Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Copper Town Circuit Race

Quite a bit to cover this week but let's start at the beginning.  Monday morning I woke up at 4:15AM to catch a 6:10 flight to Kalispell, Montana.  If you have never spent time in Montana, it is quite interesting.  After landing and picking up the rental car I headed to my first meeting in Whitefish and passed one of the most unique billboards I have ever seen.  It was for the Blue Moon nightclub and advertised "Live Entertainment, Happy Hour Specials, World Class Animal Mounts."  You guessed it, they had the best taxidermy in town and wanted everyone to know it.  After 3 days in the cold weather I was definitely looking forward to our warm(er) California winters.

My first real warm-up before a race.  I am slowly learning.

On the way back I had received a phone call from our local bike shop to let me know they were finished with adjusting the brakes on my bike.  I had mentioned in a previous post that the new wheels I had purchased have extra wide rims and I couldn't get the wheels on without the pads rubbing.  Fortunately the bike shop had a few tricks up their sleeve and they fixed the problem.  The drawback was that there still wasn't much room between the rims and the pads and therefore the brakes were very touchy (grabby).  The solution is that I will have to file down the brake pads by about 1-2mm in order to regain some modulation and feel when braking.

Thursday and Friday were both very busy days at work, so much so that I never had a chance to get in a training ride as I normally do.  The result was that I was both frustrated and feeling underprepared for my upcoming race.  Saturday I went for a ride on my new wheels but it could hardly be called training because I stopped constantly to check that everything was okay.  On a side note, the new wheels are really fast, they seem to spin up quicker and maintain that speed much easier.  I am looking forward to using them in a race at some point.

Copperopolis is a tiny town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains and they are host to 2 bike races every year.  The first of those races is the Circuit Race (basically a longer version of a criterium) and the road race comes later in the year.  I had heard that this was a good race from a teammate the week prior and after checking out the drive time and my start time, I knew I couldn't pass on this race.  This would be the first time that I started later in the day and I was excited to sleep in and still have plenty of time before my race.  

Town Hall building of Copperopolis.  The entirety of the town square looks like it was built for a movie set, especially since there wasn't another town for miles.
Kelsey and I left around 10AM for my 1PM race and drove east across the central valley to the Sierra foothills.  The town center of Copperopolis was the setting for our bike race and it was a wonderful location for a bike race.  The course was closed to traffic so we never had to worry about other cars and the pavement was pristine.  The course was approximately 6 miles long with a loop around the town square and then a 3 mile ride to the turnaround (literally a 180 degree turn) and then coming back on the same road as you went out on.  The finish line had been moved out of town this year due to safety reasons and now ended about 2 miles after the turnaround at the far end of the course.

After picking up my race number in the town square I set up my trainer and proceeded to warm up for the first time before a race.  For all of you that don't actually believe me, I have the picture to prove it above.  After a proper warm up I headed over to line up for the race and Kelsey took her place right at the start line (different than the finish line) to take pictures of the race.

The field just before the start of the race.

One of my goals for the year is to learn how to "race smart."  By this I mean that I am trying to learn how to read a race and to plan and react to what may happen.  I am still learning but this week was the first time that I actually planned ahead and executed my plan.

The race started pretty quickly and within the first lap we had settled down and a breakaway of 3 riders had formed.  They gained an advantage of about 100 meters and there was really no concern from the field with another 3 laps to go.  By the end of the first lap I had learned 3 important pieces of information that I would use to my advantage throughout the race.  The first was that there were two sections of turns that caused the field to slow down considerably and thus speed up after exiting those turns.  The key for these turns was to be as close to the front of the race as possible to lessen the amount that you slow down and also the amount that you have to speed up after the turn.  A great analogy that I read in a book describes it this way.  At the beginning of every race, each rider has energy equivalent to a book of matches.  Every time that you are forced to sprint(such as to catch the field after a sharp turn), attack a hill, or spend time in the wind you burn a match.  The key is to save as many matches as possible for the end of the race.  In other words it is much easier to ride at a consistent pace than it is to ride slowly and sprint every 100 meters (kind of like the tortoise and the hare analogy, sort of).

Heading into the town square on the second lap.

The second revelation was that I quickly gained an understanding of the last 1km before the finish line. There was a hill just inside the 1km sign that was just steep enough to slow down the field every time that we went over it.  I planned to use this hill as the springboard for my attack on the last lap.  After this hill was a slight downhill for about 400 meters, followed by a brief rise, and then the last 200 meters were slightly downhill to the finish line.  The third and final revelation was that the wind direction was blowing mainly from the west and for the most part meant that it was a crosswind.

The second lap was spent doing my best to conserve energy by staying out of the wind as much as possible.  This meant that on the way out I always wanted to keep another rider on my right side (the wind side) and on the way back I wanted to keep a rider on my left side.  Sometimes this seemed too easy and other times it seemed like I was about to be run off the road.  By the end of the second lap we had not gained on the 3 man breakaway and the race had settled down without much activity.



On the third lap 1 of the breakaway riders had fallen back and was picked up by the field.  Before the 180 degree turnaround I had moved up to the front of the field and made sure that I stayed there thru the turn.  This meant that I spent about a minute at the front (which I normally would not advise) but I saved quite a bit of energy by not having to sprint to catch up after the turn.  I knew that I would need to be in a similar position on the next and final lap.  Heading into the town square for the last time I made sure I was once again towards the front going thru the turns.  I made a sneaky move on the outside of the field right before town and was able to move quickly thru the town square.  The video above shows how the field will get stretched out in the turns and this will force all of those at the back to sprint to catch up after these turns.  Note: You can probably hear Kelsey in the video realize that she is still filming when she thought she was taking a picture.

I spent the next half lap towards the back as I prepared for the last few hectic minutes of racing.  It was quite obvious that the field was not interested in catching the breakaway and that they weren't coming back to us at any great pace.  This meant that a bunch sprint was definitely in order and that the pace would increase all of the way to the finish line.

Right before the turnaround I moved up the inside of a few riders to make sure that I was towards the front going thru the turn.  After this turn I just did my best to stay out of the wind and tried to be as patient as possible before my attack with just under 1km to go.  At least 2 riders tried to make solo attacks as the km's ticked away but none of them would come close to sticking and when I passed the 1km sign I knew it was time to attack.  The only problem is that I was completely blocked in from having conserved energy in the draft.  After a few seconds I finally saw a gap and forced my way thru into open road and charged up the climb towards the front of the field.

I guess my plan worked almost too well because by the top of the hill I found myself at the front of the field with about 750m to go.  I wasn't sure how many riders had been dropped on the sprint to the top of the hill but I did know that I couldn't make it all the way to the finish line by myself.  I kept a fast but manageable pace for the next 400 meters as I knew that I was now leading out the sprint to the finish line.  With about 300 meters to go and just at the slight rise, someone attacked and I was quickly passed by 4 other riders.  I reacted quickly to increase my speed as the sprint to the finish was in full force.  Inside the last 100 meters I knew that I was beginning to gain on some of those that had passed me and with a final push I had managed to pass 2 of those riders back.

http://www.usacycling.org/results/index.php?permit=2012-266

5th place is my best finish and I was very happy with the plan I had put in place and the success of that plan.  I am starting to feel more comfortable during the races and I am starting to understand what it is that I should be doing in order to get myself in a better position to win.  I have 1 race this Saturday and it will be my last race as a Cat. 5.  After completing this next race I will have earned my upgrade and the competition will get tougher.  Until next time.

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