Beautiful spring weather for another great training race. The first race of the season is always nerve wracking to see how the fitness is progressing over the winter and to see how well the team is working together. I was happy with both for this race — my fitness seems on track, and everybody on the team worked hard and played important roles in the race. The win went to a strong competitor, Travis Sherman, who showed that his form is excellent by powering a two-man breakaway to the finish and taking the win by probably close to 5 minutes. Ed Whitehorn showed that he has carried excellent fitness through the winter and helped Travis and finished a strong second. I had two teammates in the initial breakaway so I helped block for the first couple of laps covering moves by Alabama Masters to get somebody across to the break. But the pace proved a bit much for my teammates and both got dropped from the break. So we established a chase group that motored along for three laps but not making much ground on Travis and Ed. With the help of my teammates Wes and Mike, I edge out Pat Allison in the sprint for third place.
Heartrate/Power data for the race annotated at the interesting spots.
- Covering Will Hibberts initial attack to bridge
- Covering another one of Will’s attacks
- Covering Pat’s attack that established the chase group. Notice the heart/rate and power bumps immediately before this. There were several attacks that softened up the field prior to Pat’s attack
- The arrows designate the length of our chase (from 3 until the end of the race)
- Pat’s attack that trimmed the chase group down to five people – me, Wes, Mike, Pat, and Mark
- Lots of attacks by Wes and Mike. Pat was forced to chase each down
- My own counterattack immediately after Wes and Mike’s attack – Pat was able to bring this back
- The final sprint … new personal maximum 5 second power of 990 watts registered on the Polar power meter.
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