7/25/10: Scott Kornfield Classic

After racing Mt. Evans yesterday, I awoke pretty ambivalent about racing again today, let alone a high-intensity crit. But I wouldn't miss this race for anything, given its significance to me and to the team. Given the P/1/2 race was the last of the day, starting at 5pm, I would have plenty of time to get my legs back and be ready to roll.

Riding over to the race venue, my legs responded well to some accelerations up a couple hills. Good sign. But a 75-min crit would certainly be a different story.

The SKC course is a well-laid out venue with a fully closed off course, twists and turns, Hay Bale Alley where the course narrows to a single lane into a 90-degree right hand turn, and a couple of gradual climbs which aren't too challenging in-and-of themselves but definitely sting the legs over the course of 20+ laps.

The goal was to get Tim Srenaski into "the" break of the day. With members of Fly-V Australia, Garmin, Groove Subaru and other top teams in attendance, it would be pretty easy to determine when "the" break would form. My job would be to ensure Tim got into that break and then shepherd Mahting Putelis around the course until the sprint finish. When the gun went off, a spark went off and I jammed it off the line. Stringing the race out the first 2 laps, I then backed off the pace hoping it would launch some sort of counter-attack and thus let Tim react to it or not. A counter did go off the front and Tim did go with it. A couple laps later, Tim was back in the fold as was the entire break. As he slid past me, I asked if he was OK and he said he was. I left my place next to Mahting and moved back to the front with the goal of keeping things together until "the" break finally formed. On the gradual uphill of the finishing straight, several heavy hitters launched themselves up the right hand side of the road. Tim went with the move, so I accelerated as if I were going to go with the move as well. After about 15 seconds, I slowly let off the gas. The ruse worked. Given my acceleration on the front of the peloton, I'm guessing everyone behind me thought the gap to the break was being well-managed. Instead, the break got its decisive gap and Tim was in it. Great!

A couple laps later, Tim was back in the fold, clearly having an off day. Unfortunately, by that time the 12-man break was well-established and far enough up the road where trying to chase it down would simply waste a lot of energy. I found Mahting and got in front of him, urging him to sit in and save his legs for the end. If another group got motivated and went up the road, I wanted the 2 of us to be ready to go with it. I lost track of the number of guys or small groups that attacked off the front to only lose all the steam literally a couple hundred meters later. It all seemed pretty damn silly, to say the least - just completely unfocused and unmotivated accelerations which served absolutely no purpose. But, in the heat of the race, you don't really know the mindset of each attack, so you just have to react. Consequently, I covered way too many worthless attacks. In looking at my power profile after the race, I noticed no fewer than 34 surges above 600 watts, a dozen of which were in excess of 800 watts.

With 3 laps to go, I pulled up along Mahting and told him that with 3/4 of a lap to go, on a hard right-hander into a sweeping downhill, that I was going to give it everything I had for as long as I could. Mahting has some explosive speed, so my hope was that he would get a free ride into the uphill drag to the finish. As we hit the right-hander into the finishing straight with just over a lap to go, I led the peloton up the left side of the road. If anyone attacked, I wanted it to be to my right. About 50 meters later, a Natural Grocers rider put in a massive attack up the right side of the road. It was so strong of an attack that I felt I had no choice but to go with it. As I bled out my eyes, I finally grabbed his wheel at the precise spot I had planned on attacking on the first place. Looked over my shoulder and saw we had a sizable gap, one worth pressing. I shouted at him to continue drilling it so I could grab my breath and try to help him keep the pace high.

We traded pulls as we urgently meandered around the course. As we hit Hay Bale alley, 2 turns from the finishing straight, we got swarmed by the peloton. Totally blown, the 2 of us sat up and got spit out the back. It was worth a shot. I did notice that as the peloton galloped up to the line, the break's lead has shrunk surprisingly. But it was too little, too late to realistically have any shot at catching them.

We averaged 28mph for the race. I felt surprisingly strong and the legs were very responsive. A great rebound from the previous day's disappointing result at Evans. While our small team executed our plan to precision, it unfortunately didn't work out. Tim felt great in pre-race warm-ups, but his legs clearly betrayed him out on the course. That's OK, we all have off days. Next time, we'll get him in "the" break and he'll make a go of it, just like he has multiple times already this season.

Only one race left - the State RR Champs at the Air Force Academy on August 15th. Till then, ride safe.

Nate