Hey all. 2 weekends ago I went down to the Catskills to do a little bicycle racing.
Sarah K. and I headed down the scenic way of route 80, 13, and lots of other random route numbers that took us South and East to the Tour of the Catskills.
Our main camp was made at a quiet little hotel in Windham. It was some awesome riding. The race Friday called The Prologue (a 2.3m uphill TT) was in Tannersville just a bit south of there. Saturday the 51.3m road race called Stage 1: The Catskill Epic started out in Windham. Sunday the final stage was another road race ~58m called Stage 2: The Mountaintop Classic ‘Featuring the Assault on Devil’s Kitchen’ which was a beast of a hill around 3miles long and boasting grades of mid-20%’s…
Day 1 – Uphill TT’s are sweet, I used my TT bike to practice for the upcoming Syracuse 70.3 though I definitely think I could have gone much faster on a road bike.
Day 2 – Learned some more rules about road racing.. not many in the cat5 that I was racing wanted to do much work. So rather than coast behind people I frequently ended up riding in front which I didn’t mind too much, got a good workout and was able to avoid the wrecks (at least 2 in cat5 for the weekend). Anyhow after putting in a bunch of time at the front I drifted to the back to have some drank and relax a bit, which I didn’t time very well as we approached the KOM, which I had mistakenly thought no one would go for because there was no KOM jersey for cat5. Well, a breakaway group went and I ended up in no mans land, ahead of most though out of sight of the 3 off the front. I spent a bunch of the race working to catch back up to the leaders who were working well together. The 50+/Jr peloton caught up as I was working to get back and I spent numerous miles passing them on the uphills and being whizzed by on the down.. eventually it was too much effort to avoid the pack and 2 dudes in my race seemed to be working in with the peloton.. eventually we got all intertwined. A bit later myself and the 2 others from the 5 race were working together and were gaining nicely on the breakaway three. However as we neared, our pace car pulled over to let the other races pace car pass, and at this point one of the guys in the 5 race was too near the other race peloton and so our pace car began yelling things I couldn’t hear, and for some reason the breakaway 3 had pulled over at some point during this. Myself and another rider not hearing what was going on merely kept riding at a reasonable pace trying to listen to what was being said. The rider in our race that was in the mix with the other peloton was given a 30second time penalty and we were told that we must finish behind the 3rd place otherwise we would be disqualified’d for working in with the other race peloton. Which was confusing, and if you were trying to ride the roads with this swarm of people you were going back and forth with you may understand the confusion. So it was learned not to ride with any other races besides your own, no matter what. That’s my understanding… anyhow this put us in quite the spot, so now will the front in reach we were stuck finishing no better than fourth, which was further complicated because the 3rd place dude was shot, spent from the attack.
We had to bring him along no matter what so we didn’t get DQ’d and it was in our best interest to do it as quickly as possible so we didn’t build up a big time deficit from the 1, 2 guys. With at least 4 miles to go we tried having him at the back of a pace line; he dropped off. Tried a flying V with him tucked inside; we road away from him… We ended up having me pull, one dude who was a little tired block the side wind and another behind him with his hand on the small of his back pushing him along (not sure of the legitimacy of this move, i name no names but given the situation.. I’m not sure but the whole predicament was odd) Anyhow, finished up tied for 4th or 5th as we cheered our 3rd place dude on to the finish.
Day 3 was to be an adventure, Sarah and I drove the course later that Saturday and it was to be a wild climbing day towards the end. The hill was no joke. Going up it in the car Sarah remarked that it was a ‘terrible hill’, and couldn’t believe it just kept going. I was pretty excited, I thought it would be a nice place to make a move, if I could put in a substantial break there there was just about 10 miles of downhill left that as long a pack didn’t form I thought I could stick it out.
Well, the race came and I don’t know if everyone was nervous of the monster climb to come or what.. but no one was doing any work again, so only myself and this german dude from the day before would voluntarily take a turn on the front, later on a couple kids from NYC took a brief pull, though promptly fading back to the safety of the groups slipstream. So I rode on the front quite a bit because I’m not trying to draft off a group traveling slower than a training ride. During this race too early on our entire peloton kept going back and forth with the masters/juniors again and each pack had its turn being ‘neutralized’ where we let the other pass and for a while we put on a break and the peloton was stuck behind their peloton but eventually we took a long ‘neutral’ break and maintained an easy pace, had some snacks of gels and water and let the other peloton get far enough away to be out of our hair for the rest of the race. After that ridiculous break we resumed racing at a vicious 11mph, into a headwind and with a downhill coming up, some people may have not realized that we were back on, I didn’t feel like pulling b/c I had just gotten the first KOM, even though no jersey since people raced for it yesterday I figured it would be fun to play… however after the race resuming 2 dudes just slowly separated from the pack and I actually remarked as a joke “worlds slowest breakaway pack” thinking that by aerodynamics alone we would easily catch them on the next downhill. However, no such luck. Never saw them again.
