Weekend totals:
Prologue: 12 or 14th
RR: 3rd
TT: 10th
Crit: 11th
Saturday's recovery food: Chipotle Burrito, reduced fat coffee cake from Starbucks, King sized Twix, Reeses McFlurry, 1/2 bag of Goldfish, 3/4 of a 14 inch pizza.
Chipotle weekend double up: Success
Highlight: Seeing a bowling alley bachelorette party at the opulent Hagerstown Lanes.
Education lessons on wide-ons during the road race: 1, but thorough.
I wasn't going to do this race, but decided to last minute in a caffeine-induced "I-can-conquer-the-world-through-my-neverending-efficiency" moment. Got a super tri dork TT setup going thanks to the advice from some of the wonderful staff at Cyclelife, rented an 808/404 combo, and booked a seedy hotel room in lovely Hagerstown.
Saturday's prologue was a interesting to say the least- mainly due to my lack of foresight. I was literally the first person to go off in the entire race, but forgot to include getting my number, the half dozen trips to the porta-jon, driving too and from Dunkin' Donuts, pinning my number on, pumping up my tires, warming up, and then rolling to the start in the equation. I ended up eating my lovely DD muffins at about 7:15 and scrambled to get ready. I got what seemed to be a decent warm up. I only had one real training ride on the TT setup (which consisted of a 70mm -28 degree stem slammed to the headtube, some clip ons, an Adamo saddle mounted to a 15mm setback post that had been flipped around, and brand new Speedplay pedals. It was hard to get the saddle setup right, so my second session of the week consisted of riding it on the trainer while watching myself on a webcam to see if it kinda looked right. That's pretty much the depth of my pre-Tour TT training.
My warm up was short, but I got to ride the entire course. I overcooked it right off the gun and the massive amount of coffee had my Garmin reading an average power of 507 watts for the first minute, which would have been great if that was my actual 10 minute output, but its not. Not even close. This caused some discomfort, but I regained myself only to lose time on the turns due to a lack of confidence with turning on the new setup. My pacing was a bit bad as was my gear selection because the different position had me pedaling with a much higher cadence than my preferred 80RPM average.
I ended up getting 12th or 14th about a minute off the leader, which was great considering the fact that I threw up in my mouth on the second to last hill.
The road race course was pretty fun and pretty easy. I made it a point to get to the front and I never left the top 10. Some people got mad that I wasn't willing to do almost any work, but why would I considering that I was teammate-less and not worried about letting random attacks going. It basically made it so that I had about 3 actual teams of riders doing tons of work for me and sacrificing themselves for my well-planned wheel sucking. I had made a commitment to try and get the lowest average power I possibly could and achieved a season average low of 264 watts.
The race went like races at this level usually go. The weather was nice and I made it a point to alert riders that I was approaching to their 'side-boob' and put on a smile as much as I could. This is supposed to be fun right? The climbs were easy and I was told that there were two crashes behind me as well as an epic FAIL of a crash on the one kinda steep hill in which a rider managed to take out a large chunk of the peloton by shifting the wrong shift lever and accidentally dropping into his small ring. The normal finishing swarm was extra sketchy since many of the riders seemed content to just roll in with no effort. I felt good so I wanted to go for it for once, but I was temporarily foiled by another rider who pulled an Andy Schleck and dropped his change. I darted through a gap as he and the rider next to him tangled a bit and bridge the short gap to the group that was going for the sprint win. I never really got a leadout and came up the right side to get 3rd place, missing out on first by a second and a few wheel lengths. I'm very happy with the result since I really wasn't focusing on this race, but wonder what could have happened had some people shifted correctly.
I was careful to get to the TT on time the next day and managed to borrow a disc and 808 front from a teammate. I got a short, but suitable warm up in and felt good and knew that I had to put out a good effort since I was now sitting 8th on the GC about 45 seconds down. I decided to only go with one muffin due to my episode the day before and went about my way. I was told that I should conserve on the portion out and drill it on the way back, which wasn't as good of a plan in hindsight. I was about 10% lower in power than my 20 minute best and I felt really good and the hills were absolutely no problem. The guy 30 seconds behind me caught up to me on the way out so I played some mind games with him by getting behind him and then letting him hear the disc echo as I shifted down 4 cogs and put 20 seconds into him. Caught my 30 second guy, some other riders, and got my one minute guy at the finish. Oh yah, the random woman with the stopwatch was not the finish checker, so I lost a bunch by soft pedaling for about 500m.
I ended up getting 10th in the TT, bout 30 seconds off the winner. My average power was 20 watts off my best and what I was capable of so I left a lot on the proverbial table. You don't get points for winning the time trial, but it would have been nice to start front row in the crit.
The crit was fun and getting clipped in on the first try is fantastic. Got to the front and made sure to stay in the top 10 just like yesterday. Got in what looked to be a promising mid race break only to have the rider in the middle completely wash out in front of me. A C3 rider went down right behind me on the over 90 degree turn and then later right next to me on the straight, but I swear that I had nothing to do with his unfortunate luck.
The downhill was super sketchy with the potholes and the wonderful crack that caught my wheel several times during the turn. Came into the final turn sitting about 10th wheel, stood up to sprint home and immediately cramped up. Rolled across the line 11th with one foot unclipped for the last 200 meters with the worst quad cramp I have ever had.
Overall it was a fun weekend and I learned a lot and felt that I was able to finally avoid total noob mistakes such as not being able to get clipped into my pedal on the first try or riding in a place that would cause me to become victim to the accordion effect.
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