Sandy Springs – USA Crits Speedweek Finale

Posted

in

Quick summary – chasing after avoiding early crash, riding in a cold hurricane, slideout crash with five second slide, another near-crash, 20th place!

The details – I drove over from Birmingham past all the craziness that is talladega – partly cloudy and I’m thinking that it’s not going to rain. By the time I make it over to Sandy Springs, it is sunny and HOT. I thought about moving my car to find some shade, but by the time I picked up my number and changed clothes the clouds were starting to get much thicker. Still, there were periods of warm sunshine as I was riding over by the Chattahoochee River. When it started to get closer to race time, I headed back towards the course and suddenly encountered very wet streets with steam coming off them b/c it was still sunny where I was. Apparently while I was out warming up it started to downpour on the women’s race — whereas I didn’t get a single drop of rain or even know that it was raining just a couple miles to my east!

The sun was out, though, with no rain clouds anywhere close (although there were some ominous looking clouds visible south of town). The firefighter’s race scheduled between the women’s race and the men’s race was cancelled b/c of the wet course so there was about 20 minutes of time to ride on the course. With a bunch of riding laps easy on the course, it was drying out pretty quickly. Still, the course was by no means dry on those first laps. We did a reasonable 23 mph on the first lap even with a $200 prime on the line – but apparently that was enough to give the guys at the front confidence to ramp up the speed for the second lap. Unfortunately for those of us at the back, that means even faster speeds around the corners to keep from having a gap open up. So that second lap was absolutely insane. The course was drying out pretty fast, though, but not quite fast enough as there was a nasty crash at the front of the race about three or four laps into the race. I was far enough behind it to maneuver around, but ended up in a second group with people not chasing very hard.

This only lasted for a few seconds though b/c a rider behind me attacked seeing that this group was not going to make it back up to the field. Sergio Hernandez (Predator) and I both followed making for a three man chase group. The rider who attacked never slowed down and did all of the work. Fortunately for us, the course was almost dry by this point so the three of us could fly through the corners whereas the field was a bit more tentative. So after almost 10 laps we finally made it back up to the lead group that had maybe 30 riders still left in it. Sometime during our chase, Frank Travieso (Mountain Khakis) and Karl Menzies (United Healthcare) escaped. Since these were the two strongest teams in the race, they were happy to let them go meaning that the overall pace of the field dropped with only Empire Foundation (NYC) chasing. The next five to ten laps were sporadic with various surges, but the pace always seemed to ease up. I came off the back once or twice through the start finish with the moto-official even passing me, but just steady chasing through the corners meant that I was able to catch back up to the field.

Then the rain started again – fairly gradual at first – so that we had about two or three laps of rain with a course still dry enough to go pretty fast. Then it was a crazy downpour / hurricane. Very hard rain with some high wind gusts dramatically slowed down the field – but because I was at the back, I had to risk the corners at a bit higher of a speed to keep from getting gapped. The last turn was the trickiest. About every other lap, I would be gapped off b/c I would still be taking the turn slowly while the front of the group was already attacking up the hill. This meant that a gap would open up, and it would take me about half a lap to close it back down. The irony was that once I was off the back, I could actually go faster through the rest of the course then when I was with the group because it was easier to pick a line.

Eventually, during one of the laps where I was chasing and hadn’t quite caught back up yet, I tried to take the final turn a little bit faster to carry some momentum up the hill. Without warning, though, both wheels slid out from under me and I ended up sliding on the ground for a good five seconds through the turn. It took me a while to get my chain back on the bike b/c I didn’t realize I had bent my rear derailleur and the chain was off the pulley wheels. Once I figured that out I was able to get the chain back on the bike and pedal back to the pit where I thought I was going to have to use one of the SRAM neutral bikes. One of the mechanics was putting zero pedals onto the neutral bike while the other mechanic worked to straighten out my derailleur. Amazingly, he got it working so I was able to hop back on my own bike and into the race with 9 laps to go.

I got put in on a particularly fast lap b/c everyone was strung out single file through the pit area. I quickly drifted to the back tentative through the corners not wanting to crash again. A lap or two later the rider in front of me went down on the same corner that I had fallen. I was able to get around but there was no way I was going to be able to go fast enough to catch back up to the pack. I settled into a pace that I was hoping would keep me far enough ahead of the leading duo of Frank and Karl, but with three laps to go the head official pulled me. The field was so small by this point that I ended up in 20th place, anyway!

Sandy Springs USA Crits Speedweek Finale
May 5th, 2013
20th place

Lap	Time	AvgPow	MaxPow	HR	RPM	MPH	Comment
1	1:34	274	808	140	77	23	Wet
2	1:21	265	836	160	84	25.8	Insane
3	1:23	273	883	164	78	25.2	
4	1:22	241	932	169	77	25.5	
5	1:23	256	871	171	75	25.1	Chasing after crash
6	1:19	292	864	177	74	26.3	Chasing
7	1:19	252	909	177	77	26.4	Course starting to dry out
8	1:19	226	876	174	77	26.1	Chasing
9	1:19	294	846	177	77	26.7	Chasing
10	1:19	232	865	177	79	26.3	Chasing
11	1:19	266	890	175	77	26.5	Chasing
12	1:17	272	893	176	79	26.8	Chasing
13	1:18	239	892	176	77	26.8	Chasing
14	1:20	224	981	173	76	26.2	
15	1:26	212	872	169	78	24.3	
16	1:21	230	1009	169	78	26	
17	1:18	244	893	173	80	26.5	
18	1:23	188	873	171	77	25.3	
19	1:18	248	913	171	78	26.8	
20	1:21	227	875	170	77	25.7	
21	1:22	210	946	171	76	25.2	
22	1:24	212	972	168	83	24.8	
23	1:23	207	896	168	75	25.1	
24	1:21	228	824	171	77	25.7	
25	1:27	202	913	168	75	23.9	Heavy Rain 
26	1:30	231	906	167	76	23.2	Heavy Rain 
27	1:31	217	894	166	71	22.9	Heavy Rain 
28	1:30	214	866	167	77	23.1	Heavy Rain
29	1:27	198	680	170	78	24.1	Rain 
30	1:31	233	803	168	80	23.2	Rain 
31	1:27	214	845	169	74	23.9	Rain 
32	1:27	206	832	167	75	24.1	Rain 
33	1:24	221	876	168	73	24.4	Rain 
34	1:27	204	667	167	77	23.9	Rain 
35	1:27	219	744	166	75	23.7	Rain 
36	1:24	198	818	164	75	24.5	
37	1:26	202	889	164	75	24.2	
38	3:22	73	491	155	60	23.7	Crash
39	3:43	73	816	128	66	6.2	Crash
40	1:32	185	784	154	70	5.3	Bad speed
41	1:31	209	587	160	74	5.8	Bad speed
42	1:37	199	644	157	75	5.8	Bad speed
43	1:34	187	642	156	75	19.2	
44	1:42	149	603	155	72	20.4	

Sandy Springs power map - you can see that 1/3rd of the course is hard and the rest is coasting/brakingSandy Springs power map – you can say that 1/3rd of the course is hard and the rest is coasting/braking (click to enlarge)

Annotated plot with crash data (click to enlarge)Annotated plot with crash data (click to enlarge)

sp-hrsumm Heartrate zone summary

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *