| Ride Stats |
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Distance:
31.50 miles
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Altitude Gain:
2,323 ft
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Avg Speed:
22.24 mph
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Route:
Tour de Loop
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Avg Grade: 0 %
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Max Grade: 0 %
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Max HR: 0 bpm
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Avg HR: 0 bpm
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Terrain: Road: Rolling
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Bike: Look 585 Carbon Road
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Club: Schuyler County Cycling Club |
| Weather Conditions: Sunny 78 F S wind @ 4 mph |
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Race today was an early one in Oswego starting at 08:30. Drive to it isn't too bad being well under two hours but still had to get up before first light to get to the site for registration and warmup. Hitting the generic Nuprins pretty hard to stay upright and they seem to lessen the discomfort from my sinus problems to keep me going. Probably dissolving my liver but I guess I'll worry about that later. Opted for the thirty mile course today with around 190 others. The fifty mile race only had eighteen entrants this year. Registration took awhile to get through as even though it was handled smoothly it takes a while with over two hundred people in line. Finally found a teammate as I finished my warmup. He hadn't done the race before and drove around Oswego awhile before finding the start. Gave him a run down of the course as we cruised around. Got to the starting line late and had over a hundred riders already ahead of us. Course starts out along the shore of Lake Ontario and runs flat for around two miles before starting a series of rollers. None of the rollers are that long or steep but there are probably ten or twelve good ones most being between a quarter to a mile long and maximum grades hovering around ten percent. Course requires alot of work if you are on the front but with a large pack you can draft and use the speed and mass of the pack to coast halfway up a majority of the climbs. First mile of the race is a controlled pace. I could see, as the peloton went around a bend, that three riders took off behind the pace car early. Couldn't see the front on the straights as my teammate and I were weaving our way through the throng of riders when holes opened up. Things went well until the first climb where there was a crash as usual. I missed out on it but my teammate was delayed by it and didn't see him for awhile. Started working forward on the second and third climbs of the day. Was next to another crash as a large rider lost it around one of the corners. Not sure whether he hit a wheel or caught some gravel but he went down hard and it looked painful. Made contact with my teammate again but lost him again as several riders including him ran through a large pothole. It is hard to miss potholes when riding shoulder to shoulder in a large pack as you don't get to see the road in front of you and if a rider swerves to miss one it risks taking the whole pack down. Stayed upright through the carnage that is the B race in Tour de Loop and finally saw daylight at the front of the pack near mile five or six. Two riders were already away when I got to the front. Not sure whether they were the same guys that had went hard earlier. No one seemed to want to chase them down so I went up and started pulling hard to bring them back. Didn't get much help though as the pack was content to sit on my wheel. Tried to bridge up to the two riders when the pack slowed but they were going too hard for me to risk going all out alone. Figured I couldn't bridge alone so I went back through the pack and was looking for some help from my teammate who was noticably absent at the front. Drifted all the way to the back and couldn't find him. Talked to a couple of people that had seem him dismount earlier. Seems he had pinched his tube and flatted when he had hit the pothole earlier. Rode back up through the pack and settled in the front third of the sixty rider pack. The pack just kept pace with the two flyers who maintained thier thirty second advantage as the rollers continued to go by. Actually felt good and was staying with the pack spinning in my small chainring. Not much happened until the last long climb when some a few of the riders got tired and near misses started to occur as riders would stand up to maintain the pace. Not sure again what caused it but a rider in a Radioshack jersey took a big swerve and fell over taking several riders with him. I had enough room to swing around the pile of bodies and used the adrenelin rush to work my way to the front of the pack. Saw one of the teams getting together for a run and got in on the tail end of thier line when they made thier move. Had good speed going up the hill and our small group was catching one of the flyers whose legs must have tired with the rest of the remaining pack in hot pursuit. Our small group slowed as it caught the slower rider in front and I made my move of the day by shifting into the big chainring and going around the rider and over the top of the climb alone. Looked at my odometer and saw I still had five miles to go and would have to ride hard to stay away. Did fairly well for awhile keeping the speeds in the low thirties and hoped the pack would lose interest in me and hope my legs would give out. Held on until the about a mile to the finish when the pack reeled me back in on the flat back to the start. Actually worked out okay for me as I was in good position for the final sprint and speed was high enough that people were just trying to hold position in the line. Ended up finishing fifth in the sprint and sixth overall as we never did catch the lone flyer and he had finished forty-five seconds up. Might have been able to do a position or two better but I got boxed in the last fifty meters. Was quite happy with the though as I rarely get a top ten finish in a large field sprint. Ended up winning a medal for first place in the fifty to fifty-four class. Also felt good when some of the riders who had chased me down said they had to bust a gut to catch me on my breakaway. My teammate had changed his tube and fought back to end up in the top seventy which was impressive.
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