Local Racing Season Is On….Finally!
After a long, cold, wet, gray winter of Dickensian proportions, followed by those too-early-in-the-year “training races” with names like “Froze Toes” for good reason, the temps have finally surpassed the 70 degree mark across the U.S. Midwest and the race calendar is suddenly chockablock.
Now this is what we live for, isn’t it?
So we’re all finding our early season form. Maybe it’s awful, due to too many days when it just wasn’t worth venturing outside. Maybe it’s not so bad, due to boring hours on the Turbo Trainer sweating to replays of Lance-era Tours. Whatever we thought it might be — now we’re finding out for certain in the only way that really matters: against the clock and against the pack.
Last weekend we had a two-day race-fest in pleasant Hermann, Missouri – a Germanic wine making town nestled along the Mississippi river about an hour and change west of St. Louis. Cars rolled in from Illinois, Kansas, St. Louis and a lot of small Midwest towns, bike racks packed with expensive toys.
Saturday brought a ten-mile individual time trial across a flat course to steam the sludge from bodies long overdue for a good sweating outdoors. A teammate scouted the course and explained how steady winds blowing from the west at >10mph would make the race a five-miler in reality — with success determined while riding into the teeth of the wind.
Our team had about seven racers sprinkled among Cat 3, 4 and 5 for the ITT. I sported a virgin TT helmet and my SystemSix road bike without any aero accessories. As a road racer, I don’t ride aero bars in training, so I didn’t want to try something new in a race. This turned out to be a good call. Given the relatively brisk winds, having my hands down in the drops made me feel more in control as I was buffeted along the course.
As a Cat 5 racer, my goal was a 20 mph average over the ten miles, so thirty minutes or less total time. Feedback I’d gotten from stronger colleagues was that it was a real challenge to hold 20 mph going into the wind — but you could get closer to 30 mph when it was at your back.
Aside from the time trial helmet, the only new piece of equipment I had brought was a Garmin 705 GPS/cycle computer. I’ll write a separate article about that, but for now, let’s just say that I enjoyed having the stats right under my nose to tell me how I was doing throughout the race.
The Time Trial Stats
My ride rolled out like this: The first 2 miles were to the north, so the west wind was somewhat neutral except that it bullied you from the left side. However, my speed was relatively constant in the 21mph range, where I had hoped it would be. Troubling was that my heart rate was showing 175 bpm, which is only about 5 under my max and well above the 160 average I’m used to seeing when I’m doing hard intervals on the indoor trainer. I worried this high a heart rate would foretell a meltdown of the legs once I turned into the wind.
After two miles the course turned left to follow along the northern shore of the Mississippi and immediately the wind was straight in my face and my speed dropped into the teens. At the same time, my heart rate actually rose as the work got harder. I kept my head down and tried to cheat the wind every way possible and just endure the work and the pain until the turn, three miles ahead. I jumped among gears until I could spin the pedals at a constant 105 turns per minute, which felt like a good rythym.
Inside my shiny new TT helmet - which was all but devoid of ventilation - I’d forgotten to put on a sweatband, so the intensity of the workout soon produced my own rainforest with streams of saltwater trickling inside of the wind visor. There was nothing I could do about that.
Nearing the turnaround point I pushed harder, trying to avoid digging too deep a hole speed-wise, and was rewarded with a heart rate reading of 182. At my age, using the “220 minus your age” formula, technically I was a coronary waiting to happen. Strangely though, the legs felt fine working this hard and I wasn’t motivated to back off.
Finally, euphorically, came the turn and the tailwind, and I watched my speed roll up into the twenties, then mid-twenties, then almost-thirties – and my heart rate settled back into the land of the living.
The trip home was quick and pleasant and I finished in 28:38 overall, or about 21 mph average — of course without the benefit of drafting other riders. I placed 17th among the Cat 5’s, a little better than mid-pack and substantially behind a couple of teammates who placed well up in the Top 10 and rode the course approximately three minutes faster than I did. Another one of our mates actually won the Cat 3 TT with a time of 22:11, then he pulled a top ten in the 60 mile road race the next day. What can you say, he’s an animal. Fortunately he’s in our zoo.
