Athlete Blogs
August 8th, 2009Crossroads Crit and yet another electronic component to the bike
First, I have added yet another electronic gizmo to my bike. Now my bike has 5 items with batteries:1. Di2 battery
2. Powermeter crank battery
3. Powermeter computer battery
4. Rear blinkie light battery
5. 1500 lumen, 23w Lupine Betty Light battery
I'm wired up like the terminator now. Fun stuff. That lupine light is amazing, obvious super high quality german engineering and just bright as all can be. Bring on the early AM rides.
I raced one of the crossroads crits today, a M35+ crit near charlotte. This series has been going on since tuesday, races every night, with some pretty big fields and very strong masters guys. Many of these guys go on to win the p1/2 races later in the day. IN almost every compairsion, my power has been higher by a long shot in the masters races vs p1/2 races - with the exception of the really really hard NRC races.
Today was the last race in the series, and it was a really close omnium between charlie brown and some super fast sprinter dude from the midwest. Charlie needed to beat him by 1 place today to take the overall, so I agreed to help him out if I could. I got a really solid warmup, 35 min, 500kj, so hit the line HOT. I attacked from lap 1, charlie and I drilled it and basically rode everyone off our wheel, flying through these turns (really technical short course) and going balls out. First 5 min was 410w average with a bunch of no-pedal turns. One guy came with us and we quickly took off, putting 5 to 8 seconds per lap into the field. Both guys agreed early on not to sprint if I would work, so we all traded pulls, I did a bunch of work and we lapped the field.
As we lapped the field, there was one guy, Ryan, off the front of the field about 1/2 lap behind us - and I couldn't have him joining us on the lead lap, so I went to the front and rode a hard tempo for a good while, 15 min or so, to ensure he didn't. The course was wide open, and we could see each other the whole way, like a pursiut. Fun stuff. Came to the finish nice and safe, clean win. There were several crashes but thankfully no one was hurt too bad.
It was nice to come back to racing after a bit of a break and pickup a nice win, not a lucky last corner move but a strong hard effort.
Tommorrow is Hanes park in Winston Salem, our team race, and finishes right in front of Mock Orange racing.
Cheers,
Pete
