Well, that went well

This past weekend was the Capitol Stage Race. Clearly, the race organizers had designed it especially for guys like me. There were long road races, no epic climbs, a very short time trial and the event was low-profile enough to keep the Canadians and other hot-shot racers away. Also, it was close to Tacoma which made lodging at Hotel Karly an option.

Thursday

I trained it up on Thursday afternoon just in time to join a ladies night Fight Club where the dudes of us hammered it off to Steilacoom and back. I may have exerted myself a bit too much, but it was fun to go on a fight club ride again.

Friday

I headed out to the boonies of Olympia for stage 1: a 70 mile road race. It was an interesting course: one decent puncher and then a whole lot of flat or false flats. Some breaks were breaking away, but none sticking. That is not until the final lap (each lap is 10 miles) when a bunch of us finally got it together and ended up putting a minute on the field. In the sprint, it was really only a 3 person sprint since two guys were just in it for GC. So I ended up picking the best and winning wheel, but just didn't have the last bit to get around it. Still though, a 2nd place finish was great.

Also, I got to meet another fellow racer that also blogs about his adventures over at the Billy Goat Chronicles. Sean was a real nice dude, I've raced with him a few times and now he's riding with the 2s, which is nice because that's one less threat in the 3s field for me! He also produced some water (that I begged for due to being unprepared) from his RACESHIP!! I don't know what all else is inside there (trauma center? rocket boosters?), but holy smokes this is the proper way to roll to a bike race.



Saturday

The morning had a time trial which had the start times change twice. Once from the original tech guide, then again from the times posted online last night. I ended up warming up a half-hour early. Still though, I went out there and rode hard on my bike equipped with a front Zipp wheel that Scott let me borrow. Thanks! I ended up getting 20th, but only losing 40 seconds in GC holding it solidly in 5th place.

I hung out with an Olympia friend and killed some time before the crit. I was warming up on the crit course and was a bit scared for a little bit because they had stopped the warmups earlier than I had expected and thus I wasn't right on the line at the start. Lucky for me though, there were call-ups for the top 5 in GC. The race seemed to be going really well for me - I got a time prime and was generally staying at the front. But then I just started losing wheels and didn't make a good enough effort to get back so I ended up off the back in the field sprint.

However, I did fare better than two other GC leaders. The race leader got dropped! Within the first few laps! And then 4th place in GC crashed hard on the final sprint. He'll be all right, but that still sucks.

Sunday

Now before we get into the racing, I made it over to Dean Burke's neighborhood breakfast. I had some delicious eggs and hashbrowns, saw some friends and chilled out. Thanks! That was nice.

OK, on to racing!

Today was the day to make it or break it in the stage. It was a 90 mile race of mostly flat, but then some hills in two other popular courses in the area. Olympia Ortho now had the GC leader so a whole lot of protecting that leader was to be expected. The second guy in GC was 2 seconds behind and then there was me 20 seconds back followed by 4th place at 34 seconds back.

We had a smaller field than before and also the pro/1/2 women were riding with us. I have to say, these women were stealing my nice wheels like pros! Did they know who I was? Anywho, basically nothing happened and the pace was super easy, like zone 2 easy. With all the protection and inability of enough serious to stick, I knew that I had to try to make the field crack on the hills. At a little past the halfway point, there was a decent hill. A climber dude broke off hard from the field. I almost went with him, but had to feed at that point. Once we got to the top I noticed that Olympia had lost it's support and since the medium break wasn't doing anything they caught right back on.

Olympia was having a blast of a race. Right after the feed one of their guys was taunting others. He had two cages and tri cages for a total of 4 water bottles. He asked some guys "hey anybody want some water?" and then he proceeded to dump it out on the road as we were racing. I thought it was hilarious. However, they got their share of pain since hillclimber dude had put two minutes on the field, so the water-dumping taunter then had to bust his nuts to chase down hillclimber dude which he eventually did.

I was waiting for the next series of hills at about the 75 and 85 mile mark and they weren't long enough! The second to last hill, about 8 of us broke off, but then the field got it back together. The last chance of the race was the final hill where 5 of us got away with a good margin from the field. Unfortunately it was the GC leader, 2nd place, me, 4th place in GC and 7th place in GC that were in this break. So of course every one of us except for the GC leader wanted to gap the rest of us in the 4 miles to the finish. It was attack and cat and mouse and attack and cat and mouse and then the chase group swallowed us up since we weren't cooperating with each other at all. Someone from the chase won the sprint so GC didn't change.

Kudos to Olympia for playing all your cards right and winning on your home turf. Well done. So I ended up 3rd overall. I concluded that I could have played it better by having a $5,000 time trial bike since I was only 20 seconds back in GC. And with my performance this weekend I may or may not be close to having points to upgrade to the 2s. But I don't want to know if I do yet. I don't want to do Elkhorn as a 2 just yet.

On the way home, I had a crappy recovery as in not eating a crap-ton of food. I only had some bars and a measly plate of pasta. As I'm writing this, I'm eating another batch of pasta at 1am and I think it's not going to be enough either.