heppm01

Wow - there is a boatload of "Oh ****" in that series.

Not to blow off anyone's misfortune, but the photog got some great shots.

badhat

yeah its a spectacular sequence for sure. a buddy of mine is one of the guys who went down hardest and broke his collarbone in the process and even he's posting that link on his FB page.

this first guy down was pretty F'ed up. by the time i got through there his crew was directing people around him and he was lying on his side, not moving, and making really sickening gutteral groany noises. it was really upsetting.

that crash and really the whole race are sorta the talk of the scene this morning. back and forth "what an irresponsible course, i'll never ride it again" vs "HTFU"

people who were lucky enough not to get stuck behind crashes like this are being faily flippant about "if its too hard for you stay home", but to me the point isnt whether or not it was too hard for ME, but rather if it was unreasonably sketchy for riding in a big group.

miwoodar

WOW, Wow, wow. Scary stuff in those photos. Perfect timing on the part of the photographer.

My Mead Roubaix Race Report:
Raced early so I could spend the rest of the day with the family which meant 35+4's. Roughly 70 starters. Two 19 mile laps.

The 1st lap was largely uneventful. The accelerations were mild and occurred where I expected. I went to the front to ride first wheel down the descent on 3 (the portion in the photos linked above). Surprisingly nobody fought me for it. The climb on 7 was a short, tough slog. A handful of us ended up with the little separation on the peloton. We worked together and our group of eight finished 1-8 on the day.

The 2nd lap was more eventful. Attacked the break at the wrong point in time. I knew better but I had a moment of separation shortly before my intended attack and thought that either A) it would stick or B) the group would catch me but with only half of the former members. I expected the latter but hoped for the former. Hmmm, 6 guys caught me. Apparently there was an option C that I hadn't counted on. Another slog up the climb on 7 and I rolled to the line in 5th place. Cycling bib #4 is on the wall.

Time to get healthy. Taking a day or two off to rest. The entire family is still coughing...we've all had this weak bug for a week now. It's gotten to the point that when I cough I push in on my temples rather than cover my mouth. If I don't it feels like my head is going to explode.

VT Biker

The thing is, even if you pre-rode it, unless you somehow pre-rode it with a really large group, hauling a$$ down County Road 5, you do not have the experience of hitting that sand, having to deal with losing control of your bike a bit, and dealing with having no room to maneuver and correct because you have two guys to your side, a guy in front and a guy behind you, and also dealing with the same issues.

I do not have enough experience to know whether this course was reasonable or not. I agree with another that criteriums are also dangerous, yet people do not complain. However, the one difference is that with crits, your equipment is designed to be used for that race. In this case, people riding around on road bikes, hitting 4" deep sand as they are descending in a pack....not sure that is the same thing.

echappist

Ditto for this and Brian's comment. Bike racing is dangerous enough as it is, and why we amateurs want to take risks that professionals are paid/required to take is beyond me.
Oh my, sorry to hear that. Was your teammate released from the hospital? Hope she heals up soon.
Despite my own reservations against the Roubaix type races, chapeaux for doing them.

shovelhd

Best wishes for your teammate, GA.

Hida Yanra

last weekend race before the first big SR of the year.
Weather was horrible, even for a proud PacNWer - raining, cold, windy, on roads that weren't well repaired (all chewed up), and lots of chip seal.
The course was almost 180d opposite of how I'd draw up 'my ideal course'... so the robots said I should work really hard and do as much as I could for the big guys we'd brought along... all in the name of training.
So, flat-to-slightly-rolling, with some short, steep, 5-10" power ramps.
I would have aimed for a long ride in a small group, but friday I hit an all-time 20' power number, and saturday I climbed a mountain. this was not a day for me to be OTF.


I did as much work as I possibly could - pulling the pack, pulling in breaks, easing breaks away and pretending to chase hard...
I hoped to run the tank dry with about 2 miles to go on the last lap, and I certainly did. Pulling a really silly percentage of the last lap, I drained it, and then was done.

The race finished with a steeply diving 180 right-hander, immediately into an 'S' turn, immediately across a bridge, and then 1.2K of totally flat, totally straight roadway.
Not my finish... not at all.
The top four finishers all weighed 185+.... the descending-then-a-wattage-arms-race was exactly what I was expecting, and I wanted no part of that. the finish did result in a massive stack-up at 150m, and some folks got "lights-and-sirens" rides away, glad I wasn't there for that either.

I rolled in a bit later, soft-pedaling the last 2.2miles.

VT Biker

Good job on the race. Where in the course did you attack? I would be interesting to hear from you and Chris about where in a course such as this, with the conditions as they were where strategically there was a place to make a break? Aside from the hill on 7 where would you or did you guys see attacks or breaks form?

miwoodar

Standard stuff. Attack when you have an advantage. I didn't.

