Murray State Report - Men's C RR - aka Serious Business, Part One

Men's C was the first RR on Saturday, so it was a cold start to the MWCCC season. After only doing 3 race weekends in D last year I was uncertain how my form would hold up against the stiffer competition and I made sure to start the race in the front by getting to the line 10 minutes before the start.

We rolled off without incident under a neutral start and made a left onto the course where the race began. The first several miles were a continuation of the roll out, with everyone deciding they would rather go 16mph than actually working hard. During the detente I took the opportunity to introduce myself to the non-posers at the front. Topics of discussion ranged from my rotor q rings to the specialized arc 2 sunglasses that one of the Indiana guys was wearing. This gentlemanly discussion ended quickly near the first right hander, when the one Murray State racer decided to test the elastic on the field. Unfortunately for him I was second wheel on the left side of the pack and summarily dispatched with his foolishness. We actually had a good group of 5 or 6 with a gap, but no one was particularly interested in staying out that early in the race. There were a plethora of other weak moves during the middle part of the first lap, all of which were marked by a group of 5 or 6 of us. In that respect the first lap was very informative because you could tell who was serious about winning the race. The big guns kept their attacks holstered pending our first ascent of the steep hill on the back side of the course. The climb did not disappoint with one of the good racers from OSU dancing up the road on the yellow line. When the other captains came after him he looked back down the road to see how many people had the legs to respond to the move and then shut it down. Again we had a gap over the top, but the fanfare was just a test run for the real move to come on the second lap and I made a note to find his wheel in advance of the second ascent.

The last part of the first lap and first half of the second lap passed without anything of significance for a brief hissing sound that came from my front wheel after I hit a rock near the end of the first lap. I was concerned that I had flatted, so I looked down at the tire deflection and didn't see anything out of the order. I asked the guy next to me if my tire looked okay and he confirmed that it did, so I didn't think about this again until after the race. On the second lap, a really serious move came in the rollers a few miles before the climb as one of the bigger guys dug deep to try and split the field before the climb. Another strong rider caught his wheel as he went up the left side, so I knew I had to get after it. I wasn't in ideal position to respond, so I worked my way out of the pack onto a group of three chasers and sat on the back while they charged downhill. The gap from my chase to the two in front was only around 50 yards, so tapped my brakes to let out a little gap between myself and the guy in front of me. Then, as the road leveled out in advance of another roller I accelerated through the slipstream and carried the momentum in an all out bridge before the next downhill. When I got on we did several rotations before the original attacker didn't pull through and I was perfectly amenable to letting it come back together before the headwind section that was rapidly approaching. As we reintegrated with the group I sought and attained the wheel of the OSU guy that was going to try and break the race open on the climb a mile up the road. The pace slowed in the headwind as we approached the climb and I realized that I had only consumed half of my first bottle, with the second being entirely full (probably because it was cold). This offended my sensibilities and I launched the bottle in a skyward arc over the field into the ditch on the right side of the road. It takes a certain panache to execute this type of maneuver, so I would not recommend it without practice. According to an observer in the back of the pack it elicited oohs and aahs usually reserved for 4th of July fireworks.

Moving on, the attack came on the base of the climb as expected and due to my position I exerted very little undue effort following the wheels. Near the top of the climb I pondered re-raising the stakes, but thought better and sat in. As we descended a short section after the climb I looked back to see what the split was and saw about 15 people with us and the rest of the field swarming to close the gap. I'm not sure why that split didn't stick, but the finish could have been much safer if it had. The run into the finish sucked because it was a busy road and we were packed 4 wide. Occasionally there was a brief acceleration, at which point you had to frantically look for small gaps to open up to move up and maintain position. There was a crash on the right side at around the 5th wheel, so even being a little off the front could have cost me the race. For the most part I stayed in the left two columns and in the 2nd or 3rd row. We were at a fast 28 or 29, but no one was really trying to attack. The nervous energy leading up to the sprint was palpable and I couldn't even feel my legs. I focused on breathing deeply and keeping my hands relaxed as we entered the last mile. Indiana and Kentucky had amassed near the front and as we strung out into the finish it was IU, IU, IU, KY, KY, and me. This position would have been fine if it weren't for the combination of good and bad team tactics that were about to take place. The good was the 3rd IU rider, who blocked while the first two rode off. The bad was that my KY wheel was not the protected rider as I had assumed, and did not match his teammate's move around the blocking IU rider. This left me to sprint around two fading racers to even contend for the win...not ideal. Fortunately, I recognized this quickly and set out to chase down the three guys in front. The maneuvering had forced me into the wind about 150m early, so my best hope was that the lead-out IU rider would fade near the line as I accelerated into 3rd. Sure enough, I had significant top line speed relative to the guys in front and caught the IU rider. The annoying realization was that if the finish was 50-75m further down the road I think would have taken the W (more impressive because my front tire was at 70psi due to the slow leak that was caused by a rock on the first lap).

Per my upgrading discussions with Jeff Hansen, I needed top-5 finishes, so I was happy with getting 3rd and scoring 18 points. For all you wattage counters out there, my 10s was ~1100, 1min ~520, 5min ~340, but these numbers were probably a little underestimated by my iBike due to the increased rolling resistance from my soft front tire (this is also a proper time to endorse latex tubes for racing, because I likely would have lost a lot more air pressure from a butyl tube b/c they have less elasticity and pinhole punctures will quickly widen). All in all, the first race was serious business.

After consuming various recovery substances, I borrowed Taylor's wheel and set out to find the bottle that I jettisoned during my race. While riding the course backwards I stopped to yell encouraging/obscene things at Will, Scott, Axie, and Hannah in addition to talking to the course marshalls. Predictably, my bottle was covered with mud from the ditch, but while I was looking for it an IIT rider that dropped out of the A race rolled up and struck up a conversation. He expressed surprise that Scott was hammering it out in the breakaway because not less than two hours before he had claimed to not have any form. Feigning weakness is a time honored tradition in cycling and we can all learn from Scott's flawless execution of this classic bait and switch. Indeed the first race is a perfect time to employ such tactics as one does not even require an excuse. I expect that future weekends will be rife with significantly more theatrics as Scott will arrive at races describing illusory training ride crashes and sporting fake bandages in an attempt to disown his newly minted status as a marked rider.