April 10, 2005, Arizona State Criterium Championships, Masters 50-54
Scottsdale, AZ   15.9 miles

Since I began racing again, a major desire was to capture a State Championship. There are various events that award State medals, Road racing, Time Trials, various track events, and the Criterium. When I was racing 30 years ago, the Criterium was not a championship event and since this is my favorite road event, I really wanted to win a Criterium State Championship. I rode the AZ Criterium championship in 2004 and finished 3rd in my age group, although I was riding for Washington state. We spent the summer of 2004 in the Northwest and I got a 4th in the Omnium and a 3rd in the Criterium championships in WA. For 2005 I am riding as an Arizona rider, so I had been looking forward to this race for about 6 months. They announced the course about a month ago and I had studied it immensely. During the last couple weeks I had been planning various strategies in hopes to secure a win.

One snag in this plan was that for the last six weeks I had not been feeling at full capacity. I'd often feel fatigued and I pretty much had to reduce my hard training days to once a week, and even those did not have a lot of intensity. I was pretty worried that I may not have the fitness and strength to pull off anything substantial. But I listened to my body and gave it rest when it seemed unable to put forth the intended exertion. I had skipped the hilly races of the prior weekend because of this and would not have had any strength for them.

This was a 40 minute criterium in downtown Scottsdale. 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 and sometimes had a headwind. The weather was sunny and in the 80's with a varying intensity West wind. Since the Championships for Masters classes are broken up in 5 year age categories, our class only had 10 starters.

David Bixby won this race in 2004 and has won several times prior to that. He would be my biggest challenger. He has an excellent sprint and can motor alone quite well as well. Duane Mulvaney, who got 4th last year, can be strong, but doesn't have a fast sprint and he rode the previous day in the 3.7 mile uphill TT up an 11% grade, which may have sapped him a bit. Larry McCormick, another teammate of Bixby's was also in the group, as well as another Team RPM rider, so 3 of them out of the ten. I was not familiar with the rest, but felt like they should not be serious contenders.

We had a fairly aggressive start and there were a few minor attacks in the opening laps. As expected, David and Duane appeared to be the strongest. The course was closed and the roads were generally wide, so the corners were generally not much of a problem. The stretch from turn 7 to 8 was a bit narrow, so turn 7 was the tightest. Turn 8 had to be taken tightly on the inside or one would lose a half length to a length swinging too wide. About 15 minutes into the race, I was leading David and Duane on an attempt to break up the group and going around turn 9 my rear wheel did several quick skips on the bumps that made a shallow gutter across the street; a bit scary to David behind me and not reassuring to me for the final sprint when we come to the finish.

Although I thought for sure that the group would break up once we picked up the pace, everyone was able to stay together. There were numerous prime sprints and Team RPM seemed determined to make it a clean sweep; even David worked hard for a few of them. I chose to conserve my energy and make sure no one escaped after any of the sprints.

I had set my computer to display the elapsed time so that I could judge how far we were into the 40 minute race. There was a prime called and when I glanced at the time, it was 30:45 into the race. Since we had done the first lap in 1:56, I figured this had to be the 5 lap to go point, even though it was not announced by the officials. Sure enough, on the next lap we were told we had 4 laps remaining. On the following back stretch I tightened up my shoes. So far, the race had not been stressful and my breathing had never been taxed.

With 2.5 laps to go, Larry rode off the front and his teammate David let a gap grow. I was sure Larry was not fast enough to keep his lead to the end and this would mean David would not be doing any attacks as long as Larry was away. I could just relax behind him and watch the other riders work to bring Larry back in.

My Plan A for the final lap was to attack between turns 6 and 7 into the narrow stretch that would make it difficult for others to maintain the same speed and then try to hold the margin to the end. Plan B would be to do the logical jump on the back stretch to lead through the final 2 turns and hope to maintain it to the line. Plan C was to stick to David's wheel into turn 9, try to accelerate before turn 10 and have enough speed to pass him on the outside and beat him to the line, which the winner of the previous race in the 45-49 category had accomplished.

Just after turn 1 on the final lap, we caught up with Larry. Just after turn 3, Greg Barrett took the lead with a bit of speed and kept it up through turn 6, which killed my Plan A. As we went through turn 7 for the final time, I was in fifth position on David's wheel. Through that narrow stretch David passed Duane and I had to also get past Duane, but could not accomplish this before we got to turn 8. I had to take the corner on his inside and hope he did not cut me off. I had my fingers on the brake levers, but feared any slowing down this close to the end. I leaned it in tight, which was the best line anyway and had no complications with Duane. Whew! But now I'm staring down the back stretch with only about 120 meters to turn 9 and I say to myself "this is it, I've got to go now". David had swung a bit wide in the turn and I was on the far left. I dug down to surge forward and felt an immense power going through the pedals; I don't think I changed gears or got out of the saddle, I just zoomed past everyone. David would have the two other riders to interfere with his getting on my wheel. I had planned my course through the final two turns during the previous two laps and planned to take turn 9 with a wide arc to avoid skipping my rear wheel again, which would then set me up for a nice dive in on the final turn. I hit the turns just as planned and then gave everything I had to get to the line before anyone could make up ground. I was able to get up to 35.6 mph this time, so a good improvement in my top end. I noticed David coming up on my left and he got even with my back wheel and I dug in even more to maintain my lead, winning by a bike length. Greg was a couple lengths behind David and Duane another couple lengths behind him. All the others were still back at the corner.

So a very satisfying mission accomplished. I'm a happy boy and Noel was very proud too. David, with a smile, vowed to get me next year. I'm really hoping my training slump will end soon and that I can get back to improving my skills.

Noel and I went out for a nice lunch, as Scottsdale has many fine eateries. There was about a 5 hour period from the finish of my race to the start of the Category 4 race that I had also entered. Since there was a fair amount of time, I was hoping I could recuperate and not suffer as I did two weeks ago with cramps and bonk during the race. However, while we were eating, my left calf began giving me pains very much like cramps, the same muscle that failed me two weeks ago. It did not seem like it would improve prior to the race and I determined that I'd certainly not be able to compete successfully in the faster and more aggressive Category 4 race, so I decided to count my blessings and call it a day.

Many thanks to Noel for sharing the day with me and snapping some great photos.


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)
11:30 am 15.9 10 40:10 84, W@2-12 20 23.8 35.6 173 196 45 366

Results         

Racing page     Bike page