LowCel 

Well this was my first road race, I have to admit it wasn't exactly what I expected. In my mind (though I wasn't going to admit it) I thought I could possibly just go out and leave the majority of the field. I had saw all of the graphs about average power to weight ratios per cat, mine is pretty much equal to a cat 3. Since I was entering a cat 5 no problem right........wrong!!!!

This race was originally supposed to be a 30 mile race, three loops each ten miles long. Once we got there we found out that it was going to be four loops eight miles long, no big deal. It ended up being four laps 9.5 miles long and pretty much flat, a total of about 38 miles. The weather was in the mid 40's with 20 mph winds with 30 mph gusts, that made it interesting.

Anyway, on to the details. The officials put the cat 5's, juniors, vets, and women together. We all started off rather easy and headed off into the wind. About 7 miles in there was a section about a mile long that people really took off. I think we hit about 30 mph in that section. We dropped a few of the riders including my buddy that I was traveling with. The suffering only lasted a couple of minutes until we made a turn that put us back into the wind. That was about the end of the first lap. The second lap was pretty uneventful as was the third until I had a guy come over and give my bars a pretty good tap. A gust of wind pushed him right into me, definately got my attention. At this point I was still amazed at how strong the riders were in a cat 5 race, I was just hoping to finish with the pack.

Well, now it's time for the forth lap. This was a pretty slow lap since most people were fighting for position. This road race thing is basicly a rolling chess game on two wheels. Much different than the mountain bike races I'm used to. The first couple of laps I had been stuck on the inside with no place to go. I knew that I was going to spend most of this lap on the outside, I hadn't really planned on pulling for over 1/2 of the lap though. At times I did get down to about 12 mph, no one would pass. Can't blame them, they were either exhausted or saving for the finish. About 4.5 miles into the lap me and another guy found ourselves in a breakaway, this was a total accident. We both decided to set up and let the peleton catch back up. It was too windy to make anything stick at this point. With about two miles to go things started getting interesting. There were a couple of attempts at breakaways, I just did my best to follow each of them.

With about 1 mile to go there were four of us out front. It stayed like this for about 1/2 mile. With 1/2 mile to go one of the guys finished his pull and sat back. The guy behind him just sat up for some reason. I decided to go. I looked back and no one came with me, I didn't think I had a chance at getting it to stick, especially when I had to hit my brakes and ask a cop which way I had to turn. I just started pedaling again and hoping for the best. The finish was a slight uphill grade with a little bit of a headwind. I finished about five to ten yards ahead of second place. I couldn't believe it, I had won my first race!

I must say I was a little dissapointed in the prize. After spending around $200 to get to the race and enter it, then busting my butt in the race the prize for first was two bottle cages. However more important then the prize is the satisfaction and knowing how I did.

Anyway, after all of that I had to get back into the truck and drive about five hours to get to Sunday's race.

blonduathlongrl

WOW!!!! congrats!!!! gesh and this was your first race!!
This was such a good read too!
Hurry and sign yourself up to another one!

LowCel 

Thought some people may find this interesting. This is the power information from my PowerTap.

botto 

congrats man. well done!

but one thing - don't expect much more than the bottle cages for a cat 5 race.

Grasschopper

Well...were they nice bottle cages?

Congrats on the victory...I love race reports like this...makes me want to to it....then I see one where someone fractures their elbow in a crit...and I think otherwise.

LowCel 

Thanks everyone. The bottle cages were pretty nice, they are American Classic. Unfortunatly I already have American Classic cages on all four of my bikes. The promoter did offer me a couple of inner tubes instead though. I gave the cages to my buddy, he just had some cheapies on his so it worked out pretty well.

blonduathlongrl - I did another race on Sunday. I will try to get the report up a little later.

PolishPostal

Great job Lowcel. You did such a good job with this race report, I think that you should do the report for our race yesterday. You can also include how I botched the finish. Lesson learned, I won't make that mistake next time. I won't be at the front in the last mile either.

LowCel 

Thanks, I will work on it in a little bit. I need to wake up a little more. It was great riding with you yesterday. I learned some things yesterday as well, I'll include the details in the report. Don't want to give away too much information.

LowCel 

The race report for the following day is now up.

Sunday's race - Mentor, KY

BoSoxYacht

Great job , when I raced cat 4 (no cat 5 at the time) it was crashes-o-plenty. I"m glad to hear you had a much better expirence .

gcasillo

Congratulations, LowCel. Very impressive times in your HR zones too. Mine would be more like 56% in the 167-220 zone at least. Probably more. :<

TomM

I hope you weren't expecting to pay the bills with your winnings.

LowCel 

Not even close. I wasn't expecting anything big at all. Something of comparable value to the entry fee would have been alright. I did have a choice though, the promoter looked at my bike and said since I already had bottle cages I could have a tube instead if I wanted. However, like I said it's more important that I have the satisfaction of knowing how I did.