2008 Race Reports 8 & 9: Wood Dale ABR State Criterium Championships
As I tell my friend and new racer Matt on some interval, “You can never judge your future performance in a race by how you feel when you line up: some of my best races ever were begun with overwhelming feelings of tiredness, weakness or even sickness.”
This was a bit of my mantra as I rolled to the line for the first of two or three races that day. I was hoping to complete the Dybowski ‘trifecta’ and race and place in 3 races: the master’s 40, master’s 30, and Pro ½ races. As it turned out I only ended up starting the first two. My friend Matt also started both and as the pictures will show, was having a good series before disaster struck.
For myself it didn’t help that the day before was comprised of a pool party at my house: I blame Mike Dienhart for any wine consumption that occurred that evening. The fireworks I provided myself and we knew it was a good party when the police arrived to politely shut down the 2” mortar display I was in the middle of shooting off over the pond beyond our house.
My legs didn’t feel good at first and that, for whatever reason, is typical of any ride following a swim in the pool – it is as though all that freedom to kick and use all the unused muscles in the legs in all directions causes those straight and narrow cycling muscles to get distracted and I ‘pedaled squares’ for the first half of the race. The pace was fairly consistent – not brutal – but never slow. These Master’s 40’s clearly proved their dominance at Winfield nationals over their younger bretheren.
I didn’t bother even thinking about chasing breakaways considering that I was planning on racing 3 times and over 100 miles. Eventually, a 6 man breakway did get away – I considered attempting a bridge when the gap was within my range, but decided to save that energy for later races.
With two laps to go, Chris Black – a very strong Master’s racer – pulled his signature move and broke away off the front of the field. I watched him go from the middle of the pack and symbolically tipped my helmet with respect - as I decided at the end of last year my job is the last lap – everything else is merely preparation. Luck will have to decide the one-lap-to-go situation – from there I’ll take the reins if I can..
So suddenly it was 1 lap to go and in fits and starts we passed the start/finish line. I surfed the peleton near the middle. My plan was a little different than normal – rather than ‘finding the perfect wheel’ to the line, I intended to lead out the sprint with about 500m to go – due to the proximity of two back-to-back corners with a short uphill in between shortly before the finish.
I figured I could get a gap before the corner to the uphill, put all my horsepower out up the hill, and then try to hold it to the line.
However, in between, several riders had strung themselves out in front of the peleton in pursuit of Mr. Black. If you watch the video, I stay safely in the bowels of the peleton until about 50 seconds into the video, and then the camera starts shaking as I get out of my saddle and kick off my sprint. In the video it looks odd – there’s no where to go – but what I’m shooting for is a sudden opening up the right side. Meanwhile you can also see the distances to the lead riders…
After my accel I swing all the way right with some momentum and then ride the wind shadows of the riders, following the “string of pearls” of the leading riders, passing each in turn, saving the last two for the uphill stretch. The beauty of this approach was that I never really had to face the wind on my own and could instead put in short sprints (my strength) before putting my head down on the final stretch trying to close in on Chris Black.
These are the moments of racing I love – that sudden knowledge that there is gas in the tanks and that despite my heart rate being above 190, that the legs and pedals and bike are willing. Its hard to tell from the video, but my full on sprint only started just as the lead rider looked back on the uphill – that’s when I kicked in the turbo and passed him on the inside setting up the final turn. I actually thought I might catch Chris – but he accelerated yet again and I didn’t catch him – what a stud.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNcGtopKOnQ]
Race Report #9: Sunday, July 6. Category: Master’s 30+, Weather: 86 degrees, 9 mph winds. Course: 4 corners, 1 mile, small hill. Distance, 45 minutes plus 2 laps, ~45 riders Average speed, 26.3 mph, Avg. pulse 165
Clearly a pattern is developing: there are more 40+ racers in Illinois than 30+, and quite possibly they are stronger as well. Overall the pace was only slightly higher – and that was only from a significant organized chase of a breakway. Otherwise the race was relatively mild.
The first half of the race went quickly and Matt and I rode together quite a bit – switching wheels, sometimes following, sometimes leading. As a breakaway got away, I began to feel guilty for my mentoring of Matt. Yes, for me, a breakaway is a distant target and not something to concern myself with. But Matt’s got an aerobic motor – shouldn’t he be up there?
As the pace picked up and things began to string out, I swung up the outside on the downhill and said, “we have to get up there” to Matt – and sure enough his motor kicked in and he actually took one of the hardest pulls of the race after a series of hard laps.
