Bikes and Code

Habits. Important things they are.

The cycling season is going pretty well if I do say so myself. I’ve done a grand total of 8 races as of now this season, which pretty close to matches my lifetime road race total. I’ve even actually placed in a couple of the races, which was pretty much unheard of for me in the past. My goals for this year is to win a race and I can certainly see that happening.

I ended up only doing one other race in the EV Spring Series, the Bradner Road race. Held on a hilly course, it was relatively tough, but ended up being a rather uneventful race. Anything remotely resembling an attack was quickly chased down. I made one go at it about halfway through the race, but after about 2km out front with a small group it was clear that it wasn’t going anywhere. I attacked on the last climb, was out front for about 1km and was passed by the pack with less than 200m to go. Ah well.

The Campbell Heights cat 5 road race ended up being the fastest race I had been in to date with an average speed of just over 39km/h for somewhat over 50km. Not much to note there other than I made it up the 184th avenue climb and only got spat out the back on the last ascent. Caught up before the next climb and finished 11th in the bunch.

My Thursday nights have been spent in Richmond, with the Team Coastal Cycling criterium series. These are massively fun little races. Short, cat 5 is only something like 15km, but pretty intense. The circuit has wide, shallow corners, so it’s nice and safe and the cat 5 guys all seem pretty relaxed, which is nice. I’ve had two pack finishes in this series, one 4th and a 2nd.

The fourth came in my first real attempt at a sprint finish and the 2nd came out of a two man breakaway with 2.5 laps to go. Lost that race by something like a foot. Still though, it basically means that this year I have finished with the pack or in the break with every race I have done. The only race I haven’t finished is one where I crashed and that was when I was sitting in 10th in a large field going into an important corner.

In other words, I think my positioning is decent as are the legs, so I’m pretty happy. Going for the win is my next goal, then just attacking and attacking until the season is done. Hopefully I’ll find a team for next year and then up to category 4!

The road race season starts much earlier on the west coast. March 15th is this year’s first real road race and this is two weeks earlier than last year’s race. The race series is put on by these guys and from what I’ve been able to gather from exactly one race, appears to be well run.

The first race of the year was a flat, four corner circuit race weighing in at about 6.3km per lap. 9 laps in total for a grand total of  just under 57km of racing for my category, the lowly ‘C’. I had actually been somewhat worried about this as I haven’t been able to get much riding in yet this year, so I was definitely relying on riding intelligently as much as any semblance of strength that I actually had. My main goal was to see how fast the thing was and sit in for the first half of the race. After about halfway if things were going well, I was going to try to get to the front, see if I could get into a break for at least a little while, then attempt to have a good last few km. I also intended to not crash and stay away from anything remotely resembling a sprint.

The day started off cold. It got colder and rainier. It actually started snowing just as my race finished, so that about sums up the environment. It wasn’t a drizzle either, it was a driving rain, I was completely soaked. That said though, I was riding with enough effort that I wasn’t cold until after the race was over, though I wouldn’t have enjoyed an extra couple of laps.

My race was punctuated with two particularly hard efforts that were worth noting, but other than that, I probably took it a bit easier than I should have. The first one was roughly on lap 4, two guys went down just in front of me and basically brought me to a complete stop. At that point it was chase time, which is never fun. It was pretty chaotic getting back on with lots of single riders stretched out. Unfortunately by the time I caught most of the people trying to catch up, they had blown and I wasn’t able to help them at all. I eased up slightly as I overtook each rider trying to let them latch on, but once I had a gap, I figured it was more important to get back on the back.  The chase took me about a quarter of a lap and I didn’t really let up until I was in the front half of the pack so I could relax a bit more. 

The second ‘major’, quoted for reasons that will become clear, effort was with approximately three laps to go. Two guys had gone off the front and had a bit of a gap. I probably went too early, but I felt that a break might be kind of fun. I jumped across and was followed by about three other riders. So there were five of us up there and we were pretty quickly reeled in by the group. Nothing was getting away, probably because none of us is fast… Anyhow, my turn on the front came around and before I knew it I had about a 20m gap, which was not where I wanted to be with 18km or so to go. A bit far for me to go it alone. I kept the pressure up for a bit, viewing this as a chance for a bit of a harder effort for some fitness but I never committed. 

The last couple of laps were pretty uneventful for me. I sat in the pack, tried to move up a couple of times but messed up. I put in a hard last kilometer and while staying out of the real sprint kept in touch with the leaders and came across in 20th or so I think. All in all, pretty solid considering I was very worried about being shelled in the first few minutes.

Lessons learned? Next race I’m going to spend more effort trying to get into a break and keep it going. The racing seems to be of  a ‘chase it all down’ variety. Since we’re all pretty weak, a ‘counter attack’ wasn’t going to happen, though I could see it being an effective tactic. So that’s my goal next week. And if that completely fails? Fabian from 5km to go.

The biking season in Ottawa is pretty much finished for those of us fair weather cyclists. There will be a a final ‘cross race this weekend at Mooney’s Bay and that will be it for me. It’s time to wind down a bit, take some time off the bike and get ready for next year.

I’ve been on the bike about three times since the last race, all inside on the trainer. While riding on the trainer isn’t too terrible, it does get old fast. Still though, it only generally takes me a week or two without riding before I’m feeling that I need to get back in the saddle. I find that planning out the next season during period of low intensity or no intensity is often the best time. Energy is up, I’ve forgotten the pain of training and am only looking forward to the next set of races.

Next season is going to be a different one for me. Hillary and I will be moving to Vancouver in the next couple of months, so I am going to have to find entirely new series of races to keep me busy. My long term goal is to do the BC Bike Race in 2010, so next year is going to be my return to mountain biking to start getting ready for it. It sounds like my season is going to start out with The Salty Dog and, if I can get myself registered (sells out quickly I am told), the Test of Metal. It will be fun to get back into mountain biking more seriously again. My technical skills will be pretty rusty I think, but I’m hoping those will come back as the season progresses.

I’ve already been told that I will have to spend a weekend or two in the Rossland area and ride the Seven Summits as well as several other trails in the area that are best described as epic.

I’m fairly excited about road racing as well. There is a pretty impressive March series of road races put on by Team Escape Velocity that I’m planning on doing my best to attend most of. That and I fully intend on riding several of the major mountain passes that I did in 2007 in the cross Canada trip again. Hope-Princeton is definitely a doable ride and if I can talk some people into it, there are lots of good day trips in and around the Okanagan.