The course was what I expected it to be. It seems tame relative to some of the stuff I've seen for Pari-Roubaix.

jwible

Teammate finished 21st in the 2/3 race at Sunnyking. Not sure of his position in the 3s. Last year he finished 20th and won the 3s.

badhat

because the crash split the field in cat3 and 35+ 3, there wasnt really much of a tactical race from my perspective.

there were like 100 people in those fields and the crash mid pack. at least 40 guys in front and the rest of us had to foot down to get around the crash site.

what kinda pi$$ed me off is that i was pretty motivated to make up spots and invariably i'd get in with a group of 3-6 guis, and they werent interested in chasing at all, they were just conserving. so i'd sit for a few, then take off and target the next group up the road, and just kept repeating that all day.

i get that somepeople feel like why burn the matches if youre out of it, but i'd rather get a workout, get my mony's worth, and work my ass off for every place and every second i can get. especially since i really didnt know how many people were ahead of me at any given time. and in the end i wasnt THAT far back, and finished in the top quartile of starters despite losing a lot of time and places to the crashes.

if i'd have found 3 or 4 guys of my fitness (strong 3) who were willing to do some work, the course had plenty of opportunities to make up time and possibly crack top 10.

but, i dont really think 3 ended up being a very tactical race for anybody, i think most of the folks ahead of the crash just went hard and kept popping guys off the back, and most of those behind the crash gave up and tempoed the rest of the day.

i think if you were tactically minded, you'd want to figure out how to exploit your strengths. tailwind on 56 made that a pretty good place to try to get some time, if you werent as confident on the dirt climb, whereas the dirt is good for attacking if youre light and a good bike handler.

washboard is actually a pretty good place to go cuz its actually easier to ride faster, and people settle into a rhythm and tend not to respond to moves cuz theyre concentrating on finding good lines.

save10

does not like.

TMonk

I was #425
black skinsuit yellow lettering
black caad 8
ksyriums

u were on the red supersix with white lettering?
big guy?
i think I saw u

GirlAnachronism

Thanks for the well wishes, guys. She's fine, just bruised and sore. She went down on a dirt descent when someone in front of her hit some sand, so no road rash and nothing broken but her helmet. We went to a hospital in Bennington, VT, and she was discharged after a few hours.

I believe the airlift people were from one of the master's men's fields. I heard that one was pretty brutal. My teammate rode by and saw an old man laying on the side of the road unconscious with blood gushing from his face and she said she was thinking "that could be my father." Yikes. Hope they're all right.

Hida Yanra

huh - looking through the race results, it looks like only 1/2 of our field finished the RR on Sunday.
the pace was hard, and at one point in the race I had drifted back to rest after a bunch of work... I thought I was slightly more than 1/2 back of the field...
I look around, realize that there are exactly three guys behind me....

then move back up to the top 15 wheels.

the course wasn't epic or selective, just hard.
the weather wasn't epic, just hard
the difference? the pace was really atomic for a long time. I recall several points in the race where the front.... 25 or so were single file and dying.

good times.

Creakyknees

this needs a sticky.

kleinboogie

Cyclo-vets Cat 3, 4, 5 and 45+ pics are up at https://picasaweb.google.com/116369284658389121688. I see TMonk and Jancouver in there based on descriptions.

zitter

Nice photos! Too bad you only got the first cat 5 race, I was in the 4:10 group =/

Hida Yanra

I'm looking for a RR from Forza...
I looked for him at the start, and checked with one of his team mates, but couldn't find him.

seemed like a fantastic course/weather for him.

kleinboogie

Yeah sorry, I had been there since 8am and was starving. Hope you did good!

zitter

It's cool, I wound up getting 4th. I had some buddies in the 4's and you got some great shots of them, though.

kleinboogie

Congrats! Wife did all the shots, I'll pass along the comments.

crapweasel

Are the race times pretty accurate in the results? The Cat5 time seems pretty anemic compared to the 4s and 3s.

Also, I think the GCRacing guys just turn off the camera after a bit and score people as DNF. I didn't even make it on the results one week after coming in ~10 minutes back.

Forza

We were brought to a complete stop for about 40 minutes due to a bad crash in the C4s, if you subtract that number from the total you get our actual number. We were turning laps of 45 and change, which would have put us slightly quicker than the 4s.

Aerodee80

Cyclovets Cat IV:

Good Seeing you again David [Tmonk]!

Felt strong throughout the race, chased few breaks and stayed at the front 90% of the time. I sat back for two laps for my team mate to solo for himself. Last two laps got hairy due to crashes and forgot to stay at the right side before the last corner. So I sprinted from the left side only to be boxed in by 4th and 5th guy. Lesson learned.

Results 6th place...fun and scary race.