Stage III. San Dimas Stage Race

Stage 3 was the downtown crit. The course had six turns including a sketchy left hand turn with a huge dip through the gutter. There was a four block climb that was enough to make the legs burn followed by a fast five block descent leading into the last turn before the finish line. After holding my lead in the road race, the GC classification would come down to this race, and I can’t emphasize enough that I owe the GC win to my teammates. Without them, I would not have held the lead. Again, from the beginning, PAA set a quick pace. I pulled for the first lap and Rafael pulled the second lap. After that, people started to move around and the pace remained high. In fact, the average speed for the race was over 31 mph. Some of the PAA V’s commented that this was the fastest crit they had ridden in. There was a one man break early in the race, but we worked to reel him in after a lap or two. Jason won the intermediate sprint with Lyle on his heels in third. Fortunately for me, they were able to hold of 530, who also went for the sprint. The remaining laps were fast as well. With four laps to go, a teammate of 530 (both were riding for Covina Valley) moved in front of me on the wheel of his teammate. This made me pretty nervous, as I was not feeling as fresh I had wished. I hung close until one lap to go when 530 passed the few people in front of him to get out front. Fortunately, Lyle and Jason also moved up past me to the front, because I no longer had the legs to defend my position. Coming through the downhill and into the final turn, 530 was out front and Lyle and Jason were close behind. I was back in 15th or so, watching all of this unfold and feeling helpless. The sprint started and at the line Jason came through first winning the stage! 530 finished 3rd, gaining a 6 second time bonus, but not enough to put him in front! As I said, I owe my GC win to my teammates!
Overall, we had a great race and worked well as a team. I certainly owe them all a great deal. Said and done, PAA (my non-collegiate team) won all three stages and had three riders in the top 5. We also won the yellow and green jerseys, and finished second in the KOM competition. I have included a couple pics Banner (I think) took. Thanks again to all the PAA V’s for helping me maintain the overall GC. I had a great time and look forward to racing with you all again.

Stage II: San Dimas Stage Race

Well, today was another successful day for me at the San Dimas Stage. With much thanks to my PAA/Merrill Lynch teammates I was to win the stage and maintain the overall leaders jersey. My teammates set a quick pace almost immediately and the race never slowed down. They also took the first two positions in both of the intermediate sprint laps to keep others from gaining the time bonuses. I spent the whole race keeping an eye on (and holding the wheel of) the second place rider (only 6 seconds back from me at the beginning of the stage). The pack mostly stayed together until the last climb (a moderately steep 200 ft ascent over a half of a mile or so) when the second place rider attacked HARD! I was a few bike lengths back when I saw him start to move up. He started passing riders at the bottom of the hill and I started cranking as hard as I could to stay with him. We pretty quickly dropped the pack as he set a blistering pace up the hill. I held his wheel to the top and down the fastest descent of the race. As we came into the flat section leading to the finish I held his wheel and let him do all the work. With 100yrd or to go, he tried to sprint, but I was pretty fresh as I had had the opportunity to recover from the climb while he was still pulling, and I out sprinted him for the stage win. The race was great fun and I am looking forward to the crit tomorrow! Hopefully there won't be any accidents. Until the....

Stage I: San Dimas Stage Race

Today was a successful day for me in my first ever USCF road race (and hence first stage race). Todays stage was a 3.8 mile hill climb time trial up Glendora Mountain Road. The first three quarters of a mile of the course was sort of flat but after that it was pretty much a continuous climb. I started at 9:11 am and the course took me 15:37 to ride. I passed 5 or 6 riders on the way up to win the Mens Cat 5 stage by only 6 seconds! Third place was over a minute back (I don't remember the exact time). I now have to wear the leaders jersey in tomorrow's stage and am a marked man. Fortunately, I have a good team who I hope will help me keep the jersey. I know one thing for sure. Tomorrow is going to make for an interesting stage. I'll post again on the results of tomorrows road race.

UCSB Race Weekend Pt. 2

Before I give my own (brief) take on last weekend's racing at UCSB, congrats to John on his great result in the RR -- and best wishes to Will for a speedy recovery.

