Bring Your 25...And Your 11

I missed updating my last time trial here. I'll include it with my first real race since returning to the states. Because I didn't have a proper road bike to ride for the time trial, let alone a time trial bike, I did it on my cyclocross bike. Fortunately I felt better than last week. Unfortunately there was a strong headwind and a bunch of new people that showed up pushing way down to 16th place. I'm quite curious to see what I could do with all the time trial gadgetry. It doesn't look like that will happen because I'm not going to ride an hour each way to a time trial on carbon tubular wheels. It's just training.

I managed to build up a new road bike on Friday. I had 15 miles on the bike when I got to the race on Sunday. The race was just under 75 miles; that gives the bike 5 times as many race miles as training miles. And I'm not riding today, then hopefully doing a criterium on Tuesday and a time trial on Wednesday. It'll be a race only bike then.

The race was in Union Vale, NY, about 2 hours north of New York City. Last year I got 6th there in Category 3. I honestly didn't think I would last very long in the Pro/1/2/3 race there because of the course and some super strong riders in the field. Over the course of the entire race, there were 21 climbs that could figure significantly in the outcome, with the last one being about 1.5 miles and super steep to the finish. This is one of my favorite races. It's in a really beautiful setting.

I didn't feel great at the beginning because of the heat and humidity. It started raining about forty minutes into the race and it was a blessing. I started cooling down and feeling a lot better.

I found myself going to my personal Belgian place a bunch of times. That's where I bury myself to keep good position, attack or bridge across because I know once I get there I'll have a minute to rest once I've got the position I want. I didn't realize it would help me climb so well. I would kill myself to pass guys that were struggling, bridge to the guys at the front and at a couple of points, bridge to attacks. My plan was just to sit in as much as possible and I did that. I wouldn't really go on the attack by myself.

Shiri did a great job in the feed zone. She also had funny stories about the people there. I'm happy I missed it. She was certainly the most pregnant person in the feed zone.

Early on in the race somebody from the Empire Cycling Team attacked and opened a big gap; at its max it was over two minutes. Target Training had 6 guys in the race and they couldn't decide on the tactic to chase him. They would pull for a while, then attack and try to bridge, then sit up for a bit, then repeat. Unfortunately for the break away rider, he flatted and that opened up the field to more aggressive attacking.

This is when I broke. On the 19th climb of the day I started cramping and couldn't keep pace with the winning attack. Little did I know that behind me the field was shattered. I went up the 20th climb pretty slowly compared to early to not cramp but not lose too much time. I hit the final climb and really suffered. That climb is really, really hard, especially at the end of a race. I got 11th place; the race paid 10 deep. A bit more effort and I would have been there. Had I known maybe I would have had a little bit more in me to dig deeper but at the time it didn't feel like it.

To fully compare this to Belgium, the race was about the same distance but it was almost an hour longer. The difference was clearly the climbs. We started the race just by rolling out. It took a bit until we started going fast; the mentality is totally different. It seems like a different kind of hard.