Me and Kristine before the start of the 2013 Sunny King criterium
SATURDAY’s Sunny King Pro/1 Criterium
A five man break gets away about one/third of the way through the race. A four or five man chase with Frank Travieso (Mountain Khakis) and eventual winner Carlos Alzate (UHC) gets away a few laps later after my own very short-lived bridge attempt. I watched them go from near the very front having just been reeled back in by the field thinking that looks like a good move, but no way I can do anything about it right now. Our pace in the pack plummits as UHC now has Karl Menzies in the original break and Carlos in a strong bridge move. Brendan Cornett related to me at the post-race dinner how amazing (and painful) it was as Frank and Carlos traded pace ramping up the speed insanely after giving each other a short rest. Two or three guys end up getting dropped from the break, which doesn’t surprise me given that it takes practically no time at all for the break to lap the field. Once the break laps the field, UHC goes to the front and controls the pace for the rest of the race to make sure that nobody from the original break has a chance to try to escape again. Perfect leadout train for Carlos leads to another UHC win. Sergio Hernandez (Predator Cycling) takes second followed by final leadout man from UHC (Karl Menzies) in 3rd.
Meanwhile, back in my part of the race, fighting elbow to elbow with everyone behind the UHC leadout train, I end up in decent position maybe mid pack 25 riders from the front when two guys run into each other in turn 3 – right in front of me – with maybe five laps to go. They don’t go down, but I end up having to chase around them to close the gap. Tired from this, I lost a lot of places and end up towards the back of the pack with three laps to go. By two laps to go, people in front of me are starting to sit up and a gap opens up about five riders in front of me after turn 1 across the top going into turn 2. Nobody (including me) closes it down quickly enough, so the field slingshots itself down the hill a lot faster than those of us who are now suddenly off the back. I’d say at this point there’s about 30-35 guys left in the main field with another 15-20 of us gapped off. There is still almost two whole laps left, so I end up chasing hard with a small group. One of the things about the sunny king course is that in order to control the field, you have to keep the pace super fast since it is a really wide course in spots. This means that when the leadout guys are done – they are done, I mean really done, put a fork in them done – so it’s pretty easy to catch and pass all the leadout guys after they sit up. My small group ended up catching and passing about 15 guys from the front pack who had sat up on the final lap and I ended up 4th in that group to take 21st for the race.
About 75 starters and only 40 or so finishers. Here’s a video of the last three laps and another one of the call-ups and the first 20 minutes of the race:
Here’s a short video of me attacking and trying to bridge … and if you look very carefully you can see towards the middle of the video where the successful chase group including Frank and Carlos has separated itself from the field. I’m heading backwards by this point.
Team Lupus driving the 2013 Foothills Road Race pro/1/2 field
SUNDAY’s Foothills Road Race
A key part of this race is summed up by the picture above I took during the race. Why did I take a picture during the race? Well, long story but I accidentally brought my phone with me when I forgot to drop it back off by the car after my warm-up before the race. I realized this about an hour into the race. A little while later as Team Lupus was chasing I had just moved up and noticed that three teams were lined up at the front (Team Lupus driving it, a couple guys from Predator Cycling behind them – but not visible in this pic, and then the Mountain Khakis team). Much later, 1K from the finish when I was dropped from the break with bad cramps, I missed another golden opportunity – to call Kristine and chat with her towards the end of a race – since the field was several minutes behind.
Oh well, now back to the race – Lupus was chasing because they only had one guy (who was not a climber) in the original break. They knew their best chance to win the race was with one of their strong climbers (Mike Stone) who I think had missed the original move. Lupus has a number of strong riders, proved by the fact that they were able to bring back what I thought for sure was the day’s winning break. It took a long time, though. In fact, it wasn’t until the bottom of the third big climb of the day (Cottaquilla west to east) that the catch was made. I was in good position towards the front having been following Frank Travieso around in the field thinking that he was going to launch for Mountain Khakis but several other people attacked first and had a small move. When that move was brought back, the pace eased up a bit, and I found myself on the wheel of a different Mountain Khakis rider who attacked. I was right there and saw him shift to attack, so I just went with him up and over the top. This attack ended up splitting the field so that there was about 25 of us left by the bottom of the awesome switchback descent (end of the first video below). It was at the bottom of this descent back in the field, though, that David Carpenter (Village Volkswagon) was t-boned by a dog that darted out into the road. He was air-lifted back to Birmingham, but I’m happy to report today that he has been released from the hospital already once his ct-scan came back negative.
