Athlete Blogs
March 22nd, 2009Race Report - City Park Crit M35+
Today was another beautiful day of racing in Salisbury, NC. The crit course was a really nice .9 mile loop in a park with a nice uphill finish and a couple of technical corners (more on those later).The strongest masters team in the area, carolina masters, had their whole team out, 5 or 6 guys as well as the usual strong group of masters guys. The race started fast of course, and the attacks started flying right away. I had no choice but to follow every single attack, because if I let anyone go up the road, they would be gone because the field was marking me so heavily. So I endured attack after attack from carolina masters, and a few other guys, to the point where I thought I was going to vomit! About 1/2 way through I went after an attack and we got a bit of separation, so I took some really hard pulls and we quickly established a break of 4 guys - 2 carolinas guys and one other dude. We were gone from the field really fast and it was obvoius the winner was coming from this group.
With a few laps to go, I attacked several times, but was brought back each time. I attacked pretty hard with one lap to go, and ripped into the one very technical turn as fast as I could - because I noticed I was gapping charlie brown (one of the strongest carolina's masters guys) every time through it. So i flew through the turn and behind me I hear a crash! Turns out charlie rolled a tubular - while I was sorry to see him crash(he was ok), rolling a tubular is absolutely unacceptable. I had one guy with me for the rest of the last lap, who I easily outsprinted in the end for the win.
Today's power numbers were among the best numbers I have seen in a race for the last 2 years - so these masters races can be every bit as hard, if not harder, than p1/2 and NRC races depending on how you race them. It also saved me from doing a power test this week because my peak 20 min power was right were I expected it to be - so I now and bumping up my FTP a bit. Solid.
Lastly - the tubular thing. No reason at all you should roll a tire. Never. Again, I'm sorry to see a good guy crash but that is totally avoidable. I'll post my tubular gluing process tomorrow, but suffice it to say I have 100% confidence in my gluing job and ability to fly through corners.
Now - time for more basketball! Woo-hoo.
