April 9, 2006, Arizona State Criterium Championships, Masters 50-54
Scottsdale, AZ 18.1 miles
The 2006 season had begun very slowly for me, with only one USCF race in February prior to this State Championship.
After getting sick in January and again for most of February, March had become a struggle on the bike, with no significant training.
I had skipped most of the racing during this time, as I was not anywhere close to being in racing shape.
It wasn't until the last week and a half that I finally started to feel normal again and did some proper training.
I did my local training time trial course of 5.3 km in my fastest time ever on the previous Tuesday, averaging 26.5 mph.
On Thursday, I was able to do some sprint practice, with all three sprints exceeding 35 mph.
So my strength was coming back, but my endurance would be very limited with the struggles of the last two months.
However, last year I also had some similar setbacks just prior to this race.
This was a 45 minute criterium in downtown Scottsdale over the same course as last year.
The course was 0.73 of a mile, with 10 ninety degree turns.
From the final turn to the finish line was about 105 meters.
The weather was sunny and in the 90's with a very little wind.
The Championships for Masters classes are broken up in 5 year age categories and we had 18 starters.
The organizers decided to run the 55-59 Championships at the same time, starting one minute behind us; this would later prove to have an impact on our race.
I won this race last year and David Bixby won this race in 2004 and several times prior to that.
He would be my biggest challenger with really no one else to contend for the win unless they were allowed to ride away from the pack.
David is a member of Team RPM and they again had 4 riders in the race, but at least they did not comprise half the field as in my previous race.
I went right to the front at the start, one to familiarize myself with the course again and two, to avoid accidents that can happen as riders settle in.
I led the entire lap up to the home stretch and although I was not going fast, nobody wanted to take the lead.
As I learned after the race, an accident did happen and the rider abandoned the race.
A few laps into the race, we were given a prime (a sprint for extra prize merchandise).
I usually do not waste my energy going after these, but I still need to stay near the front to watch that nobody gets away after the sprint.
Sure enough, 3 riders got a small gap in the prime sprint and kept on going.
One of the riders was Larry from Team RPM, so of course his team was going to try to help him get away.
Thus it was up to me to drag the pack up to the 3 leaders and swallow them up again.
Knowing that I did not have a lot of miles under my belt, my plan was to try to keep the pack together until a bunch finish at the end.
I was unsure how well my legs would last if I went solo or even in a small breakaway group for more than several laps.
On the next prime sprint, a solo rider kept going, but he was from a different team.
However, nobody would chase again, so if I didn't want to lose the race due to apathy from everyone else, it was going to be up to me to reel him back in.
These efforts were not hard, but I needed to try to save as much strength as possible for the final sprint.
I'd notice that on some of these chases that we'd lose about half the riders who would then join up again when we eased up.
Also, I was a marked man, as every time I'd make an acceleration towards the front, you'd hear other riders yelling "there he goes", so it was pretty much me against everyone again.
One aspect of this race was having the other race going on simultaneously.
When we would ease up, the 55-59 lead group of about 6 riders would pass us.
The course is pretty tight with many corners and the rules were that we were not allowed to mix.
Each group had a motorcycle that would lead the leading rider(s), but even they got confused as to who was who, which then confused the meet organizers as well.
To top it off, the 55-59 group's race was just slightly shorter than ours.
As we got to about the 30 minute mark, the 55-59 group came cruising through us as we were in a slow period and we had to try to stay out of their way.
However, one rider of our group stayed ahead of them and by the time we got through 5 tight corners, he had a sizable lead.
Since we were getting closer to the end of the race, this was a bit more of a threat.
David and I were the strongest riders and the guy away was not a Team RPM rider.
Thus it was in both of our interests to get him back.
I would pull for about 3/4 of a lap and David would pull for 1/4 of a lap and then start wheezing, where I had to come around him and keep the pace going.
Nobody else could or would help with this effort and after about 7 minutes, we finally had him back in the fold.
And just then the organizers announce that we have 5 laps to go.
Oh great, I'm finally starting to feel the efforts affecting my legs and there's only 5 laps to try to recover and then sprint.
With 2 laps to go, a Team RPM rider took the lead with Larry and David behind.
Obviously this had been planned from before the race, as most times that I've beaten David in the past was by getting a good jump on him close to the finish.
By keeping the pace up, there would be less of an opportunity for anyone to escape and it would be harder to get a surprise jump near the end.
With one lap to go, Larry took over the lead, with David on his wheel.
I maneuvered onto David's wheel and basically lost track of everyone else from that point on.
Last year I got the winning move by making a jump on the back stretch before the final two corners and hoped to do the same this year.
There is not much distance from the final corner to the finish line, so it's important to have good position before the final two corners.
Larry kept a good speed up going into the back stretch and I started trying to judge when to do my jump.
Knowing that Larry and David were working together I probably should have gone early, just as we got into the back stretch, but I didn't.