Ultimately we closed on the leaders and caught them, but in between things went a little haywire. After Matt’s hard pull, we entered the 3rd corner at high speeds and behind me I heard the train wreck explosions that are unfortunately all too common in cycling. I wouldn’t have given it much thought except that Matt had just swung off the lead and was just behind me in the general vicinity of the noise.
As the next laps unwound, I found no trace of Matt – but neither did I see him on the sidelines, and his 11 year old daughter Rose continued to take pictures – so assumed he was at the tail of the peleton or safely on the sidelines. As it turned either – neither was true.
And for a second time it was one lap to go…
I had the same general intention of the previous race – to lead out the sprint from the backstretch, but given the smaller size of the field I didn’t move up as aggressively and suddenly found myself boxed in. In the video you can see my switching left to right looking for a hole – I was still intending to lead it out – but when I finally squeezed through a 1 inch hole, I found myself neatly tacked right onto the leadout move - I timed it right and found a hole 58 seconds into the video to follow the leadout, taking the second to last corner at 35mph in 5th, with a lot of power to spare having never seen the wind.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLM94sE1fEc]
Shrouded by the field I still had not used any real juice and anticipated on using my full sprint on the uphill. As always, plans need to be adjusted – as you can see on the video, just as I began to exit the 3rd corner for my big sprint, the rider in 3rd position clipped a pedal, lost both feet, bounced off rider #4, and then careened into me – feet flapping wide, sending me towards the curb, as I locked both brakes up.
Due to the slow frame rate, what is missing from this scene is the absolute terror of that half second…
In those milleseconds I went from an adrenaline soaked anticipation of a sprint to a two handed skid toward the curb, slowing to 20mph from the 35mph sprint speed around the corner.
My saving grace was the parking lot entrance that allowed me to just miss the curb and then immediately get out of my saddle (camera shaking) to attempt to regain all that lost momentum as my 3 leadout men disappear into the distance. So much happens so fast that the camera misses much – meanwhile as they recede, two new riders winging around me as I try to undo the damage and I find myself in 6th with a big gap to 4th…
But I had some horsepower to spare, and I furiously put on the afterburners and re-accelerated uphill back to 35mph and entered the 4th and final corner in 6th, swinging wide with a visual lock on 3rd place coming out of the corner.
This is where the camera really misses the most terrifying moment of the whole race for me. As I accelerate up the outside from 6th position, the the rider in 5th suddenly gets out of his saddle and swings 3 feet to the left, hitting my front wheel, to the sound of angry xylophone, and bending several of my spokes in the process. I lock up both brakes again and swing left and manage to hold onto my bucking and endoing bike.
I screamed an epithet at this point and then coasted to the line. (Virtually all this happens between frames or mostly out of view – all you can see is the sudden appearance of the rider to my right and then the sudden ‘backward’ movement of my sprint).
At this point I coast in for 5th… feeling lucky.. and scared.
I coasted around and found Matt sitting in the grass in turn 3 - right where I almost went down. His seat was destroyed, and his helmet cracked nearly all the way through. With just a couple key questions I realized he had a concussion - "Matt, what city are we in?" "Ummm I don't know - how did I crash? I don't remember..."
Matt's road rash was mild, but his hand started to swell up pretty good. In his short term memory state he reminded me and others several times, “I don’t think it’s broken – just some ligaments – see I can move everything”. But even as his memory returned, “Oh yeah – I had a flat – that’s how I crashed!” the swelling in his hand continued. Eventually he had all his memory back as we sat in the shade near the cars after I was able to obtain ice and water from the very helpful promoter Vince.
Even as he recounted the flat, the skidding, and the eventual contact with the pavement I was reminded of my two close calls in my race and considered myself lucky. A day later and he got his X-ray back – and the base of his thumb joint had basically crumbled (see picture)and was impacted into the other joint, requiring the surgical imposition of metal pins and 6 weeks recovery off the bike minimum. Damn. At least it was his left hand.
Perhaps I’m a bad friend, but I did remind Matt that time trial handlebars use only forearms and that they might provide him a new, safer outlet while he mends. It is amazing that after 32 years of racing I've never actually had any kind of serious injury - I'm thankful for my luck...
Tomorrow begins the 2008 Superweek series – see my 2008 Race Report 2 ½ for the schedule I’ll be attending, I’m both nervous and excited for the races. I’m nervous because of getting dropped at Grafton… I’m excited because I clearly still have my sprint and if I ever get a chance to actually use it I’m reasonably certain it might bring me results.
Til then,
-John