2010 February 13 - Cantua Creek Road Race

35+ 4/5 A race
CTL: 125
TSB: 19

Got to race early and was planning on doing a little bit of course recon refresher but took a nap and woke up to find a super long registration and bathroom line -


Am here to help support someone else so no pressure for results on me. The first lap is uneventful except contact and off road riding that I hear behind around me near the two turnarounds, and I just sit in or try to shelter my teammate from the wind. Even so, it's apparently so dull my heart stopped beating a few times according to that silly chart.

Second lap and more people try to get away. Move up to the front to keep an eye on things and have to accelerate a few times to keep things in view. A few of the attacks are from riders sitting at the very front of the group, I am a little puzzled by this but let them go and none are strong enough to TT away from the field and they come back soon enough. When we get close to the turn around I put in a slight acceleration of my own, just because I want to avoid any of the closer calls we had for the other turn arounds and claim first - to the 3/4 point anyways.

Lots of riders attack but nothing sticks. Finally there is one Wells Fargo rider off and after a couple of minutes has a pretty big lead. Another rider sets off to join, since I don't have to save myself for the finale, I spend a lot of time on the front to keep their lead to a manageable gap. Not really going that hard, but it's much harder than I worked the first lap. I only notice this when we hit the rollers leading to the finish. By itself this effort to the end is not bad but cumulatively stacked on top of the last lap my brain tells me it is hard. I just need to HTFU.

Stay midpack with the final selection of thirty riders over the first climb. My closest teammate is sag climbing so I wait and try to help them a bit. Downshift to the small ring but am kind of stuck in my thinking of keeping up at all costs and when they sag climb the next hill I have to wait and spin back up again. Try to sag climb the next hill but still go a little too hard and have to wait at the peak again but cannot spin back up to speed this one last time and have to roll in at the back of the pack after I lose about 195 meters in the last 200 meters.

This result is still an improvement over the last two times I tried this race in the E4's, only made it about thirty five to forty miles of seventy two miles with the E4 groups, OTOH those races were filled with a lot more attacking on the first lap including from me. The drive there felt more exhausting than the race, but the race obviously wasn't easy or I would have had better results. Probably should save more for the finish and use the big ring last time up the hills.


T: 2:05
S: 36.6
C: 88
H: 137 (first lap data probably lacking due to lack of sweat, second lap 173)
Pavg: 136
Pnorm: 187