The Road Race
On Sunday, the good folks of Hermann hosted a well-organized road race of 20-80 miles, depending on Category. Fives such as myself got one taste of the circuit while the Pro 1/2s got four loops, and the categories in between got either 2 or 3. The generous folks of Hermann planned a surprise party for all of us, and the party favor of choice was a set of excruciating climbs along the course. This little party was to be a first class sufferfest.
Okay, so everybody’s got hills – what makes these special, you might wonder. It was that they were evil.
Speaking later to one of our mates who had chosen not to bother coming to Hermann, I told him in vernacular that one can’t directly relate to unless you’re from hereabouts – but might suffice, nevertheless – that the best way I could describe the climbing was: “It was like climbing Doberman (a nasty half mile climb with no flat spots) only to find Ossenfort (a twisty, turny and quite steep half mile crawl) waiting at the top.”
Let me grovel a bit more about the little playground the townfolk offered up for our amusement.
Picture a starting line with the usual officials’ tent and a gaggle of riders going to and fro, checking in, limbering up the legs and waiting nervously for their appointed start time. Picture this scene set along a quiet back street leading out of a quaint Midwestern town, modest homes laid out neatly along the roadside, pickup trucks resting peacefully in driveways on this sleepy Sunday morning.
Leading straight away from the officials’ tent is a two lane road that rolls a distance of one short block, maybe a couple hundred yards, then climbs straight into the sky. Or so it appears. At first glance, it was enough to make one question the merits of actually visiting the officials’ tent for check-in.
Then the good news.
Someone - I know not whom, but God bless their soul – said that Cat 5s didn’t have to climb that hill. The race actually rolled out of town in another direction and, given that we were riding only one loop, we wouldn’t have to face this particular wall that the higher category riders would at the end of each of their laps.
The hill was doable, of course, but what a relief that we weren’t going to have to churn up it at the very start of our outing.
Then the bad news.
As we gathered at the start area before the race I had a chance to talk with Alexandra, a lovely young lady we’d met the day before when we’d stopped for beers and sodas after the time trial. She worked in a restaurant in downtown Hermann, and told us she would be driving the lead car for the Cat 5s on Sunday.
I reintroduced myself and she chatted with us as we did whatever we could to distract ourselves from our pre-race anxieties. One of the guys mentioned his relief at not having to climb that wall on the way out of town, to which she responded by dropping an unintentional bombshell.
Alexandra said, “well, there’s more hills on the course than the maps show, including one I’ll lead you up as soon as we get out of town.” I said, “how does it compare to that hill?” – referring to a hill whose name shall not be mentioned, just like a certain villain in Harry Potter.
“Oh, it’s longer, maybe a half mile, or three quarters,” she said. “And it’s steeper.”
Her smile seemed to droop a bit as if this was news she didn’t enjoy sharing as much as I would have if I were the one sitting inside the pace car telling it to a bunch of nervous cyclists. Looking down, my Garmin displayed a heart rate of 95 and increasing, notwithstanding that I was doing absolutely nothing.
I’d like to say that she was wrong, or had exaggerated what was up ahead for us, but after a pleasant neutral ride through town we took one turn out toward vineyard country and immediately the fun began. Suffice to say, it was a brutal piece of work. Like the kind where you’ve now been riding maybe ten minutes into the race and you see a guy up ahead of you get to the crest of the hill and put a foot down. No mechanical. No biological break. Simply unable to pedal one more time.
At least the climbing was steep enough that nobody was able to use it to their advantage. Certainly a good number of people lost time off the back, but among the front half of the group, nobody broke away as I feared would happen.
By the end of the race we’d done more than a couple thousand feet of climbing, always in steep, intense intervals, and everybody had suffered.
I suffered proportionately less, because about two thirds of the way around the course as we rolled along in a draft line across more gentle terrain with clean, empty roads for our enjoyment, there came the recognizable phffft-phfft-phffft sound that indicates someone has just blown a tire. I felt sorry for them. What a shame. Then the guy next to me says, “Dude, I think that’s you.”
I spent the next hour waiting on the side of the road until one of my mates finished his race and drove his truck back to get me. In the future, I’m packing a spare tube even if it means carrying a few extra grams up those hills.
Enjoy your springtime riding, and we’ll be back later in the week when we visit Brasstown Bald in Northern Georgia to watch the sixth and likely defining stage of the Tour de Georgia. Anyone want to bet against Astana on that day?
Categories: Events, Hub, Races, Rider Diaries, System6
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