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What Richard saw:
Category: 3
Result: Did not finish
Vallejo Street Haiku:
Twenty times up it.
Will be tough - four laps to go?
No, not tough enough.
Race report:
The Giro di San Francisco was my first race as a 3 this time last year.
I recall working extremely hard and being extremely hot. Today wasn't as
hot, but I worked just as hard.
Today seemed to be a day for crashes. There was 4 separate times when
ambulances were called to attend to crash victims. As a result, the
races were extremely delayed. The 3's race finally started a little
after it should have been finishing.
The race was shortened a little to 20 laps rather than 24, and started
out as it meant to go on with a hard (for me) pace from the gun. Still,
I was finding the hill relatively comfortable, but it was clear that the
body was being asked some hard questions each time given the HR which
was being displayed.
There were a couple of dodgy moments. Turn one had one relatively early
on. I found myself following Pritpal (yes, there were 4 FFBC cat 3
riders today - is that a record?) and due to something ahead, he had to
check and this got me worried quite a bit as he went wide and locked up
his rear tyre a little. Still, we got round safely.
The second was at the top of the hill a few laps later. There was a
tangle as people crested and a couple of people went down. Their
immediate urge was to get back up and move to their bikes, but loud
shouts of "Stay!" kept them motionless.
By now it was just a matter of hanging on. I had hoped that come 5 laps
to go I might have something left to contribute to getting someone up to
the front, but there was nothing there to give. The fourth to last time
up the Vallejo Street ramp was too much for me and I was popped. I kept
rolling to find that Pritpal had lasted a shade longer than I. We pulled
off when we were at risk of being lapped by the field after they had
seen the bell.
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What Mike N. saw:
Category: 5
Result: Did not finish
With my mind of saving a couple dollars on gas, I drove to BART and
lugged all my gear, including trainer to the race. I suppose that's a
warm-up in itself. During the real warm-up, I actually started a bit
too early because the races were being delayed by about 10 minutes. I
got in a little over an hour of warming up, which seemed a lot to me,
but I was feeling good.
At the start I couldn't get clipped in quickly and the lead riders
were hammering it so I was hanging on the last quarter of the pack.
As we rounded the first corners, the field started to get strung out.
On the long back straight, the whole field was basically one or two
riders wide. Obviously this was a pretty fast pace. Coming into lap 2
you could see gaps starting to form in the field. Since the field was
strung out, it was pretty hard to bridge gaps.
I could manage the
small gaps by blasting through the corners, but eventually by lap 3
on the slight downhill back straight, I couldn't close anymore gaps
and me along with 10-15 riders started to fall back.
We somewhat did pulls in front, but it sure wasn't enough because we
all got pulled out on lap 10. Perhaps if we had a tight paceline we
could have lasted through the race.
So it was fun but disappointing race. The corners were fun but
getting pulled out for the first time sucks. At least 30 other riders
didn't cross the finish line.
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