He had done the 45 race that morning (and got second), so that was his 11th lap of the course!

Yeah, I think 4 was plenty enough for me:o

George was out riding and I don't know where Brandy was. That may have been us. What team are you on?

I ride for SC Velo. I know what George looks like, it looked like he was riding with a female. I couldn't get a good look to tell if it was Brandy. BTW- Mark is a stud. I was giving him **** for not being able to place in two races in one day, Thurlow style.

George was training someone in the hills after he raced today.

Thanks!
More pics at our site (http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/313/san-luis-rey-cat-4-pictures)

He made it ok.
Also, no crashes in the feedzone as far as I know.

Probably been asked before, but do you guys sell your photos? The quality is better than any of the typical "photographers" you see out there.

I ride for SC Velo. I know what George looks like, it looked like he was riding with a female. I couldn't get a good look to tell if it was Brandy. BTW- Mark is a stud. I was giving him **** for not being able to place in two races in one day, Thurlow style.

I thought you meant in the feed zone. George was training that woman.

Probably been asked before, but do you guys sell your photos? The quality is better than any of the typical "photographers" you see out there.

Yeah, we sell photos. We don't make as much of an effort to sell thr cycling photos, but we will sell them to anyone interested.

OC Roadie
http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/images/2884.jpg

That face says it all, that was nasty race, hardest out of the 3 times I've done it. According to the results, I wasn't there or didn't finish :rolleyes:. Oh well, not that 40th matters. It was good seeing you guys out there yesterday.

That face says it all, that was nasty race, hardest out of the 3 times I've done it. According to the results, I wasn't there or didn't finish :rolleyes:. Oh well, not that 40th matters. It was good seeing you guys out there yesterday.

I was wondering why I wasn't seeing your name up there. Everytime I walked by the results after the race I kept looking, but your name never materialised. Were you between groups or something? I'm pretty sure the only reason I was counted was because I came in with a good sized pack.

George was out riding and I don't know where Brandy was. That may have been us. What team are you on?

I took the kids to Queen Calafia's Magic Circle Garden (http://www.queencalifia.org/) after the race because George had a client for a couple of hours.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/2467758947_230979f4b6.jpg?v=0

[QUOTE=Brandy;6639938]I took the kids to Queen Calafia's Magic Circle Garden (http://www.queencalifia.org/) after the race because George had a client for a couple of hours.

Hey, I forgot to thank you for your feed zone service. Those were great hand-offs.

Hey, I forgot to thank you for your feed zone service. Those were great hand-offs.

You're welcome :) It was my pleasure!

Avery and Gavin were asking if they could do the hand-offs, but I think I'll need to practice with them here before they get official feed zone duty! :eek:

Aww, you should have let them do one. I was overfilled at one point, so it wouldn't have mattered if it had been botched. Next time!

I was wondering why I wasn't seeing your name up there. Everytime I walked by the results after the race I kept looking, but your name never materialised. Were you between groups or something? I'm pretty sure the only reason I was counted was because I came in with a good sized pack.

I was in a group of about 20, what started as the first chase group with myself and two Swami's. Our group splintered on the last climb and I was somewhere near the end of the first of our group.

I was in your group for a few minutes. Then I was in the group behind that. Then the one behind that...

At this point, the season has become purely educational. I'm hoping now that the road racing is over for me I can start getting back into the top 10. I never realized road racing would take so much out of me. Oh well... Something to think about and work on for next year.

I was wondering why I wasn't seeing your name up there. Everytime I walked by the results after the race I kept looking, but your name never materialised. Were you between groups or something? I'm pretty sure the only reason I was counted was because I came in with a good sized pack.

The results were revised because they missed a group of like 6 riders. However, I'm looking at a picture of the revised results and I still don't see him listed.

The sprint for third
http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/images/2878.jpg

And second
http://www.photoscene.com/kimandsteve/images/2879.jpg


Looking at the results, I guess the guy in front must have been from the cat 5 race?

I was in a group of about 20, what started as the first chase group with myself and two Swami's. Our group splintered on the last climb and I was somewhere near the end of the first of our group.

Looking through the pictures I matched you up with somewhere around 45th. Its hard to tell exactly because the teams listed in the results don't always correspond to the reality of the pictures, plus I can't tell what category riders are in and there were a lot of cat 5 stragglers mixed in between the 4s.

Wow so I just looked at the results so I got 13th in the cat 5a was hoping for better but it could have been a lot worse. The winds were nasty the last lap for me and with only 3 people in the chase group we could just not catch the lead group who was just to big. Luckily some cat 4s we caught on camino del rey joined in and worked with us and I think george was in there cause i say a superman on the back of a cervelo. I still have not learned my lesson on trying not to go so hard on the first climb.

