January 18, 2015, Avondale Crit #1, 45+
Avondale AZ
Report from Lionel Space, Phoenix AZ

I had returned home after the 7:55 morning 60+ race, then came back (a half hour drive) for the 45+ race at 3:10. The weather had warmed up to 76 and it was still sunny and calm. Oddly this race was nearly at the end of the day, so not many entered and a handful that had, already left for the day, so we only had 12 at the start line. My main contender would be Woody (James Woodburne), who has a reputation of being very strong and fast, with a number of wins under his belt. I had not raced against him much, since I usually don't enter the 45+ race, but with this race so close, I thought I'd give it a try.

My objective was to stick to Woody's wheel for the entire race. He has a habit of breaking away, so if he went, I would go with him. He had ridden the Pro 1/2 race earlier, which sapped him of a bit of energy.

For the majority of the beginning of the race, he sat very near the back, with me right on him, and usually only one or two others behind me. We saw a few solo attacks, but the riders didn't have the endurance to sustain their efforts. There were a few odd solo efforts that didn't seem to warrant chasing, but Woody jumped hard to bridge up to them, just to ease up once he caught them. His accelerations were very strong and he probably was doing it in hopes to shed me from his wheel.

About half way through, there was a prime prize called and with almost a full lap to go one rider slid off the front with nobody countering and he gained many lengths to claim the prize. Thus I didn't have to expend any physical or mental energy pondering if I should take the chance to go for it.

Woody went after a few more solo efforts, but I noticed that his accelerations were getting easier to stay with, so hopefully he was tiring. His efforts were also shorter, which made it easier on me.

As we got towards the last third of the race, we started really slowing down, sometimes dipping below 20 mph. This allowed me plenty of rest to prepare for the sprint, so it played well for me. They finally gave us the 5 lap to go countdown and the pace remained relatively easy. All I had to do was avoid any crashes and play the final sprint smart.

With one to go I was on Woody's wheel and he had slipped back to about 8th place. As we came up to the final long bend, he had not advanced his position and I was getting concerned that we were too far back. I was watching the inside and there was plenty of room to make a run up it, so as we approached 220 meters to go, I dove into the inside track. Just as I did that, a rider a bit more than a length ahead of me moved to the inside and I coasted for a second to determine his intentions. He stabilized with enough room to still come on his inside, so I shot through the hole and headed down the straight with a couple lengths advantage over Woody, who had gone around the outside. We averaged 30.2 mph on the last lap, some of that due to hitting a top speed of 36.2 mph during the final sprint using a 50x14 gear.

So a very successful start to the season with two wins.

Summary
Start
Time		 Distance
(Miles)		 Starters Duration Weather
(Deg F, mph)		 Speed avg
(MPH)		 Speed Max
(MPH)		 Course Length
(Miles)
3:10 pm 14.2 12 34:20 76, Calm 24.9 36.2 0.5

Results

The graph shows how the pace varied quite a bit from the attack stategy to try to escape from me.


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