Anyway, the C crit was pretty uneventful for me from a "results" standpoint, but I was pretty pleased with my own performance. I'm used to getting dropped pretty early into crits, which means that I still haven't yet finished one. However, I felt relatively strong in this race, and I was able to ride in the pack for about 16 laps before getting dropped -- everyone put the hammer down for the prime (sprint) laps, and by the time the second prime came around, I couldn't hang on. It was a great experience though, and nice to finally ride a crit in the pack for a while! One interesting story about the crit, though: it was held on a beautiful, flat course in the Isla Vista shopping district, with only two turns. For some reason, though, someone decided it would be a good idea to clear the road of debris -- by hosing it down with water! (Apparently, nobody realized that wet roads and crits don't mix well.)

The C road race was also a good deal of fun, despite the fact that I finished quite a bit down. The first lap was particularly amusing, since there was a very strong headwind, and while the people at the front were working hard to fight it, the rest of the peloton was supremely bored with the 13 mph pace. Basically, we spent a good twenty minutes talking about our Oscar picks (which we hoped we'd get home in time to watch), making fun of the people in the front, and yelling "slowing!" about every five seconds. Finally, the pace picked up as we got to the final climb, and I got dropped. I spent the rest of the race working together with a couple other dropped riders, which kept things a lot less boring than they would have been soloing off the back. In one final bit of drama, one course marshal abandoned his post on the final lap, and I ended up missing a turn and going off course! When I realized my mistake, I had to chase back hard to my remaining companion (who slowed up, fortunately), which took about 10 minutes of very hard effort. I finished about 10 minutes behind the peloton, fortunately missing the crash that ensued at their finish.

One final bizarre anecdote: as John mentioned, the feed zone was an absolute disaster. For some reason, they decided to place the feed zone on a narrow passageway right after a long descent, when everyone was going 30-35 mph. As I was passing bottles up to John and Morgan, another rider flubbed his bottle handoff and sent a full bottle of water rocketing into my shin at 30 mph. Needless to say, my leg is still somewhat rainbow colored from that one. :)

Cal Poly Pomona Race Weekend

Since the last race report was so late, I’ll write this one now while the details are still fresh in my memory (and I am trying to avoid writing my candidacy report). The hill climb time trial yesterday was supposed to be a 5.5 mile climb up the “backside” of Glemdora Mountain Road (from where GMR intersects East Fork up to Glendora Ridge Road) but was shortened to 3.5 miles because of the weather. I was one of the first to register so I went of at 11:05 after a good warm up in the rain. I got my heart rate up right away and held it between 184-189 for the duration of the climb. I caught the rider in front of me at mile 1.5, and finished 10 seconds behind the rider in front of him. The climb was painful, but lots of fun. I didn’t even notice the weather on the way up. It was snowing at the top and I felt like I should be skiing instead of cycling. On the way down, a rider from UC Santa Cruz was nice enough to give some newspaper they had stashed. The descent was far and away the coldest and wettest I have ever been on a bike. We descended through the snow, then the sleet, and finally the rain. I was completely soaked by the bottom and couldn’t feel my fingers, toes, lips, etc. I took my shoes off and there was standing water in the soles. I clocked myself at just under 15 minutes, although the official results say I did it in 13:53, which I don’t buy as that would have been the second fastest time of the day. I talked to the officials, so we’ll see if they check the results. They told me that they had adjusted the times because a couple riders were assigned the same start time, and I’m curious how that affected who’s results.

