March 21, 2015, South Mountain Circuit race 55+
Phoenix, AZ 30 minutes
Report from Lionel Space, Phoenix AZ
This was a circuit race that is rather close to my home, just 7 miles away.
The course was a 1 1/8 mile counter clockwise loop, with almost half of that going up hill, gaining 130 feet each lap.
I rode this for the first time last year and came in second, so it was fun enough to do again.
The racer who beat me seems to have retired and there were fewer entries than last year, so it seemed very possible to win this time, even though I haven't ridden a hill since this race last year.
David Bixby, winner from 2 years ago was entered, as was Andrew Hosterman, who had ridden strongly to a fourth place in the Tucson stage race the week prior.
There were 7 riders in our 55 plus race, racing with the 5 riders in the 65+ race.
The weather was sunny, in the upper 70s and calm; just beautiful.
I didn't bother to do any warmup, pretty much just riding from the parking lot to the start line.
Lots of other riders were dripping sweat from long periods on their stationary trainers; that would just wear me out.
I lined up on the front row for the start and put in a pretty good pace to strain others who have a hard time getting going.
After leading up the climb at 15 to 17 mph, I also took the lead through the downhill section.
This allowed me to control the pace, take the corners at the pace I wanted, and not have to worry about anyone crashing or causing some other mishap in front of me.
This was the fastest lap of the race, completed in 3:05 (as fast as the fastest lap in last year's race).
As we started up the hill again, I maintained a pace that should keep anyone from trying a severe attack.
Bixby would come up close to my side, but I'd keep just ahead of him.
When we hit the top of the climb, there were 5 of us left, all 55+ riders: Me, Bixby, Hosterman, Mike Bontrager, and Greg Barrett.
I lead through the downhill section again and the second lap was completed in 3:14.
Bixby came to the front on our third time up the climb, so I let him take the lead and sat on his wheel.
At the top, he was breathing a bit more heavily than me; we had left Greg behind on that climb, leaving us with four riders.
Bixby eased up, so I took the lead through the downhill section, taking it a bit more easily.
The next lap was a repeat, those two laps taking 3:22 and 3:25 to complete.
The official announced 5 laps to go as we crossed the line, so we'd do 9 laps compared to last year's 8, so we must have been on a faster pace in the beginning.
As the four of us crested the top during lap 5, Bixby exclaimed "Damn, I have a flat" and he was gone from the race.
His effort up the climb allowed us to complete that lap in 3:10, the second fastest of the race as I once again led the other two through the downhill twists.
I eased up to let the other two do some pacing so I could monitor how they were doing and to avoid any surprise attacks from behind.
Thus the next 3 laps were the slowest of our race, between 3:21 and 3:29 per lap.
With 4 laps to go, the climb was wearing on me and I was wondering if I could hang in there if one of the others attacked, but I continued to persevere, knowing that a win was still possible.
With 3 to go, the official announced a prime and held up a tire as the prize.
I still wasn't sure how strong my competitors were feeling, so I was cautious to expend energy that could be countered with an attack.
I led the final corner before the prime sprint and was leading towards the line, but not very hard.
It seemed like they were going to let me just take it, but then Bontrager did an acceleration and took the prime, as I just maintained a steady, moderate pace.
No attacks developed during that climb as I used my lowest gear of 46x23, so it was going to be just a matter of one more lap to decide things.
I sat behind both riders during our last climb so I could watch for any attacking action.
To my surprise, we just did a steady, but solid pace to the top as the 3 of us crested together.
There were also no surges on the downhill as I continued to stay in 3rd position.
As we approached the last corner, I took the lead to give myself the advantage of starting the finish a length ahead of the others and neither fought me for that position.
I took the tight corner a bit faster than previously (24.7 mph) and started pedaling long before I finished the turn.
I immediately got out of the saddle in a 46 x 14 and sprinted up to 29.0 mph, watching Bontrager behind me a couple lengths back as I easily took the win, the tenth win of the season.
It's a bit disappointing that it's only March and there's only one more race for me in Arizona.
AZ is under the impression that criterium races have to include all classes on the same day.
So when the heat arrives, a day of criteriums would go into the hot afternoon.
If they had early morning races where some days had juniors, another day category races, another day women, another day Masters, we could have comfortable races all season long.
Instead they run time trials and hill climbs over the summer, which can be completed in the morning, and a small number of road races where the classes can all be on the course at the same time and finish early;
those are not races that I can enjoy, so the rest of my season will require more extensive traveling.
Several other racers today also complained that they train hard all year, just to have a couple months of races and have very little to look forward to until next January.
For me, I'll do some criteriums in California, and track racing in California, Minnesota, and South Carolina.
Podium. Bontrager, Space, Hosterman.
Summary
Start
Time |
Distance
(Miles) |
Starters |
Duration |
Weather
(Deg F, mph) |
Speed avg
(MPH) |
Speed Max
(MPH) |
| 9:40 am |
10.1 |
9 |
29:42 |
78, Calm |
20.4 |
37.0 |
Results
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