Chewin' the bars

No not those bars….the handlebars! Consider the points score. 120 laps (30km) with sprints every ten laps. He with the most points wins. Sounds easy. First sprint and I’m in the points. We all roll up the track and roll around until ten laps later when we do it again. In the points again. Two sprints, two placings. So far so good. Third sprint – legs are starting to feel the accelerations, I’m not going to place, so ease off a little. A small gap opens up when a rider goes on the attack. Look around – no one wants to chase. I have a brain cramp & decide I will chase it down. I pull a big turn, look around and I have a gap. Which is great until 2 riders come across, I roll up the track but they’re too fast and I lose the wheel. Not good, the rest of the riders fly by and I’m off the back. The race has exploded! Riders everywhere. Eventually a group of 7 form at the front, another four spread out around the track chasing behind. I am one of the four. Catch one rider then we work turns to catch another two in front. So it’s seven up front & four at the back. There is no time to recover, we’re all deep in oxygen debt and suffering! We are half a lap down. We work turns and start to slowly reel in the front group. The pace comes off at the front before each sprint, a couple of times we nearly get on, only for the gap to blow out again at the sprint. Feels like we’re never going to catch them! This goes on for a while, but eventually we make it across the gap with about 45 laps to go. Any thought of sprinting for points is out the window, I’m “happy” to just hang on now. A couple of riders have dropped out. My body is in purgatory, right arm is numb and neck & shoulders feel like rigor mortis has set in. There’s no chance to recover even when the pace is off, it’s all I can do to hang on. Every acceleration means another chance to get dropped but there’s no way I’m letting that happen, it’s too close to the finish. Eventually it ends. After all that pain & suffering, I ended up with 4 points and finished 6th. But I finished, that’s the main thing. The average speed was a shade over 45km/h but the pace often comes off between the sprints. It’s the constant speeding up & slowing down combined with the relatively long distance that takes its toll. Definitely a survival of the fittest type race…

Results etc are here http://www.vic.cycling.org.au/2007AustralianMasters/07masters.htm

Next up is the Criterium at Bacchus Marsh on Saturday.

3 minutes 51 seconds...

...of pure pain! That's the conclusion after my first competition 3km pursuit at the Australian Masters' Championships. The time was in the ballpark for what I'd been doing in training, so wasn't a surprise. At least I avoided another ride by qualifying 5th fastest - the top four went through to the medal round. Happy with the result.

For the tech-heads: first kilo was 1.10 (maybe I should be doing 1km TT's?), I lost time vs schedule in the second kilo and came home on schedule for the third km. Out of the blocks too fast I'm afraid. Rode a 49 x 13 = 102 inch gear. Note the aero gear...sweet as. Right on the black line too...nice. Now I just need the legs & lungs to match!

Next up - 30km points score tomorrow. Can't wait.

Austral wheelrace & training

A couple of weekends ago I competed in the famous Austral Wheelrace, which was held at Vodafone Arena in Melbourne. It was the 107th staging of the event which was first run in 1887. I had three races on the night, no results, didn’t make the wheelrace final, but had a great night’s racing nonetheless. The track is super fast with wide corners and short straights. I rode a big gear (94.5 inch for the anoraks) and hardly felt the pedals all night. The photo shows me warming up in full track mode…disc wheel and all (sorry it's a bit blurry). Sweet!

Am now three weeks out from the Australian Masters champs and training is going well. Last Friday night in training I set a time in full aero mode (disc rear wheel, deep-dish carbon front wheel and aero bars) for the 3km pursuit of 3 min 45 sec, a whole 20 seconds (!!!!!) faster than the first time I posted about 5 weeks ago. I put about 5 seconds of that down to aero position, the rest down to improvement. So the training is paying off, just have to hold it together for another 3 weeks……

Winners are grinners!!

Whoa! After a super hard training block and feeling like cr@p all week, I rocked up to the St Kilda criterium on Sunday not feeling too flash. After a pre-race coffee to get the heart started I reluctantly grabbed a number and lined up for the start. I’ll leave the race description to a quote from the club newsletter….

The B grade field was split very early and a three man break worked like a machine to hold off the bunch with a good 30 sec break for most of the race. A very strong and determined Todd Butterworth made several attempts to cross the gap but to no avail, and he was forced to rejoin the remains of the field. The three escapees were just too strong. Well done to SKCC riders Graeme Coull, Luigi Vecchio and Campbell Elliot who stayed away for the remainder of the race and placed in that order.

