Bikes and Code

Many cities with a decent number of road racers end up with a weeknight ‘training’ race of some form. These are a chance for racers to get out and do what we love, generally with somewhat less pressure than in some of the larger weekend races.

The Lower Mainland is blessed with 3 such series. Escape Velocity runs the World Tuesday Night Championships. Phoenix Velo has a Wednesday night race out at the Mission Raceway. Finally, the Coastal Race Club runs a the CRC Challenge series on Thursdays.

This is pretty awesome.

I mostly race the Thursday nighters.

The circuit in South Richmond is in an industrial park. This means the road is wide and the turns are sweeping so you can take the corners at virtually any speed safely. There is only one part of the circuit where there is consistently a bit of a squeeze, a gentle left-right chicane on the backstretch and while the ideal line is maybe 2 bikes wide, a bunched field can go through this fairly safely.

It’s also pancake flat. This is a really nice feature for a weekly series for me as I don’t go uphill well. It’s also a nice feature as if I’m going out to a training race, I’m mostly interested in practicing racing. I’m not interested in hill repeats, I can do that by myself.

For these reasons, this is the best place to start racing bicycles on the road in the Lower Mainland.

So with the birth of Isaac, training is kind of taking a back seat a bit. While I’m getting in some hours, it’s almost exclusively commuting time which won’t really help out with any of the longer races this year.

So this year is going to be about criteriums, mostly the Thursday night races down in Richmond as the flat and non-technical circuit is pretty good for a sprinter in questionable form. Hopefully I’ll make a decent showing at the Tour of Delta, though with a thrice downgraded Cat 2 sprinter likely in the field, I have my work cut out for me. Rant on that topic forthcoming.

My sprinting isn’t quite what it should be at this time of year either, I’m down 10% or so in my 5 second power, so that’s kind of unfortunate. On the other hand, that’s just raw power and can be trained fairly easily. I’m going to have a harder time with the longer harder races.

Those haven’t gone well this year. Life getting in the way meant that I ended up having to miss a couple of the Spring Series races that were more suited to me. The two races I have contested this year have both ended up with me going off the back. The first, at the beautiful Atomic circuit only lasted about 15km. The second was closer to 70km before I was left by myself in offthebackistan.

Again though, limited training time means that I really can’t expect to have the fitness to be around in the finish of a 2-3 hour road race. Yeah, I’ll go with that. So, I will continue to work on the sprint, the threshold efforts to last for a 45 minute criterium and we’ll call this year a rebuilding year after the successes of last year.

My best season so far.

To Summarize:

• 1st Spring Series Murchie Road Race (C)
• 1st Devo Stage Race Criterium (C)
• 2nd Devo Stage Race Overall (C)
• 1st Random Coastal Thursday Nighter (B)
• 4th Random Coastal Thursday Nighter (A/B)
• Couple of other Top 5 (B)
• Several Primes (B)
• Upgrade to Category 3

Outside of the palmares though, there are some important observations I can make about how this season turned out.

I am a sprinter

This was known, I think. I did not properly appreciate it though. The powertap says I’m pushing 17.5 W/Kg for 5 seconds, 15.8 W/Kg at 10 seconds and about 11.4 W/Kg at 20 seconds. It falls off pretty hard from there, but it appears that that is enough of a jump to get a gap on the vast majority of Cat 3/4 racers around here.

Of note though, I need to be somewhat rested. If the pace ramps up, I can jump at the end, but if the race has a regular sustained high power section, my legs will be cooked long before the end. The Tour de White Rock and the WTNC out at UBC are examples of circuits that I have no real hope of ever sprinting at.

I can read races

This made me happy. I’ve kind of been a slow developer at this sport, which roughly translates into that I raced a lot before I ever saw the front end of a bike race. But now that I’m confident enough to get up there, I’ve been fairly decent at picking important breaks and when to make decisive moves.

My win in the Murchie Road Race came after watching a bunch of breaks come back due to the attacker sitting up, not the field speeding up. It was wet and cold and the field was sad and miserable. I attacked as a cross headwind turned to a cross tailwind then spent 20 minutes alone at the race average speed and didn’t get caught.

In two different races I correctly picked very serious and dangerous breaks and got into them. The first, the Devo Stage Race road race, I hung with the break until a couple of km to go, but stayed away. The second, in Delta, I burned far too many matches in my 1 lap chase to bridge across the 10-12 second gap and got dropped from the break after 4-5 more laps. That break wasn’t caught until 3 to go. Arguably, if I hadn’t been weak or was able to help longer, it might have stayed away.

Lots of times I attacked at the wrong time, followed the wrong wheel or just plain didn’t have the legs, but I felt that my ability to read the races has gotten to the point that I can call it a strength.

I’m not terrible at Time Trials

I’m not great at them either though. Ottawa’s regular TT series taught me how to ride a time trial, so despite not having a huge threshold or anything, I know how to suffer. I placed in the top third of the two TT’s I raced this year, both in stage races.