April 18, 2004, Colossal Cave RR
Tucson, AZ 45 miles
My first race with my new bike was a success.
I was in the Masters 45+ age group which was 5 laps on a 9 mile course.
The last 3 miles of each lap were uphill and the finish at the top.
We had 32 starters with most of the top Arizona riders there.
I had ridden the course 4 times over the previous 2 weeks to be familiar with the course and practice various sprint techniques
(long/short duration, out/in the saddle, big/regular size gears).
The bike felt totally natural and I could put all my concentration into the race rather than my equipment.
I dropped my water bottle in the first half lap, so time to change to a cage that I'm less likely to miss when re-inserting it.
Each lap had 3 right turns at an intersection. On the first lap, one rider rode off the front and rode straight rather than taking the turn.
50% of us followed (I was trapped within the pack) and with lots of yelling and confusion, we turned around and got back on course
(we never found out if that first rider ever rejoined us).
I chose not to attack throughout the race and kept an eye on the attacks from the middle of the pack.
Surprisingly, the few attacks we had did not occur on the climb, but on the downhill and flat sections;
they were short lived and usually only contained no more than 2 riders.
On the climbs, I put myself in about 5th position to enable myself to join any breaks that I expected to be likely.
The third lap was about a minute faster than the others and we were down to 13, but we eased up a bit on the next 2 laps.
On the last lap, we were still all together and the field down to 19.
With 3 miles to go, I latched onto the wheel of one of the riders I believed to be a very good sprinter.
We made the final turn with about 0.9 miles to go and the steepest part of the climb to come; I was in the middle of the pack on the left side.
I carefully watched for any jumps and prepared for the surge to the finish.
With about 600 m to go, Don Lewis began to pull off the front on the right hand side, but the pack made no increase in speed.
I started getting antsy as Don increased his lead.
Realizing that the normal sprint acceleration was not going to happen and my sprint guy was not going to provide me any kind of leadout,
I dropped my rear shifter into my 53x14 and started my sprint out of the saddle.
I continued out of the saddle, immediately dropping the pack, passing Joe Cunningham who had also drifted off the front,
flew by Don Lewis, and won the race by several lengths.
Although it was uphill, I was doing 30.1 mph at the line. I also reached a heart rate of 194 bpm (my highest ever).
I felt well prepared and the race was relatively easy for me (so easy, I was almost wondering if I had sprinted a lap too early instead of for the actual finish).
The new bike was noticeably faster than my 30 year old steel steed and I'm looking forward to future races. Great fun.
Results posted at http://presteza.homestead.com/CCRR2004Results.html
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