Wow so I just looked at the results so I got 13th in the cat 5a was hoping for better but it could have been a lot worse. The winds were nasty the last lap for me and with only 3 people in the chase group we could just not catch the lead group who was just to big. Luckily some cat 4s we caught on camino del rey joined in and worked with us and I think george was in there cause i say a superman on the back of a cervelo. I still have not learned my lesson on trying not to go so hard on the first climb.

now, now... you aren't really supposed to work with other categories. Doesn't really matter for George sitting in 70-somethingth place, but its not really fair to the other cat 5s you are competing against. My group of 15 or so caught a few errant 5s on our last lap but I made sure not to have them mix in with us.

Even that's a little different though because we caught stragglers off the back and it sounds like your group near the front caught stragglers off the back of our race.

Anyway, I think you may have mentioned it already, but if you remind me of your kit & bike I'll look for pictures. Kuf took a few of the 5s I think.

Yeah i know we are not supposed to ride with other groups but not like any of us were in contention on winning, and plus it was not my idea and not like I could say this is not legal and back off and speed ahead on my own. Our field was just so spread out.

I was wearing all black and riding a yellow and blue lemond bike.

Actually, in cases like that you have to self-officiate and tell them to get lost(or vice-versa). You can get warned or DQ'd for working with the infidels. I got yelled at just for slowing down and talking to a masters rider back in 06.
Great job yesterday, by the way. 13th in a race like that is not a bad result at all, considering it was your first.

now, now... you aren't really supposed to work with other categories. Doesn't really matter for George sitting in 70-somethingth place, but its not really fair to the other cat 5s you are competing against. My group of 15 or so caught a few errant 5s on our last lap but I made sure not to have them mix in with us.



Ok did you have to call me out? :o

Igo --Yes that was me and my Superman. I had a tough day out there.

The day before I did Breathless Agony. Yes not very smart to do 114 mile 12,000 feet (11,000 in the first 75 miles) of climbing the day before San Luis Rey but it was on my ultra calendar as part of KOM. We all know where that ended up don't we.

So with tired legs I lined up. On the first time up the climb to the 395 I thought "Oh this is gonna suck". I don't think I can do 3 more climbs up this thing at this pace. I drifted so far through the pack that on the first descent I was on the back struggling to make contact. That first descent was scary. I don't mind tight packs any more. But at 45+ Mph and the fact that I couldn't see the road ahead.. I was little worried.

Still on the first lap ---I worked my way to the front of the pack on Camino Del Rey to 10th wheel before the RIGHT turn on W. Lilac. Slowly I drifted through the pack again as we climbed up to the 395 (the second time) and lost contact with the pack before the feed zone. From then on I was worked with small groups just trying to finish. Thanks to Mark from Kahala, some of you know him as Landshark dude, I was able to finish.

OMG- I can't believe I forgot to mention my lovely, Brandy, for providing feed zone, emotional, and physical (leg massage) support for me. Thank you I couldn't have done it without you there. I actually thought about DNF'ing but I felt so guilty that you were there working for me the least I could do was finish.

Ok did you have to call me out? :o

Igo --Yes that was me and my Superman. I had a tough day out there.

The day before I did Breathless Agony. Yes not very smart to do 114 mile 12,000 feet (11,000 in the first 75 miles) of climbing the day before San Luis Rey but it was on my ultra calendar as part of KOM. We all know where that ended up don't we.

So with tired legs I lined up. On the first time up the climb to the 395 I thought "Oh this is gonna suck". I don't think I can do 3 more climbs up this thing at this pace. I drifted so far through the pack that on the first descent I was on the back struggling to make contact. That first descent was scary. I don't mind tight packs any more. But at 45+ Mph and the fact that I couldn't see the road ahead.. I was little worried.

Still on the first lap ---I worked my way to the front of the pack on Camino Del Rey to 10th wheel before the RIGHT turn on W. Lilac. Slowly I drifted through the pack again as we climbed up to the 395 (the second time) and lost contact with the pack before the feed zone. From then on I was worked with small groups just trying to finish. Thanks to Mark, some of you know him as Landshark dude, I was able to finish.

OMG- I can't believe I forgot to mention my lovely, Brandy, for providing feed zone, emotional, and physical (leg maasage) support for me. Thank you I couldn't have done it without you there. I actually thought about DNF'ing but I felt so guilty that you were there working for me the least I could do was finish.

Look at it this way: 2 climbing races back to back is good training for Everest Challenge. :p

Look at it this way: 2 climbing races back to back is good training for Everest Challenge. :p

yes and look at it this way both of those races combined are just the first day of EC. ;)

Ok did you have to call me out? :o

Igo --Yes that was me and my Superman. I had a tough day out there.

The day before I did Breathless Agony. Yes not very smart to do 114 mile 12,000 feet (11,000 in the first 75 miles) of climbing the day before San Luis Rey but it was on my ultra calendar as part of KOM. We all know where that ended up don't we.

