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What Ziggy saw:
Category: 5
Result: Top ten
What a day! My race didn't start until 11:10 so for once I got to sleep in before a race. I arrived in Santa Cruz about 2 hrs early and on my way to check-in I ran into Santiago. He said he did well and I'll let him tell you about it.
While getting ready to warm up, I locked my keys in the car and was stuck with nothing but bibs, undershirt, shoes and bike. You could say I was a bit panicked at this point. As I was trying to squeeze my arm into the two inch crack between window and door frame, another rider passed by and offered some help. With the assistance of his portable bike stand, I was able to unlock my doors and get back to warming up. My warm-up, cut in half, felt good and off to race I went.
I think the 5's had about 30 at the start line, perhaps a few less. The race started off fast, and a breakaway was formed with two riders on lap 2. I was hovering around mid-pack at this point and was sure that someone would not let us have a repeat of the Lighthouse crit. I was wrong, mostly. One rider made an attempt to bridge up the breakaway, but found no help so I jumped from mid pack to help out. By the time I got up front, he had given up and didn't want to work anymore. I pulled some, but the cat 5's, ever content to suck wheel, did just that the entire time so I sat up and let the race get good 'n slow.
I drifted back to mid pack to recover for a couple laps and when I felt good again, I made my way back up front. I saw what I thought was the break and went hard to get up to it. It wasn't the break, but rather a half a$$ attempt at catching the break. They sat up as soon as I made contact with them, very frustrating! The rest of the race was fairly uneventful. I found that for me, the best way up the hill was to do it standing at a fairly high cadence. On the last lap, I was first over the hill and I think last to change gears for the sprint. I spun out whatever I was in and ended up 7th, a wheel length behind the dude in 6th.
Oh, one lesson I learned today: don't eat a banana 30 minutes out from the start. This snack led to a gut-wrenching warm down. 'Nuff said?
P.S.: Just a little something funny I heard: While in line to sign in, I overheard someone telling of his friend that brought his Ksyriums to Copperopolis to race on. He managed to break both wheels (spokes?) through the course of the race.
Boutique schmotique! Long live Open Pros!
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What Santiago saw:
Category: 4
Result: Top ten
It was really a nice day, even at 7am, I did the senior4 race at 8am and got 10th (getting points for my upgrade :-)). We had around 50+ riders at the start line and this wasn't a peaceful race at all, it reminded me the parking lot crit, it was one attack after the other, I was in two brakes and jump my self once but all of them were chased back into the main field.
It was actually a hard work to stay in the top 10 for the whole race, chasing breaks, jumping on who ever tried to go, and the last two laps were brutal, it was pretty much and acceleration that lasted until the finish line. I was actually one of the promoters of that since I didn't want to have any slow down of the pace that allows everybody from behind to move up with one lap to go.
By the way, that's a very technical course, with up hills, hairpin turn, a flying down hill and narrow roads... great!!!
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