February 6, 2005, Usery Pass RR
NE of Phoenix, AZ   47.6 miles

First real race of the 2005 season. I entered the Men's Category 4 class to try to gain some points to move me up to category 3, rather than the Masters category as I would normally do.
The course covers about a dozen miles of very scenic National Park area about half an hour NE of Phoenix. We travel 9.5 miles of a slight upgrade and then do a U-turn on the 2 lane road back to where we were. Then we make a left turn and go up Usery Pass Rd, about a 3% grade for about 4.4 miles and do another U-turn back to the intersection. Then one more time up the 9.5 mile section and back, do the left turn again, and finish 1 mile up the climb.

All the various classes would be competing on the road at the same time, although staggered with 4 minute gaps; classes were not allowed to intermingle if they caught up with another class.

The race started at 7:47 a.m. and the posted directions to find the registration in this remote area were sketchy. This required waking up at 2:30 a.m. to make sure I got there in time (a time I often GO to bed at), but I was able to get in 4.5 hours of sleep.

The weather was basically good, although a bit cool. When I left Tucson it was 46 (3:15 a.m.), but at the race course it was 42. The trickiest part was figuring out which clothing and how much to wear. I opted to dress too warmly, which meant that I was trying to keep the sweat out of my eyes by the end of the race.

My strategy was to conserve energy and hope that we had a bunch sprint at the end, hoping that I could take the sprint. I only had one day of sprint practice in the last six weeks due to my colds, and no hill climbing practice, so I'd just have to hope that I still had enough fitness to pull off the job. Before the start, some of the other competitors said that the 4's usually start way too fast and last year caught the 3's. This year we started off rather leisurely, so much so that right after the first turn around, the Masters 45 class that started 4 minutes behind us, had a six man break that passed us. This was fine by me and I was sort of glad that I wasn't in the 45 class as I'd be working real hard. A few miles later the remainder of the Masters 45 class caught up and the following cars had us slow down to ensure that the classes has some separation again, fine by me.

There were no serious attacks and the climbs were at a moderate pace. A couple people got shoved off the road at the turn around, going down in the dirt, but they were barely moving and we all got back together. The climb up Usery Pass was easy enough, although we had probably shed about half of our group by the top and we caught up with and passed the rest of the Masters 45 that had previously passed us.

So far so good. The Masters 45 trailing group passed us again and again we were told to ease up, fortunately on the steepest climb of this section of the course. But our group kept them real close and we soon passed them again, never to see them again. Then I started running into an old problem of mine: my calves started to shudder with cramps. I was able to pedal differently to bring other muscles into play and got myself up the climb, but after the turn around I was still having cramp problems as we approached the finish. I was also having to frequently wipe my brow to keep the sweat from running into my eyes. I was able to coast on some of the short downhill sections and massage my calves and didn't have a reoccurrence for the rest of the ride.

As we approached the final turn, I had gotten myself into a good position, about 10 deep out of the 30 still remaining in our pack. Another rider I know that has a good sprint from our Saturday rides was in our group and I positioned myself on his wheel in hopes that he would give me a good leadout in the final 200 meters. For the first half mile of the climb, the finish line can not be seen and it's a bit trickier to judge the distance because of the ascent. I noticed that my heart rate was already in the low 180's, which was higher that what I wanted for this stage of the race. We finally make the slight bend with about a half mile to go and I can see the finish tents. I'm on the outside so that I can avoid getting boxed in and patiently avoid going too soon. There's no real surge, but the pace does gradually pick up and about 5 are starting to move off the front. I leap off of Jesus' wheel, knock the gear up a notch and start to try to reel in the others. However, I don't accelerate and I seem to have no extra power. Darn, I'm not going to win this race and will be lucky to get any upgrade points at all (only the top 6 places have points). As I start to falter even more, Jesus passes me in the final 50 meters to steal another point from me. My heart rate maxes out at 191, a little lower than I usually get in a sprint. I finally only managed an 8th place.

So, not as spectacular a start to my upgrade campaign as I had hoped. Next Sunday is another chance to get some points in a 30 minute, mostly flat, circuit race. I'll be riding two races that day, as the Masters 50+ starts right after the finish of the Category 4 race.

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)
7:47 am 47.6 60 2:16:15 42-62, Clr, E@6 2960 21.0 44.4 154 191 46 974

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