So with tired legs I lined up. On the first time up the climb to the 395 I thought "Oh this is gonna suck". I don't think I can do 3 more climbs up this thing at this pace. I drifted so far through the pack that on the first descent I was on the back struggling to make contact. That first descent was scary. I don't mind tight packs any more. But at 45+ Mph and the fact that I couldn't see the road ahead.. I was little worried.

Still on the first lap ---I worked my way to the front of the pack on Camino Del Rey to 10th wheel before the RIGHT turn on W. Lilac. Slowly I drifted through the pack again as we climbed up to the 395 (the second time) and lost contact with the pack before the feed zone. From then on I was worked with small groups just trying to finish. Thanks to Mark, some of you know him as Landshark dude, I was able to finish.

OMG- I can't believe I forgot to mention my lovely, Brandy, for providing feed zone, emotional, and physical (leg maasage) support for me. Thank you I couldn't have done it without you there. I actually thought about DNF'ing but I felt so guilty that you were there working for me the least I could do was finish.

Haha, didn't mean to "call you out", as much as get the point across that although his help has no affect on your/our race, your help to him actually affects the results of his race, since he finished pretty well (13th). Now, if you just wheelsucked them and the officials saw it there may not have been any issue for them, but even then they could have been relegated or DQ'd. Last year when I did the race as a 5 I was (I thought off the back) working with 3 other guys and we came up on a 4 who tried to get into our rotation. After a few minutes I realized he was a 4 and told him he had to either go off the front or the back but he couldn't stay with us. He chose off the back. It sucks when you are just trying to survive but those are the rules.

Anyway, huge props to you for even showing up to take your punishment after doing Breathless Agony on Saturday. I had a teammate do Mullholland Challenge the day before the circuit race in Ojai.

Edit: and for those of you who think this is just a theoretical exercise, I have seen riders relegated due to this. So beware!

Haha, didn't mean to "call you out",


I know I was just teasing. I'm just glad I finished.

actually it did not help me out at all. There was no way we were going to catch the riders in front and they were way off the back so no one behind us was going to catch up. I probably should have said something but I was with some more experienced cat 5 riders so if they were not going to say anything neither was I. By that time anyways we were almost to the finish. If it did help us catch up to the lead group I would have sure of felt bad. Was the Cat 5b race as stretched out as the Cat 5a race? I waited at the finish for about 5 minutes and did not see any one in my group come in.

I don't want to belabor the point... it may not have helped you this time, but its still against the rules and you can get in trouble for it whether or not it actually helps you, if an official sees it.

Yeah I know I won't let it happen again I mostly like to race on the dirt so you will see maybe at 1 to 2 road races a year but thanks for the heads up

Skippy, I'm curious, did you happen to have any avg. speed numbers for your race? I finished basically at the same place that you did, just in the B group, and I'd be interested to see if the fields were much different. My computer read something like 34.5 mi. at the end of the ride, and avg. speed was like 21.9x mph for the course.

-Jeremy

Skippy, I'm curious, did you happen to have any avg. speed numbers for your race? I finished basically at the same place that you did, just in the B group, and I'd be interested to see if the fields were much different. My computer read something like 34.5 mi. at the end of the ride, and avg. speed was like 21.9x mph for the course.

-Jeremy

yeah those are basically what i got in numbers maybe my average speed was a little slower do to the fact I had such a small group to work with. I think my time was somewhere around 1h 30min. I can't be to sure I don't have my data and I kind of didn't turn off my garmin when I finished right away. I would have to load the data and look at it to be sure. how big of a group did you have to work with? Basically for me that last lap was down to three people then to just me going up to the finish solo.. I was hurting out there. The pace line I felt was not going hard enough on the flats I think we were barely getting around 24-25 miles an hour.

Our field stayed together for the first two laps, split a bit I think shortly after the crash in the middle of the second flat on Camino Del Rey, and broke up a bit more on the climb to end the second lap. The split dropped me at the very end of that climb but my friend Paul pulled us back to the pack of maybe 6 guys barely in time before the last turn into the wind. So it was like 8 of us, but I can't say that the effort was shared throughout. Most were working, but some weren't.

It was an interesting race for me. I have experience with pack riding from our weekly crit practice that I occasionally attend, and the same thing happens there. The guy's who are going to go for the sprint are back in the middle of the pack through the first 1/3 of the race or something and it seems that they never do any work for the field, only for an attack. Sometimes it's hanging out for most of the race and then charging at the end. This is the part of racing that I'm not entirely used to yet, so I was at the front working (lightly working) with maybe 5-6 guys on the entire first lap. I would ease up and nobody would come around. Being a noob I don't really know how to pace myself for that distance of a race, so psychologically it kinda sucks to be up there. The problem is that I know that it's the safest place to be (crash-wise) and I REALLY don't want to crash.