Meanwhile in our race, I noticed that there wasn’t very many of us left so I tried to rally the troops to keep the split open. Instead, there was a number of attacks in quick succession that led to a break of 9 separating itself from the field – me, David Guttenplan, two globalbike/706 project riders (shawn gravois and another rider), two mountain khakis riders, Sergio Hernandez (Predator Cycling), one Astellas rider, and one other rider I didn’t know with an Australian accent – making for a total of 9 of us in the break. We worked really well together for a long time and yet our first time split from Bill was only 40 seconds. I was nervous that the break wasn’t going to make it, but our next time split was a minute. Then it went out to two minutes. But then when we turned left to head back into the steep rollers, the gap had come down to 1’30”. A few minutes later it was down to 1’25”. Then it was back up to 1’30” and held steady there all the way until we started attacking the crap out of each other (see endgame video). At one point towards the beginning of the video before the first set of attacks, I try to convey this with “come on guys, sell out!” meaning fully commit to the move instead of holding something back for later.
I was on Sergio’s wheel when he launched the first attack. I went with it b/c I saw him get ready to attack. I didn’t pull through b/c I was thinking we still needed the break to work together to make sure we stayed away from the field. Instead of a counter attack, we went back into a rotation for a couple minutes before there was a series of attacks leading all the way into the bottom of the final climb. During one of these attacks, I started to cramp and I thought “that’s it” I’m not working any more. If we get caught, we get caught but I cannot put any more effort into the break. I didn’t need to, though, because the attacks kept going constantly. I would get dropped by each attack, then catch back on during the ensuing cat and mouse. Sergio’s final attack towards the top saw him go clear with one other rider. The rest of us crossed the top together (I couldn’t believe I had survived the climb after cramping at the bottom). After a nearly 50mph descent we were closing in slowly on the leading duo when somebody hesitated (wasn’t me b/c I was just sitting on the back by this point) and Shawn Gravois rolled off the front. He finished the bridge up to the leading two and eventually finished third while the rest of us slowed down and started attacking each other again. I would get dropped with each attack and then roll back onto the group. Eventually, David Guttenplan rolled off our group and nobody was able to cover. He didn’t quite make the bridge but finished fourth just behind the podium sprint. I don’t know what happened in that sprint they were so far ahead by the time I crossed the line about a minute or so later having come off the remnants of the break just before they started their sprint for the line.
What a crazy race with the break getting reeled back in by Team Lupus over a distance of maybe 20 miles and then the second break forming straight into the nasty headwind. And then the finale with so many attacks and a blowing up of the break … I guess if you think about it — the break finished in four groups – the top 3 sprinting it out, David Guttenplan just behind for fourth, the next four guys sprinting for fifth, and then me by myself for 9th.
This video below has the last part of the chase led by Team Lupus heading into the two back-to-back climbs (White’s Gap and Cottaquilla west to east). It also has the switchback descent. David Carpenter was taken out by a dog somewhere in the runout after all the switchbacks. You can see from my video how high the speed was through there! This is all late in the video … the descent starts at 15:00 (15 minutes) into the video and finishes at 18 minutes.
This next video shows the formation of our breaks – including the series of attacks that led up to the formation of our nine-man break.
This final video shows the last 30 minutes of the race – including a 52 mph descent and then a bunch of attacks and then me getting dropped with about a mile or so to go.
Lots and lots and lots of data
Here’s the data from all the races — starting with the Sunny King criterium.
