Toast
Today when I lined up at
the Tokeneke Road Race, I heard the race officials do their thing for the 24th
time this year, and the 7th time in just the last 16 days. It was clear to me that I’ve been racing a
bunch lately as I scanned the faces and kits nearby. Of course I knew the four other Expo guys (Joe, Tom, Dave, and Mike), but I also
now recognized quite a few faces that I’ve seen repeatedly over the last few
months. A few guys exchanged friendly
words with me as the 100 deep Cat 4 field waited for the brief delay in the
start of the day. Words that likely
wouldn’t have been exchanged if it were not for the fact that they’ve seen my
ugly mug so many times this summer.
I had an inkling before
today’s event that perhaps today was one race too many for me. When out for a quick warm-up, teammate Joe
and I did the usual “how you feeling” rap.
I couldn’t give Joe a straight answer.
I had struggled earlier in the week at the Tuesday night @ the Rent, but
I had chalked it up to the fact that I had gotten my butt handed to me by
superior Cat 3s and 2s.
While that was at least
partially true, a later analysis of my numbers from that night revealed that my
peak power was way off. I had a decent
output throughout the night, but never could I stomp on the pedals in the way I
had been able to do in prior weeks. My
legs felt fatigued, and the feeling more or less stayed with me throughout the
week, despite a few days off from the bike.
However, I’ve come to realize that sometimes the feeling of heavy legs
for me actually is a sign of muscle rebuilding during rest weeks. So when Joe probed on my status today, I
really didn’t know.
Well, it didn’t take long
for me to figure it out. There’s a bit
of very rough pavement on the course at the 8 mile marker, right as you start
the days climbing. My plan today was to
stick at or near the front before we hit the pot holes as I wanted to avoid the
possible mayhem I’ve seen at that spot the last two times I’ve raced the
course. The effort to carry out that
plan though really took its toll on me.
It was like someone had installed an invisible electric fence well below
my top end power, and any time this poor dog tried to go beyond the fence, I
got zapped. The zaps turned into lightning
bolts as I attempted to push things at the front during the first and second of
the punchy hills on the back stretch, and soon I was feeling like burnt
toast.
Former teammate Don pulled
next to me as I started to fade and perhaps driven by concern asked me how I
was doing. All I could utter was “it ain’t
my day” as I now started fading to the back.
At that point I honestly saw no reason in continuing to race, and pretty
much felt as though the best thing for me to do was to pull out after lap 1. I can’t ever remember a road race where I had
just given up, never mind pulled out, but without any way of getting my engine out
of 3rd gear I saw no point in making a bad situation worse.
I’m not dead yet!
I read a quote once from Bill Strickland where he
attributed his modest race results to having more guile than Watts, and for
some reason that thought came to me right as I was teetering on the edge of
pulling out. In what I have to believe
is my best-ever mid-race strategy correction (which really isn’t that big of a distinction; perhaps I should have
said that it is the only time I can recall where I made any strategy
correction?), I chose to stay clear of the front and to instead hone my
wheel sucking skills.
I knew that such a
strategy comes with risk. Follow a
slowing wheel and gaps may open, gaps too big for burnt toast to close. Also, follow wheels at the back of the pack
and eventually you’ll get caught up in a crash.
But I really didn’t have a choice.
In looking at my numbers at home after the race, there really was no
evidence of top-end power. I had no
other option but to roll the dice today and as a result, I found a second
life.
While today’s race won’t
go down as one of my best performances, it will go down as a memorable one for
me. I had no clue that my body could so
quickly rise from the dead. I had to
work for a few miles as we started lap 2 to with a few other guys in a chase
group, but by the time we caught the lead back (who seemed content to get some rest, even after we caught them), the
thought of pulling out from the race now seemed ridiculous. There
was no way I was going to win the race, but I now thought I could at least hang
with the pack until the final hill, and continually improve upon my wheel
sucking skills along the way.
The same hills that had
inflicted massive body blows to me the first time through now only got my
breathing heavy for just a minute or so.
As we climbed over each step hill, I seemingly recovered another bar on
my battery’s charger. My only challenge
now was to anticipate when the wheel in front of me had gone the way of burnt
toast. It was a look I knew all too well
from the first lap, so I had no problems spotting the guys who now got spit out
the back and I never let a gap too big open up.
The tone of the prior few
paragraphs might have given you the impression that a grand story unfolding of
a come from behind, back from the dead miracle victory. If so, sorry to get your hopes up. I was personally amazed that I had so
recovered to find myself with the lead 35 or so as we were greeted by the long
last climb, and I really thought I had no right to be picking off riders during
the last two miles. However, I don’t
know if I could have had a shot at the podium today even if I had shown up
fully rested, so there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I was going to complete
today’s story with a miracle finish.
I didn’t hang around long
after the finish to see the results. I
figured I must have been somewhere around 25th, maybe two or three
minutes lost to the leaders on that last climb to the finish. But I didn’t need to see any results to find
the number most important to me today. 7
races in 16 days meant that I won’t be listening to a race official for at
least the rest of this month!
Final Results
·
2 hr 2 min 32 sec (from my powertap; awaiting the official results)
·
1398 kJ
·
257 W Avg Norm Power
·
44.39 miles
·
767 W Max Power
·
190 W Avg Power
·
21.7 Avg mph
·
Top 25? (awaiting
official results)
