton. Oh, and that I could do with losing some weight .

bdcheung

from my camp chair you looked about 150 lbs! :-D

MDcatV

^I like reading the RTCGP reports. I'm bumming I missed it, it's my favorite MABRA crit and i've had reasonable success there. Unfortunately, I was barfing all night saturday, had a 103 deg fever, and spent sunday in bed. with my temperature as it was, i probably would have been comfortable in the heat out there.

RockyMtnMerlin

That can be true. But this year, like two years ago, there were only brief periods where the winds were of significant velocity to have much of an impact on times. It did change direction (from tailwind going up the hill to finish to headwind going up the hill to finish) toward the end of the day for the SM 3 and SM Pro-1-2 which slowed their times. Nearly every other category had new records established for the TT.