|
|
Saturday, March 28th was the second of 3 practice crits put on by the Great Dane Velo Club. It was my second USCF race of the year, and my second race as a cat 3. It was a nicer day than last week, but still very windy and the sun didn't come out which kept it feeling pretty cold. It was weather for armwarmers and shorts. We were riding the course in the opposite direction that we normally do, I liked the change. The long straight right before corner 4 was straight into the big wind, and then the finish was with a tail/crosswind.
After getting dropped and rubbed into the ground last week I was just determined to stay with the pack and not get into any bad situations. 10-15 minutes into the race, however, Dave Sonetti says to me thet we're going to take a flyer and catch up with the 2 man break containg teamate Ben Neff and GDVC rider Jason. I said that I didn't think it was a good idea since Ben was up there and they weren't that far off. Dave just said to follow him, and I'm glad I did. We took off around corner 4. There was some counterattacking which luckily didn't hang on to us (boy would we have been in trouble if we'd pulled Ben back to the pack!). We took turns pulling and were working hard and gaining time. I can only assume that our teammates in the pack were blocking for us. Dave and I are awesome, but not awesome enough to just ride away from a chasing pack. After a few laps superman Jeremey Donatell, who we know from the UW team bridged up to us. That extra person made the work a lot easier (and it didn't hurt that Jeremey is super strong either). Our group was going doggone fast from then on (probably averaging 25-26 mph) and we caught Ben and Jason.
All five of us worked together for the rest of the race. At the end of the last lap I told Dave to get on my wheel, and tried to give him a leadout, as he is a better sprinter than me. Jason got on first, though, and took off right around corner 4. Jeremey was in back, but being super strong, he was able to just barely beat Jason to the line. Dave and Ben were sprinting for 3rd. I didn't have anything left for a sprint and was left in the dust. I am still extremely happy with 5th, though. Getting away from this field is something I tried to do in the practice crits last summer and never managed. It's a great feeling to be off the front and out of sight of the pack, I'd only been there once before, and it is so motivating and improves your confidence so much to pull something like this off.
Being off the front is actually easier than being off the back. Everyone works together, and you are feeling good. Off the back noone wants to do anything and everyone else who's chasing with you sucks as much as you do, if not more. This difference in difficulty was reflected in my average HR's for the different races. Both times I did the majority of the race with 3-5 guys. Off the back: 191 BPM, In a break: 187 BPM. This is in the high range where 1 BPM makes a big difference in how hard you're working too. I didn't dare look at my HR monitor during either race.