Learned tid bit: don’t let anybody go anywhere. So after people realized we were racing a bit and we zoomed down some downhills and the 2 off the front were no where to be seen I realized we needed to go much faster if anyone in our pack had hopes of winning. A bunch of leading by myself and the one other dude, during one of my breaks from pulling and the other dude pulled off the front you could feel the entire line slow down as no one else wanted to take over, having nothing to do with any kind of work. At some point there was a wreck… eventually we made it to the base of the infamous ‘devils kitchen’ steep and long. Like route 20 kinda hills leading up to hitchings, followed by case… It was definitely some work I made a soft move to get in front of people for fear they may miss shift or stop short however a couple local dudes walked away from me still, they had super high cadence going and I think I went into with a little too much muscle, not enough spin. The climb definitely got my heart rate up there, passed a bunch of riders from other races, some walking, some riding, all sweating and looking pained.
It was an accomplishment making it up to the top, then a pack formed reasonably quickly which I hung with and we cycled through doing equal work in attempts to close the gap on the front 2. There was a ditch completely crossing the road in a slight valley that I had noticed on the our race course preview drive, and they warned about it during the speech from the official just before we set off, it had been filled with gravel but from vehicle traffic the foot or so long ditch that spanned the whole road had become rather half-pipe-esque in nature. So I was very excited too for this obstacle “You won’t win the race in this downhill, but you certainly could lose it, [so go slow and use caution].” As we neared it I broke out of the pack to the side and hammered towards it giving a solid bunny hop, clearing it (as I neared it I thought man this is a pretty big gap, hope I make it) then I hammered up the next hill with my good momentum briefly distancing my self from the little pack which reformed shortly after that, we caught a couple dudes and in the final stretch I started my sprint with about 400 to go and got out of the saddle with 200 to go, 2 guys from the little pack got me putting me at 5th for the day.
For the weekend I ended up averaging out to a 4th place finish overall and getting a solid workout in. I would have liked finishing better, but all in all I had fun and learned quite a bit. I’m excited to perhaps level up to cat4 soon, the racing is much more even supposedly and I should have enough USA Cycling street cred soon to move up.. (officially you need 10 starts as a 5 then you may request to move up to 4 where you begin earning points by finishing well which count towards further progression which you can request later on)
That’s that for the Catskills adventure!
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This past weekend was the Born to Tri – sprint triathlon in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It’s always a blast in jersey. Sarah K and I went down making home out of the ol’ K’ family suburban as the eggplant audi still needs a little elbow grease and a chunk of engine or two before we can use that as our mobile means.
We did the race last year as our second tri ever after we did our first that very day prior. It’s awesome, you swim out into the ocean, have a floating start swim about a quarter mile, hang a right for shore, run up the beach / boardwalk… through a new addition this year – a kiddie pool! – awesome for getting the majority of the sand off your feets, then hop on the bike, ride up into deal loop around a lake over a bridge through Asbury around again which is a nice little jaunt. However I did manage to kick the crap outta my rear derailleur* dropping the chain to the back outside, after a super fast yank and mechanical analysis I learned that I basically had 3 gears available and tried to keep it one gear inside of the hardest back gear so that it wouldn’t get thrown off again. I made up a little bit of ground, and nailed a sweet CX dismount in my transition, and was off on the run where it faired adequately though I ended up 10th or 12th over all depending at what results you look at, but 2nd in my age group overall. I’m not sure of the intracacies of Sarah K’s race but she ended up tieing me at 2nd in her age group as well!
Photos: Randy at podium, Sarah at podium, Matching awards 2nd in male and 2nd in female age group.
The rest of the weekend was a blast down in ‘Jers. Lots of salt water swimming and fun, shout out to the roomie for puttin’ us up the second night and lending the goggles (shoelaces work just fine as elastic substitutes I’ve found) and chilling with the brains behind Evolution Performance Training, looking fit!
This weekend is the Cazenovia Triathlon, I won’t be partaking but BTB Masters Representative – Bob Hadzor will be present vying for a spot on the podium for the 60′s age group awards.
Also check out Cyclocross Training on Saturday morning at nilsson’s place. Gonna be wild.