zimbo

Today was my first race of the 2007 season and my 4th race overall. The Class C race (Cat 4s and 5s) was 40 minutes long and was comprised of about 50 riders. The course is a 1/4 mile oval speedway which, depending on your perspective, makes for either a very boring or a very exciting race. It's the kind of course that has the words "field sprint" written all over it.

I'm not much of a sprinter and haven't done ANY L6 work to speak of yet this year so my goals for this race were simply to (a) improve my pack handling skills, (b) work to stay near the front with minimal effort, and (c) keep the rubber side down.

I wish there were lots of juicy blow-by-blow details or anecdotal observations I could make but there's not much to say about the race itself other than that it was typified by unsteady effort. It was basically the opposite of a time trial: lots and lots of L6 efforts followed by L1 recovery. The attached graph shows what I mean. Next week I'd like to focus on being more steady and less panicky when bridging distance to the rider in front of me. If I do, I think I can take better advantage of my aerobic power (my strong suit, IMO) and save my anaerobic matches until the last few minutes.

I thought I did a decent job of staying near the front but with a few laps to go I somehow found myself on the inside behind a few guys who slowed down. It took me a while to work myself wide and when I finally did, all that was left was the hope of gaining a bit of ground in those last couple of frantic laps. I made up some spots but ended up finishing 11th as a couple of guys who were smarter about timing their sprint sneaked in by me right at the end. Next week, I'll to try to stay more toward the outside (but still in the slipstream) as the laps count down and try to go balls to the wall for the last 4-5 minutes and just see what happens.

It was really cool to meet Snuffleupagus from the forum. He's a solid racer and seemed to do a great job of staying up in the top 10 spots during the entire race. I'll let him give his own race report if he wants but if I'm not mistaken, he actually won the $20 Prime for the race and ended up contesting the sprint, finishing 7th. He also did the 3/4 race which I'm really curious to hear about because there were actually three guys who did an awesome job of working together on a break right from the get-go. They actually lapped the field in 10 minutes. I had to leave after that so I have no idea what happened.

Here are the stats for the ride:

Duration: 40:24
Ave Power: 259 watts
Norm Power: 288 watts
Max Power: 1095 watts
Ave Speed: 24.8 mph
Max Speed: 32 mph
Time not pedaling: 13%

--Steve