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What Donn saw:
Category: 4
Result: Back of pack
Chris and I met at the Longs parking lot right on schedule at 7 am and carpooled down to the start. Chris's brother Dan had graciously agreed to be our driver to drop us off in San Jose and pick us up at the finish later in the day. I had a so-so warm-up on the trainer and then we were called to the line where we were given a stern lecture about the evils of crossing the center line by a very grumpy race official.
The first 2 minutes of the race were great, it was the short flat section before the hill started. As soon as we turned onto the hill, my heart rate shot up and by 10 minutes into the race i was nearly at red line trying to stay with the pack. At this point it was either ease-up or blow-up, so I backed off the pace and watched the entire peleton (or so it seemed) fly by. Damn, it's gonna be a long day.
At this point I just settled into a comfortable tempo and before long we had a 5 man group working together up the hill. It quickly became evident that I would have to do most of the work as the other guys were struggling. I considered riding off but didn't relish the thought of arriving on the back side of Mt. Ham with 40 miles of solo head wind riding, so I stayed with the group.
We summited in a slow 1hr 32min. We split up on the descent, which I rode very conservatively. After the descent we regrouped and tried to make some time, but the boys were lagging. I got a little help from them occasionally, but they dropped off one by one until the feedzone at mile 40, at which point I was alone. I just kept hammering alone and hardly saw a soul until finally at about 5 miles to go where I passed a small ragged pack of 4's. I finally rolled across the line at about 3 hr 40min.
Results unknown, but I'd guess I was anywhere from 40th to 70th of our 80 man Elite 4 field.
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What Mike N. saw:
Category: 5
Result: Off the back
I ran to the registration table and back in a whopping
minute. All warmed up... I tried to get warmed up on the trainer but
the call for Cat 5 was given.
Once we got going there was an
immediate ¾ mile climb that really drained my cold legs. I managed to
stay with the pack, but on the descent, the pack turned into single-
file and someone ahead of me was too slow on the corners. From there
the pack just grew further and further away. I was hoping German
would be able to help me out on the flats, but I guess his hard
workout the day before and lack of warm-up took its toll. Being
exhausted after only ten minutes, I quickly sucked onto someone's
wheel where we caught up to another rider. I stayed with that other
rider while the previous dropped us.
For the next few miles this guy
I'm with is doing 26 mph in a small headwind. He gets tired and moves
across so that I can pull up front. The problem is that I was too
tired to go up front. I tell him that and he gets all pissed off at
me and I tell him, "fine then, get the hell out of here!" So I slow
down a bit and off he goes. 10 minutes later an older rider comes up
to me and I sucked on his wheel for a bit.
Then rollers start coming
in and I tow him up the hills while he tows on the flats. We do a
couple of rounds and next thing you know, we caught up to that pissed
off guy. So we discussed our tactics and those two would pull on the
flats while I did the hills. On the main 800' climb the older guy
went over the red-zone and he was gone. So it was just the two of us
and he was getting slow enough that he was the same strength as me-
doing short 15 second pulls back and forth. The problem was that he
was too slow on the descents, so I would have to slow down for him
because on the flats he could help me a lot more.
We managed to pass
three other riders during our escapade. If I knew the course better I
would have beaten him by a large margin since the finish was only a
mile away from the super long descent. But oh well, we crossed the
finish line together, not pissed off.
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