Fresh off cat 2 upgrade. 83-mile road race is the standard now. San Marvelous was this weekend and I decided to give it a go. We drove with Freedom in the morning. All equipment was good and nothing broken, weren’t late. Awesome! Freedom was going for the cat 3 race. Michael Sheehan and Nick were in my race. Both professional cyclists. We had about 20 people start the P12 race. My goal was to stay with the pack. Apparently, smaller races are actually harder. It’s counter intuitive. But it’s true. When you have a lot of people you can just hide & suck wheels in the pack, but when you have 20 people when half of them drop in the first lap there’s nowhere to hide, single file and you are in for 80 miles of pain.
In a normal cat 3 race the first half of the race everybody usually chills in the pack and the second half is where the action is. Not in this race. From the gun. The guys attacked for a whole lap, as many times as it took, until the elastic broke. Nick averaged 336 watts with the 700 watt attacks for the first 26 minutes, once we made the turn, and he didn’t even get into the break. And that was just first lap warm up. It was brutal. This is how it works. You have guys launching like a missile from the back. Some people hesitate then someone decides to chase and the pack stretches out. Once the guy is caught somebody else goes and the process repeats until a break establishes. And they did it 20 times. I chased couple of those and even went to the front myself. Soon I realized I can’t do it for 80 miles so instead of chasing first wheel I would chase 3rd or 4th wheel. At one point, I got caught in the back and had to bridge - pedal to the metal for 40 seconds. Luckily, 3 guys Sheehan, Das Wow & CCR got away and 7 of us started the chase. That was the end of the first lap. Out of 20 guys only 10 remained.
The next 5 laps were pretty much time trial / break-away pace where the guys would echelon for the whole time. 5-20 seconds pulls in the front. We were rotating. It was 6 of us. 1 guy dropped after deciding to smash it up the hill. That was super stupid. At about lap 4 I realized If matched their watts I wouldn’t make it the whole 80 miles so I started chilling more and more in the back and skipping pulls. At the same time, I was trying to eat those shot blocks I got in HEB. Never again. GU Gels work for me Shot blocks made my stomach cramp really bad. I felt like puking. It was horrible.
Lap 5 we managed to catch Michael Sheehan break-away. 1 das wow and 1 CCR guy that was with Michael dropped so now it was 7 of us. All that remained of the race.
Last lap was again like the first. Constant attacks and lulls. But nothing would go. I guess people were tired. They are human after all. It all came down to an uphill sprint. I decided to go. Managed to get of out the saddle for probably 50 meters then had to sit down. Every pedal stroke was a cramp. Real Pain. Managed to get 5th of out of 7 guys that finished. I stayed with the pack. All I could ask for the first race.