Athlete Blogs
March 8th, 2009BMW test track crit, M35+ report
Today we raced at the BMW test track in Greer, SC. First time for me, nice course. It is wide open, oval with two long straightaways and two short corners. Nice and windy today, but it was a dead on headwind/tailwind which was PERFECT for the 1080s. The wheels that take no prisoners, especially in the wind.I felt ok today, really looking for a hard race, good training, and fun, results second - this is a training series after all and not the national champs. My race was short, 45 min, so I got a solid warmup: 20 min easy, 10 min tempo, 5:00 at 100 to 105% then roll to the line. As I was doing that 5:00 effort I blasted by a large group of guys so fast they were still talking about it at the line. I wasn't trying to intimidate them, really, but when you fly by at 32mph with the whoosh - whoosh of the 1080s it's hard not to look bad ass.
The race had all the fast guys from yesterday - that is a handful of former and current national champs, world champ, etc - good guys. Attacks started from the get go and w/in the first 5 or 10 minutes I attacked with an effort that forced a break, big at first, then down to maybe 8 guys. We got away, and then spend about 30 minutes out on our own. All the top guys in the overall were there, and it was a serious game of cat and mouse. We'd pull steady - then attack, sit up, attack, etc. At one point I got ridden off the back of the break with the top 2 guys in the overall - almost getting dropped from the break! It was funny because if I hadn't made the move to bridge back up to the break, I'm sure that would have been it!
The last 10 laps were punctuated by attacks, chases, all kinds of fun. I focused on working really hard, tried to go with a few to go but they weren't having any of that - and ended up 6th in the sprint. Soon I will start working on my sprint power and sub 5 min power and really hope for that to improve.
Bottom line it was tons of fun with a great bunch of guys and I am looking forward to racing again in two weeks.
Wheel notes - even with 20+mph winds, the 1080s were money. I litterally felt like I was taking flight as we rounded the turn going from headwind to tailwind. We went from 350w at 17mph to 350w at 32mph. Crazy winds - but I love going big.
the weather? Fantastic of course.
Cheers,
Coach Pete