I started at about the same place as last year, and got just a fraction of a second on David's jump.
To my surprise, Larry did a hard left hook to get out of David's way and put himself right in front of me.
I hesitated as I had to see if there was going to be room on his left or his right to try to get around him and he had swerved so much that I went around on his right.
I was able to catch up to David and even get slightly ahead of him, but by this time I was not far enough ahead to be able to take the corner first.
I eased up and actually shifted down a gear in hopes of trying to get a jump through the last corner.
We didn't go especially fast through the corners which made it hard to get enough clearance to get around David and try to start sprinting again.
I was able to close to within half a bike length, but there just was not enough distance to take the win.
The final sprint speed was only 31.7 mph (I did 35.6 mph in last year's sprint).
So David was able to recapture the State Championship title, although it was more like Team RPM captured the title and not an individual.
I keep reliving what I should have done differently, as I was fully aware that I was the strongest and the fastest in the group.
It's possible I could have attacked more myself and broken us up into a small group where there would be insufficient team members to gang up on me; I apparently was strong enough to do this and probably should have tried, but I was unsure of my endurance.
My next best tactic would have been to jump immediately out of the turn going into the back stretch on the final lap, catching both Larry and David off guard and hope that I could keep David behind me all the way to the line;
that would have eliminated the possibility of Larry interfering.
My biggest mistake though, was easing up as we approached the next to last corner.
I should have just kept accelerating all the way to the line from that point on and kept tight to David as we went through the turns.
Then we would have had a sprint at full speed, rather than giving him the advantage of having a lead out of the final corner and too short a distance to make it up; so only a silver medal this year.
David was pretty ecstatic about the win.
I was happy that my form is coming back and that I could physically dominate the race, if not dominate it with team mates.
I doubt Michael Jordon would win many games playing solo against a full NBA team, but that's pretty much the situation I'm in.
There aren't enough strong riders in this category to group together to overcome Team RPM, so they always have the advantage.
Just doesn't seem very sporting to me and I'd certainly not appreciate a win knowing that I had to have my buddies gang up on other riders to accomplish it.
Noel and I went out for a nice lunch in Scottsdale again and were back home by mid-afternoon.
Summary
Start
Time |
Distance
(Miles) |
Starters |
Duration |
Weather
(Deg F, mph) |
Climbing
(Feet) |
Speed avg
(MPH) |
Speed Max
(MPH) |
HR avg
(BPM) |
HR max
(BPM) |
HR waking
(BPM) |
Calories Burned
(Kcal) |
| 11:03 am |
18.1 |
18 |
45:20 |
91, Calm |
40 |
23.9 |
33.6 |
173 |
195 |
45 |
418 |
Results
Racing page Bike page
One aspect of this race was having the other race going on simultaneously.
When we would ease up, the 55-59 lead group of about 6 riders would pass us.
The course is pretty tight with many corners and the rules were that we were not allowed to mix.
Each group had a motorcycle that would lead the leading rider(s), but even they got confused as to who was who, which then confused the meet organizers as well.
To top it off, the 55-59 group's race was just slightly shorter than ours.
As we got to about the 30 minute mark, the 55-59 group came cruising through us as we were in a slow period and we had to try to stay out of their way.
However, one rider of our group stayed ahead of them and by the time we got through 5 tight corners, he had a sizable lead.
With 2 laps to go, a Team RPM rider took the lead with Larry and David behind.
Obviously this had been planned from before the race, as most times that I've beaten David in the past was by getting a good jump on him close to the finish.
By keeping the pace up, there would be less of an opportunity for anyone to escape and it would be harder to get a surprise jump near the end.
With one lap to go, Larry took over the lead, with David on his wheel.
I maneuvered onto David's wheel and basically lost track of everyone else from that point on.
Last year I got the winning move by making a jump on the back stretch before the final two corners and hoped to do the same this year.
There is not much distance from the final corner to the finish line, so it's important to have good position before the final two corners.
So David was able to recapture the State Championship title, although it was more like Team RPM captured the title and not an individual.
I keep reliving what I should have done differently, as I was fully aware that I was the strongest and the fastest in the group.
It's possible I could have attacked more myself and broken us up into a small group where there would be insufficient team members to gang up on me; I apparently was strong enough to do this and probably should have tried, but I was unsure of my endurance.
My next best tactic would have been to jump immediately out of the turn going into the back stretch on the final lap, catching both Larry and David off guard and hope that I could keep David behind me all the way to the line;
that would have eliminated the possibility of Larry interfering.
My biggest mistake though, was easing up as we approached the next to last corner.
I should have just kept accelerating all the way to the line from that point on and kept tight to David as we went through the turns.
Then we would have had a sprint at full speed, rather than giving him the advantage of having a lead out of the final corner and too short a distance to make it up; so only a silver medal this year.