So it WAS worth getting out of bed after all.!!

Tour of Bright

Photos: Ready to race? Here comes the pain!

The weekend of December 2nd & 3rd was the Tour of Bright. The event was well run and attended, with over 400 entries across all grades. I competed in C grade in a 90 rider field. It was quite a buzz racing in such a large bunch. There were two stages on each day. On Saturday morning there was a 105km road stage, taking in the climb of Tawonga Gap from the Mt Beauty side. While I rode at the front of the bunch for most of the day, the climb started just 1.5km after an intermediate sprint (took 5th place) and I had to let go of the leaders on the climb (too steep for me!). I took it easy on the descent and finished in a small group 7 minutes down on the leaders. After this stage I was 47th overall.

The afternoon stage was a time trial of 15kms, over some rolling terrain. I had done some specific training for this stage so was looking for a good result. I was able to ride in a good rythym, and finished the stage in 22nd place (average speed 39.83km/h, 40 would have been nice!), moving up to 34th place overall.

Sunday morning saw the ascent of Mt Buffalo, which ascends over 1,000 metres in 21 kilometers of climbing. I stuck with the leaders for the first 5 kilometers, but there were a few attacks and the elastic finally broke. I found my rythym and managed to pick up a few riders on the way to the summit at the Chalet, where I finished the stage in 31st place and moved up another four places overall. The climb from the toll gate took me 1 hour and 3 minutes...that's go to be the longest climb I've done so far. Good stuff!

The tour finished with a 20 minute criterium (street race) around Bright. This was without a doubt the hardest crit I have ever raced, it was full blast from the gun. After only 7 minutes I was at my absolute limit and forced to drop back from the front group. I finshed in the second group about 30 seconds down on the leaders, but by no means last, the race had split into four or five groups around the circuit! So hard! My final place was 30th, so top third overall.

All in all I had a great weekend and learned a lot about how to ride a stage race and how your body reacts to extreme duress! I reached home around 9pm on Sunday night, tired but happy....no more hills until next year!

Lessons Learned

Post Mt.William Classic summary:

1. NEVER go to a point-to-point race without a support driver to pick you up at point B...

2. ALWAYS double check that your rear wheel is tightened up properly. Then check it again. And a third time to be sure...

3. IGNORE everyone you know before the start and concentrate on getting your own s#it together...

4. NEVER listen to your coach when he tells you something is "easy"... that translates into a hill so steep that grown men and women climb off their bikes and walk the last 1km...

5. Having a self-inflicted mechanical, losing your water bottle and chasing a bunch solo for 45kms before succumbing to cramp is not fun. Take it from me...

6. A fourteen hour day door to door for 60km of riding is not necessarily an efficient use of time...

FUN, ANYONE?

'nuff said.

Crikey! A win!

Sometimes good things come when you least expect them. Last night at Kew criteriums I had a win in the B grade race (results weren't updated on the Hawthorn website at the time I published this). I was working out a plan with Fraser (a mate) for me to attack with 2 laps to go and for him to sit in on a sprinter's wheel and contest the sprint if I got caught. Well the best laid plans....with 3 1/2 laps remaining I accelerated away from the bunch at the base of the climb (the Kew circuit has a 300 metre hill each lap with the finish line at the top), caught and dropped a rider who was already off the front and reached the top of the hill with a gap of 100 or so metres. Seeing this, I put my head down and prepared to suffer! This was going to hurt! I wasn't expecting to hold off the bunch, I thought the move was too early. However with 2 laps to go I was maintaining the gap and with 1 lap to go it was still 75 metres. I was in a world of pain! I thought with that gap there was still a chance for the win so buried myself in the second to last straight and made the last corner with a 40 - 50 metre lead. It was going to be close! I knocked down a couple of gears for the first part of the climb, thinking if I could reach 100m to go in the lead I might be able to pull out a bit of a sprint. Sure enough, I was able to drag myself out of the saddle for one last almighty effort...the sprinters were coming FAST! But not fast enough! I lunged towards the line as the gap diminished, and must have won by less than a bike length. That was so CLOSE! But soooooo satisfying! So it's up to A grade next week, that should keep a lid on any delusions of grandeur.....