"Where The Hell Is Boulevard?"

Saw this on a bumper sticker on the way up to the road race on Saturday. I've got to say it was a really good time. Definitely happy I stuck with it, showed up and raced hard even though there were about a million excuses I was coming up with to not go. I suppose some apprehension was understandable given I had never raced that style before and had no idea what to expect and also no strategic experience except from watching Versus. Doing is a lot harder than watching, but you got to start somewhere.

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My race preparation started on Friday, finetuning my ride with some quick and easy equipment upgrades. I headed up to B+L to pick up some Ultra lite tubes and tires. I threw them on my Velocity Aeroheads and was stoked to have some kind of weight advantage since I wasn't going to ride my ZIPP combo 404/808. It took much longer than expected and missed out on the talk with Conrad Stoltz. I just had to make sure my bike was safe and race ready. I still had to see the mechanic on race morning.

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I woke up to clear skies and no wind and headed east to watch the weather deteriorate. Driving up into the only clouds in the sky. It was 37 degrees, light breeze but cloudy which gave little chance for warming. At least everybody was freezing while fumbling through paperwork at check-in.

Loving the weather.

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My warmup was cut short to 25 minutes after I found a loose rear hub. Got it fixed and just made the rollout at 9:40. It had warmed to maybe 43 degrees by then but I was stoked to have a good choice of technical gear. I was towards the back (because I was late) but soon found myself in the back of the pack, like no one behind me. Knowing that wasn't good I made my way carefully about a third of the way up during the first descent. There were some sketchy riders, sure, but the highlight was when some cracksmoker hillbilly jumped in the middle of the road and started waving his arms trying to hit people off their bikes. The field skidded to a stop and I got a look in the iceman's eyes. SCARY! He looke like a zombie staggering around flailing his arms. We continuted with the descent and it was a lot mellower than I expected with the pacesetters taking it easy. Just a few more dogs down the road. There were some accelerations after turning uphill into some rollers. I was in a bad spot to stay with the lead group. I had to pick my way through the dropped riders trying not to do too much work on my own. I was starting to hurt and hadn't made it to the main six mile climb. Luckily the wind was at our backs on the climb and I could settle into a rhythm without worrying too much about sucking any wheels. My steady state training helped me to pass quite a few riders on the first climb and I was feeling strong.

First climb. 39 minutes.
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As we reached the summit I tried to get some guys to work with me but they were already crushed so I headed into the second descent solo. (Luckily the abominable ICEMAN was gone. serioulsy he looked like the cavemen from GEICO) Not good because at this point because the wind was in my face and had to pedal hard at least 3/4 of the way down the descent. I kept looking back, no one. Finally two larger blokes working together pull past me yelling to grab on. Sure guys. I heated it up and caught the wheel and relaxed for a little bit. We were soon going back up hill and I said goodbye and thank you. I bridged some gaps through the rollers but was mostly working solo through some carnage. Finally on the last climb I passed about 5 riders. With 2 k to go a guy in my race caught my wheel. I could hear him breathing hard so I slowed slightly and let him take an extended turn at the front. sucker. I was planning something and tried to remember the longest all out sprints that I've done in training, hmm about a minute. He pulled me to about 500m then I put a decisive move on him. I looked back at 100m and had put a serious gap on the guy and cruised across the hilltop finish. That was fun. I didn't pull too many gimmicks and probably didn't race too smart from the start but at least I was able to try some strategies and they worked.

Second climb.

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All in all the weather turned out to be a non factor having to take off my gloves and armwarmers on the final climb. I don't know how I ended up at this point it'd be nice to be top half of 50. I recovered a bit spinning back to the start area and put on dry clothes and my running shoes for a 20 min slow run. I was dead tired and glad I had a safe race.

Glad to be done. At least my feet were warm.

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I posted some really good numbers for being this early in the training and having spent very little time in the hills. One thing I didn't take advantage of was bringing more calories on the bike. I took in 300 calories 30 mins till start and only took in 200 liquid on the bike. I could be taking in at least 200 more calories. I just wasn't sure what there was time and room for. A Gel flask would work well.

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The rest of the training from the week was full of ups and downs mostly fighting my schedule with computer problems at work on Wednesday. I had to shift some stuff around but only missed one run and had to move a ride into a strength training spot. All my swims were great even after some hard strength work on Monday. I'm swimming my Tpace at around 1:38-1:40/100m on the same PE, which is nice. I should probably test again soon too make sure I'm not going too hard. Just nice to see some improvement in that zone after a blown test set last weekend.
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Of other news we found out Friday that we're going to have a BOY this time around. I couldn't be more stoked to have a little T. Freddy, to share everything that guys do. Everything looks good and things are shaping up well. Life is Good!