Sunny King Pro/1 NCC Criterium 21st place Note that there are only 59 laps, because the field got lapped. The break did 60 laps. Lap Time AvgPow MaxPow HR RPM MPH 1 1:40 320 938 148 86 25.4 2 1:28 315 888 167 84 28.3 3 1:28 282 822 169 83 29.0 4 1:30 289 864 166 83 27.7 5 1:28 288 813 169 82 28.2 6 1:30 270 1021 171 85 27.7 7 1:25 284 886 170 86 28.7 8 1:26 285 978 172 82 28.7 9 1:26 301 913 175 81 28.6 10 1:28 302 846 178 88 28.0 11 1:27 292 859 176 85 28.3 12 1:26 301 948 176 86 28.9 13 1:28 281 768 173 83 28.2 14 1:27 294 923 175 81 28.4 15 1:30 262 842 177 79 27.8 16 1:40 225 829 166 83 24.9 17 1:33 252 876 168 78 26.9 18 1:26 285 771 174 81 29.0 19 1:29 318 653 177 87 28.0 20 1:27 260 870 175 84 27.9 21 1:32 250 783 171 82 26.9 22 1:33 263 812 164 78 27.0 23 1:30 300 972 170 81 28.0 24 1:28 303 947 174 82 28.5 25 1:28 270 947 170 78 28.3 26 1:32 342 787 177 82 27.1 27 1:38 195 768 174 80 25.4 28 1:40 234 692 159 80 25.1 29 1:37 286 914 160 78 25.7 30 1:38 261 833 170 82 25.9 31 1:35 226 800 164 80 26.3 32 1:33 268 855 163 82 26.6 33 1:31 269 897 168 82 27.4 34 1:33 246 806 168 81 26.6 35 1:32 265 856 167 83 27.1 36 1:39 184 674 156 78 25.0 37 1:34 271 929 159 83 26.3 38 1:31 288 734 167 82 27.6 39 1:30 256 966 168 79 27.3 40 1:38 244 785 158 83 25.2 41 1:30 253 899 163 84 27.8 42 1:28 264 893 167 85 28.1 43 1:28 266 851 169 81 28.2 44 1:31 274 927 168 81 27.4 45 1:29 260 850 168 83 27.8 46 1:29 290 793 170 79 28.0 47 1:28 274 869 173 79 28.5 48 1:29 289 812 173 80 28.2 49 1:30 269 870 173 80 27.4 50 1:29 269 934 170 80 27.8 51 1:31 259 834 171 77 27.3 52 1:27 306 790 170 80 28.5 53 1:26 272 797 173 78 28.6 54 1:27 307 939 174 81 28.4 55 1:25 299 856 178 80 29.0 56 1:25 311 782 178 79 29.1 57 1:25 298 790 179 77 28.9 58 1:26 303 803 180 76 28.9 59 1:26 343 741 181 77 28.6
Sunny King power map (note the surge coming out of turn 4 almost all the way up the hill until having to coast or brake into turn 1)
Sunny king critical power curve – note the spikes and the comment in the photo
Sunny King heartrate plot annotated (click to enlarge)
Sunny King heartrate summary – lower than previous years – probably b/c of the cool temps
2013 foothills road race heartrate data annotated (click to enlarge)
2013 foothills road race heartrate summary
Climbing Postscript
On the grand scheme of riding and racing, the road race was kinda short (less than three hours) so I wanted to get some extra climbing in, and when I told Mark Fisher about my plan to go climb the Bain’s Gap cat 2 climbs, he was all-in. So after enjoing the nice post-ride pasta meal, we drove off down the Cheaha Challenge route about 15 miles, parked and did a crazy adventure ride through a bomb range (now open to the public as part of a national wildlife refuge) up steep 20+% gravel roads. Ironically, the closest climbs by comparison in terms of steepness and looseness are in the bayou of Louisiana/Mississippin on the rouge roubaix course — although those climbs are shorter. The gallery of pics below is from that ride with Mark:
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