Race Report: Farmersville Road Race 2/3

Tough race on Saturday...8 laps of 6.6 miles...~54 miles total. It was pretty flat, with a lot of long straightaways and then a lot of sections with tight turns.

Out of ~70+ starters, I ended up 14th overall and 4th among Cat 3s.

I had a bad start off the line as well and i spent 6 of the 8 laps in the back 1/3 of the race. I was really hurting on the first couple of laps and wondering why I even do this. There were a bunch of turns and I was sprinting out of the saddle to catch back on after every turn. Seriously, the course was like a giant 9-corner crit.

Once we hit an hour in, you could tell that a lot of the really powerful crit dudes who usually only race for 60 minutes were slowing down. I was moving up little by little and the more I moved up, obviously the less work i was doing.

On the last lap I was moving up on the side just as an attack went off the front...in the confusion, the field strung out a little and cleared the road enough where I was able to catch on to the back of the attack, which put me at fifth wheel or so with 3 miles to go.

There was a United Health Group dude off the front who nobody was interested in chasing. There were a couple of fake attacks, but everybody was interested in racing for 2nd place it seemed.

I messed up a little bit responding to one of the fake attacks just before 1km to go and lost my solid position and ended up on the front. I stayed there a little too long and lost a couple of places when the next attack happened. I was able to catch a wheel going into the last turn, but I was now far enough back that I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to win the field sprint.

I picked a few dudes off on the finishing stretch, but I was kicking myself for losing my spot with 2k to go. I totally had a moment when I panicked and thought to myself 'what am I doing here, I don't belong here, these dudes are all 2s, how did I end up at the front?' and lost concentration long enough to end up in the wind a little too long...so I ended up sprinting for top 20 and not top 10.

Still, i'm psyched on the result. I feel like i've been just riding and not racing in races so far this season, and I was definitely racing at the end yesterday.

Andy picked up a 6th in the Cat 5 race...I'm sure he'll post a race report as well.

What was looming in the distance. Subtitle: Battenkill and it's aftermath. Pt. 1

When you sign up for a race with a five month wait til you're actually on the start line you tend to find yourself thinking about it a lot. It becomes a centerless and uncertain way of thinking and planning for an event . Questions start coming into play that challenge your best laid plans, never mind any actual tangible obstacles such as sickness or injury, those roadblocks swell to the level of the point of abject failures.
Of course, I write of the Tour of Battenkill. As many times I tell myself that the race is a paltry sixty-something mile ride the likes of I've done countless times prior in my riding habits, I think back to previous experiences I've had in the race or one of my team mates is there to co-conspire my tranquility with their own anxieties. The kicker is that this is an ongoing theme for five months. Five months. I am not a man born of complete consistency, nor do I have the desire or attention for too many things too far in the future. My way of going into this is to lay out a decent plan where I might be able to get a bit more caught up in one week following the next and so on until the last few weeks are in sight. When I get troubled or need a little reminder of what's to come, I tend to shift my thoughts to things more insignificant and palpable. One of my favorite reminders being equipment. Let's look at tires, will I want to change my saddle, will these bottle cages eject my belongings as soon as I hit the first dirt section? These thought remind me that the race is coming but give more footing as far as I feel like I am planning the right way more so than the physiological guessing that I can easily get wrapped up in. Will my legs work, am I overdoing this, do I go up hills decent enough?
It's easier for me to quell my team mates' concerns that it is to quiet my own. I tell them it's a not that crazy of a race. I know that it's not, but no one is too assured when I say it. Not even me.
Let's not get too involved in the lead up to the race, at least not the first four months. Suffice to say that I got on the bike a lot, both here in the frigid north east and in sunnier climes of Florida, I got out on some fantastic long rides, I made sure to hit up some dirt roads for good measure. I'll also spare you the details of getting sick and feel like there was never any way I was going to be in good enough shape to race. When you feel like everything you are doing is preparation for something, the sense of purpose in you has a way to exaggerate all fears to an ultimate finality.
With a month to go all nagging questions have to be stifled. Again I typically turn towards preparing equipment. The basement becomes a whirl of work, glue and grease. After riding through the thaw here much needs attention. Bottom brackets come out, get cleaned and re-installed. Oh good, that creaking is gone. Race wheels get pulled out from the bags and inspected, new tubulars get stretched and prepped. I search around all my parts and wonder why I have so many used cassettes lying around and if they'll work with my chain. Nope, they sure don't. Time to buy an new chain and cassette. (Do I throw out the used ones? No way. Damned if I know why I don't.)

The day to glue new tires is a fun one for me. I like the process, I truly do. The way I feel about it is like this: If I'm going to glue one set of wheels, I'd might as well glue a few more. The process becomes that much bigger and demands more efficiency. Total like. A team mate drops a set of wheels he wants glued and now I've got a party on my hands. On a nice day I like to do this outside on the patio. It looks like this:
A miniature service course. With all mechanic duties finished, the last part of the wait time is to be filled with travel arrangements, finding pretty much the entire accumulation of apparel and accessory you might have given the unpredictability of the weather up in the northern reaches of eastern New York, and the finishing touches of training to ready one's self for the upcoming task. That'll be part two. Soon.