Monday, July 28, 2008

Pancake stage race TT & crit #24 & 25

There was quite a bit of confusion with the results from the road race due to the cameras not working. So what the officials had to do was make up the results as best they could. End result was that I was given 9th place points along with a dozen other riders.

Sunday, I got to registration early (I know that's a huge surprise, ha) to find out that the promoter had all sorts of problems the night before. Not only did has cameras not function, but the fuse in his laptop's power supply blew and couldn't find another power brick until early Sunday morning. That led to the time trial being delayed. I didn't know my starting position or time so I wanted to sit around the registration to make sure I didn't miss my time. Usually for a 12 mile tt, I want to warm up for 45-60 minutes. After all was said and done, I had about 5 minutes before I had to wait in a LONG que at the tt start. In a perfect world, I like to get to the start of a tt with my heart rate up. Well according to my power tap, my heart rate was 65 at the start! Within 50 seconds of the start it had ramped up to 182, where it should be for time trialling.

Everything was going great. I was averaging over 26 mph and cruising along until I hit a bad bump in the road and since I "ride on the rivet", the force of the bump caused my saddle to point down at a 45 degree angle. Shit. Luckily, I didn't crash as it sure scared the hell out of me. That happened at mile 8. I tried to pry it back up, and was somewhat successful but it would slip back down. The last 4.7 miles were wasted due to this. Pry, slide, pry, slide. Those final miles were horrible and I lost a ton of time. I actually felt it more in my arms than my legs due to trying to keep myself from falling off the seat. Those final 4.7 miles were around 21.8 average, making my overall average 23.7 well below what it should have been. I still finished 5th, but could have easily finished first had there not been issues.

A couple of hours later we had our crit. The course was 8 corners, but what made it bad was that 6 of them had either pot holes, manholes, busted pavement or a combination of all the above. Due to organizational issues, I had no idea where I stood in GC, but this course wasn't one that I felt real comfortable with. So I just sat in and that's about it. We averaged 23.5 in what felt like the slowest criterium ever. Finished easily with the field.

Guess what, camera issues again and point were handed out with everyone who finished outside of the top ten getting the same points. So basically, this omnium was almost a stage race, with bonus time (in points) based on placing. with everyone else getting "same time" points. That actually worked in my favor and led to my 6th overall placing.

Overall, I felt great and I owe this course something so it's definitely going to be on the calendar next year. Although I'm upset at the flat and the saddle issue, I'm happy with how everything else worked out. I was very aggressive in the road race, did as anticipated (for 67% of it) in the tt and hung on in the crit. Mechanical issues aside, the weekend turned out great so I can't be too whiny about it.

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