<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Posted by Paul on Saturday, July 10, 2004 at 7:41 PM

Cascade Classic, Bend, Oregon - Stage 2: Mount Bachelor Road Race


Description:
About 60 miles total. It's 30 miles of mostly downhill, then up a short hill for the feed zone, then down, some flat and 10+ miles of climbing back up to Mount Bachelor Ski Resort. This would be the second stage of the day - we started at around 2pm.

The race starts kinda goofy though - first you go down from Mount Bachelor about 4 miles, do a U-turn, climb back up, and then drop down over the other side. WTF?

How it went down:
You'd think a nice wide open descent would be a good way to start the race - wrong. There were 4 high speed shimmies on this little downhill section. We were doing over 50 mph and these guys looked like they were riding jackhammers down the hill. Scary shit.

We turned around and came back up the hill and then down the other side. No more shimmies this time. We covered over 28 miles in the first hour - mostly all downhill. Labor Power had already sent one of their guys up the road to make the leader's team (from Lowe's) chase.

At this point I really started to notice how badly I had to whiz. My stomach didn't feel so hot either.

We got to the feed zone and I moved up to the front. I still didn't feel that great mainly because of my swelling bladder. There were a few attacks, but, like the articles in Playboy, they just didn't matter.

At the base of the climb I was feeling really bad. The break had 4 minutes on us and I knew what would soon happen. The LaborPower boys would go to the front and ride everyone right off their wheel. So they did.

I was still aching from my full bladder, but was experiencing some stomach cramps too. I guess my nutrition plan for the two stages in one day wasn't quite right. I started falling backwards through the group. It was so demoralizing. I got to the back and the gap started to open up. So I made one final effort to close it.

Hmm, I didn't feel so bad. More gaps were opening up, so I kept closing them. I wasn't feeling as bad as I thought. I kept this up all the way to the top and gradually felt better, although I still wasn't climbing full steam. I finally bridged up the one last group of about 10 as we made the turn up to Mount Bachelor with about 5K to go.

The final few miles was a not so steep climb but into a stiff headwind. I just made sure I stayed with the group.

Avg HR: 150 bpm
Max Speed: 52 mph
Result: Finished about 4:30 down - not nearly as bad as I thought, given the stomach and bladder conditions. This dropped me to 22nd on GC.

Posted by Paul on Friday, July 09, 2004 at 7:25 PM

Cascade Classic, Bend, Oregon - Stage 1: Tumalo Time Trial (Master's race)


Description:
6.6 miles total, first 1.5-2 go uphill, then some steep down, then some rollers. I brought the full TT setup: cowhorns, aero bars, and Zipp deep dish wheels.

How it went:
My plan was to launch it as hard as I could on the hill. Since my climbing skillz are better than my flat TT skillz - I thought that would be the best strategy. At the top it looked like I had gained some time on my 30-second-man. But I was feeling it too. Finally got to the top and recovered a little before the downhill.

I got to the top, tried to roll it as fast as possible on the downhill section and the rollers, but I was definitely losing some time here. Blech. I soldiered on and finished in 15:55.

Avg HR: 170 bpm
Avg Speed: 24.8 mph
Result: 11th place, about 50 seconds back.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?