The interesting thing about this race, and about my readiness for it, is that I'm a climber, not a flat rider. I felt like I was able to do as well as the other guys on the flats, but that must have been outside my range a bit because I had NOTHING on the climb, which was disheartening. I was hoping to rock people on the last climb. We have a weekly hill climbing ride that charges up a fairly similarly sloped climb as SLR, and the only guys ahead of me at the end are cat 3-4 and below. That ride has much smaller laps through, and basically goes from up to down back to up, so no middle flat to work through. It's also much shorter overall. Three times up the climb and it's over. This race was a huge mental obstacle for me because I've never raced that distance, or with a whole field of 'strong' 5's. Also, it's my second race ever (first was a local Redlands Bike Classic 30 min. crit) and I've been riding a decent amount this year but it hasn't been with racing in mind. I entered both races on a whim, just for experience and fun. I was hoping to finish with the field, and I feel like I reached that goal despite the fact that the field was completely broken by the time we got that far.

I guess I was hoping to be able to feel an advantage on the climb, and simply didn't because my legs were toast from the flat riding. So that's my goal next year is to get stronger (and smarter) on the flats while I continue working on climbing so that maybe....just maybe I'll be able to do something on the climb.

-Jeremy

My mistake was not going all out on the first climb I figured if i stayed back that we could form a big group and work together and get the lead group but that climb just thined out the field. My little group did ok but I could have gone harder but I guess others couldn't so we had no chance to catch up. I guess the CAT 5A field was just not really equal. I am not the strongest climber since I am around 190lbs but I can do that climb pretty well since that is my hill I do hill repeats on. I just couldn't take off on the climb second time around because there was no group in sight to catch up to and I would be working to hard on my own without the group I was with. It was a great learning experience.

My mistake was not going all out on the first climb I figured if i stayed back that we could form a big group and work together and get the lead group but that climb just thined out the field. My little group did ok but I could have gone harder but I guess others couldn't so we had no chance to catch up. I guess the CAT 5A field was just not really equal. I am not the strongest climber since I am around 190lbs but I can do that climb pretty well since that is my hill I do hill repeats on. I just couldn't take off on the climb second time around because there was no group in sight to catch up to and I would be working to hard on my own without the group I was with. It was a great learning experience.

Yeah... it doesn't really work like that. If a group goes off the front, you probably have better chances in the pack. But if the pack goes away from you, that's bad. If you don't stay with the pack, you won't see them again.

Yeah... it doesn't really work like that. If a group goes off the front, you probably have better chances in the pack. But if the pack goes away from you, that's bad. If you don't stay with the pack, you won't see them again.

Yeah i know but if I knew it was going to be like it was I would have taken the gamble. Oh well I guess that is what road racing all about.

OMG- I can't believe I forgot to mention my lovely, Brandy, for providing feed zone, emotional, and physical (leg massage) support for me. Thank you I couldn't have done it without you there. I actually thought about DNF'ing but I felt so guilty that you were there working for me the least I could do was finish.

Of course, my love. It was my pleasure to be there for you. :)

Yeah i know but if I knew it was going to be like it was I would have taken the gamble. Oh well I guess that is what road racing all about.
it's not a gamble, the race is at the front, if you're not there your race is over and have little to no chance of winning/placing

it's not a gamble, the race is at the front, if you're not there your race is over and have little to no chance of winning/placing

+1. Stick with the pack. If you go off the back, you have next to no chance of catching back up. If you go off the front, there is at least some chance you may stay away, but I'd say not likely in the 5s. You go as hard as you need to go to stay with the pack on the climb. If you blow then you blow, there's always next race to try again...

OMG- I can't believe I forgot to mention my lovely, Brandy, for providing feed zone, emotional, and physical (leg massage) support for me. Thank you I couldn't have done it without you there. I actually thought about DNF'ing but I felt so guilty that you were there working for me the least I could do was finish.

+1. My wife was in the feed zone, feeding me and her brother. When my brother in law, who rides for BMC and never drops out of local races, told me he was going to drop out after the third lap, I seriously contemplated it. He has an excuse. He crashed in a race in Belgium last month and had to have a plate put in to fix his broken collarbone. I was just bored. The break went on the 1st lap and I missed it (I wouldn't have stayed with them for 7 laps). I knew my wife wouldn't let me stop so I kept going. I was much happier that I decided to finish. If she wasn't there, I know I would have stopped.

BTW- I was looking at the original post in this thread. UK asked if a 50 x11 would be enough gear. I thought back to the few times I was in a 53x11 and remembered that a junior from my club was fourth in the 4s. The biggest gear juniors can race is 45x12. To answer UK's question, I guess a 50x11 would have been a big enough gear, at least for 4th.