The crit today was uneventful. The course was in a parking lot on the Cal Poly Pomona campus and had two long straight aways with two 180 degree semi-sweeping turns. One turn wasn’t bad but the other required significant slowing. Fortunately, only one rider slid out and quickly got back up. There was a three man break on the first lap, which ultimately ended up staying away. I got out front with 17 laps to go and pulled hard for 4 or 5 laps to try to motivate a chase, but everyone else just let me pull until a prime lap when I got passed by a few riders. Another rider broke of the front around 8 laps to go. A couple laps later I got out front and reeled back in the lone UCSB rider. I was still out With one and a half to go, I was still out front and slowed to catch my breath. I had told a UC Irvine rider I would lead out for him, as I didn’t really care about the results of today’s race. (I needed the race to move out of cat V by Sea Otter.) Going into the back stretch I started pulling hard with the Irvine rider right on my wheel. I didn’t control the turn leading into the home stretch very well and riders started to line up for the sprint. Five riders sprinted by me and the guy from Irvine finished somewhere with them. I could have done a better job at leading out as I didn’t get out of his way fast enough, but I had a good time and finished around 9th or so, with one of the riders in the early break winning.

Next weekend is the San Dimas Stage Race (my first USCF race, and my first Stage Race.) Friday is a hill climb up GMR (the front side); Saturday is a road race around Bonelli Park; and Sunday is a Crit in downtown San Dimas. I would highly encourage all who are interested to come and watch. There will be some pro teams, including Healthnet, Navigators, Kodak, and Toyota-United Pro, not to mention many other local riders and some other racers from Caltech including Peter Meinhold and Ben Deverman.

I hope to see some of you there! Check out www.scvelo.com for details and results.

UCSB Race Weekend

I realize that this report is a little late, and I apologize for that. It took a while for them to post the official results. The UCSB race weekend was both exciting and somewhat tragic, so let me get the tragic part out of the way. During the Men's A crit on saturday, Will Sladek (who had just upgraded to Cat 2) went down on the last lap. He broke his collar bone, ended up with stitches above his right eye, and had some serious road rash. But, he took the whole incident in style, and never let a frown cross his face; even while the paramedics where cleaning the dirt out of his wounds. So, please send your support to Will and wish him quick healing.

And now for the races. The mens B crit on saturday was unefentful for me, although it was the largest field I have ridden to date (69 riders). There were continuous attacks off the front and the pace was quick. Not being a great crit ridder, I sat in the main group for most of the race. With four laps to go, there was a big crash in front of me that took out around 20 ridders. I nearly missed it and had to chase hard for a little over a lap to catch the main field. At that point, I really didn't feel like going out for the sprint and finished in some position greater than 23rd (which is as high as the results go). My guess is 35th or so.

The road race was much more fun. We did six 11 mile laps. The course was mostly flat with one short steep climb near the beginning and one ~.5 mile climb before the final 2 miles descent into the finish. The worst part of the whole things was the feed zone. Ari had agreed to feed Morgan and I on the first 3 laps. No one took anything on the first lap, and I missed the handoff on the second lap after the rider in front of me braked a little hard and I almost hit him. I got the feed on the the third lap, and made it the rest of the race with what I had. The past road races have started slowly with no one to anxious to work on the first lap. This time, however, the pace was quick from the get-go, and there was a small break on the first lap. I spent the three laps moving around in the peloton and the break dangled a couple hundred yards in front. Halfway through the fourth lap a number of riders had bridged to the break, which was not at around 8 riders. I decided that it was becoming a threat and quickly made the bridge. Apparently, the peloton became interested at this point, and caught us about 2 minutes after I caught the break. All together now, we rode the fifth lap without any attacks. The sixth lap was quiet as well, until the final climb. I had earlier decided that this was where I was going to attack, but a Stanford rider had the same idea and attacked hard. I wasn't quite up fron, but when he went, I charged with him. Suprisingly, no one else went with us! We climbed the hill at a fast pace (my hear rate spent the rest of the race between 183 and 193) and by the time I looked back I couldn't see any other riders. We worked together to put as much distance between us and anyone who was chasing and never got caught. There was a chase group of about 15 riders, but they weren't much of a threat by the time the got organized. Coming up on the 1K mark, the Stanford rider was behind me and quit working with me. I should have thought more about tactics at this point and started swerving (which occured to me after the race) but I was more concearned with not getting caught (which in retrospect wasn't going to happen at this point) I pulled hard to the line and got out sprinted by a couple bike lengths. So, I had a great race and finished second. Morgan had a great race as well and finished right behind the chase group around 25th place. I'll let Ari comment on the Men's C race, so that's all for now.