Wow – you wouldn’t think that a field with 25 riders would generate such a hard race – but it did! Here’s how it went down. 7.7 mile course – 9 laps – On the 1st lap, Wes took a flyer with a pro from Canada and they start to put some good time into the field. Eventually Emile Abraham and two other riders attack from the field and start to bridge across. They make the bridge and it is looking like a very strong move by the start of the fourth lap. They were missing two key players, though, – Frank Travieso and Oscar Henao who want to the front and rode a very fast tempo that eventually brought the move back by the end of lap 6. Before that happened though, there was a wreck a couple riders in front of me that I narrowly avoided — riding between a fallen rider and his bike. Stuart wasn’t quite as lucky as he had to come to a complete stop behind a different rider who had gone down in the break. With Frank and Oscar drilling it at the front, there was no hope for the people caught up by the wreck to catch back on. This left about 15 of us to fight it out for the finish. There was an amazing number of attacks and Tim Henry managed to finally get away to join two riders who had slipped away near the beginning of lap 8. By the end of the last climb that left about 10 of us to sprint for 4th. I managed 6th in that sprint meaning I placed 9th in the race. Excellent training though, and I’m looking forward to the epic in the snow tomorrow!
Update – today’s training race was canceled because of the unexpected snowstorm with a beautiful 2-4 inches of snow blanketing the area!
Here’s my heart rate/power data … my power meter wasn’t working very well because of the rain I guess. The heart rate really tells the story though — look at all the ups and downs — quite an interval workout!!!
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