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 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)
Heartrate zone summary
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