Monday, August 20, 2007

Hilltowns race report-from Erica

Hi all, officially this is the race report from Tour of the Hilltowns yesterday, but as you'll seen, it might aptly be name Tour or the Twilight Zone.

Day started off for us a bit sketchily, with a wrong turn getting to the Taconic (I'd better start paying more attention or I might start getting a reputation for this) followed by a mysterious 6:30 a.m. traffic jam in Westchester, followed by an all out 85mph hammer the rest of the way to the race so that David T could at least have time to get his number pinned on his uniform before his start (don't worry, David apparently doesn't need to warm up, he won anyway, yea David.)

It was super windy and pretty cold, every one was scrounging to arm warmers and non-areo wheels (thanks again for the loaner front wheel Christoff). The women's 1-3 field was a decent size, but the women's 4 had only about 13 women. We tried to get the fields to combine so that we would have more racers (and better wind protection, truth be told) but were denied.

Race layout was basically 10 miles rolling, 10 gradual miles downhill, 5 steep miles uphill, 20 miles rolling, a few miles gradual downhill, and then 7 or so miles back uphill to the start, the last 3 of which were pretty steep.

First five miles or so, 5 or 6 of us were sharing the work up front, rest of the "pack" more or less pacelining in back. My personal plan was to try not to do TOO much of the work, to size up those who were probably the strongest in the field, and try to egg them into staying on the front as much as possible, so that I could try to attack, perhaps with Lisa Force or Ashley Krause, and shake loose of some of the other challengers before the downhill. All was going as planned until the 5th or 6th miles, when I got a flat in my front (borrowed) wheel. There was wheels in, neutral out support, guy reluctantly stopped, took major amounts of time to help me change the wheel, took off immediately, and by the time I started pedalling, neither van nor peleton nor even the lights of the cop car leading the peleton were anywhere in sight. One woman had already fallen off the back and I tried to work with her for a second but I think she was going! about nbsp;half the speed of everyone else, so when I looked back she was gone. At this point, I thought my race report would read: Got a flat 5 miles in, timetrialed the next 50 or so, much fun was had by all. Thought of waiting for the sag wagon (we were the last group so I probably wouldn't have had to wait too long) but then decided I might as well at least ride the course to know it for next year and get a good workout.

Worked the downhill pretty hard hoping I might catch sight of the group, thinking maybe they had to brake more around the turns or something. Yeah right. Road was so empty of riders I thought maybe I'd taken a wrong turn. Just before the uphill, saw the lights of a cop car, thought, wow, I really did catch them. Unfortunately, it was just people attending to a woman from our group who had crashed out, hope she was okay, she definitely was down for the count at that point.

So fives mile uphill. It's quite long and steep, but fairly pretty and I just tried to keep it steady up the hill, waved to some cows, the only company I had, hoping I might catch a few stragglers at least to have someone to ride with for the 20 miles of rollers. Wasn't optimistic as I didn't see anyone for the first 3 miles or so, but then saw a few women towards the top, passed a couple but caught one woman right at the top who was ready, willing, and able to work with me to try to gain some distance on the other cat 4s up the road.

We were riding pretty well, pretty hard, up and down these rollers, passed a group of friendly spectators, thought maybe it was the feed zone, but apparently not, rode to the end of the road, and lo and behold, there was a group of 3 or 4 other cat 4s. Cool, caught up to a bunch of my field, the game changes now. And here's where it got really strange. They were just stopped there looking confused and agitated. Had been stopped there for a little while (30 seconds? a minute? 4 mintes? I don't really know, didn't get a consistent answer) because the marshalls didn't know where they were supposed to go. The road had ended in a T where they were stopped, corn field ahead, nice looking country road to the left (good choice I thought), really sketchy looking sand/dirt/rock narrow road to the right. "You need to go right," the marshalls informed us. Really? Shouldn't they have warned us about this in the race notes? You could tell the mountain bikers in th! e group . I wasn't one of them, but I figured, race on, did the best I couldn't, miraculously didn't crash out when I hit some particularly loose sand. Asked a guy who was walking along the "road" how much further we had to go, his answer "I don't know, I don't know where this road goes, we don't usually ride here, for obvious reason." HUH?
Came out the other side, and there were what seemed like hundreds of racers just hanging out in this clearing. Turned out, a power line had just gone down on the main route, and this was an unscheduled detour, but rather than just sending the racers along, they held everyone up who had not gotten through (apparently the sight where the group of friendly spectators was was the normal turn). Our field was all back together again, but women's 1-3 had acutally gotten split apart by the event.

So eventually, they sent us off by group as if the race was starting over. In between groups, blocks of elite men racers who were on their second loop were let through. They came blasting up the dirt road. Very impressive. There was talk of giving anyone was in a breakaway going into the detour a head start, but it turns out that there was only a few seconds between the first and second groups of cat 4s, at least until the detour. In the end they just sent us off altogether with an inauspicious, "okay, you can go now" and the last 25 miles of the race were on.

Our small, but back together again group worked pretty hard and kept catching and passing guys, including some elites, which was really strange. Then we caught up to the women's 1-3 field, which had left before us by at least 5 minutes, also kind of strange. Probably should have served as a warning that we might have been working too hard. But didn't. A few of us were definitely doing more work than others, especially given how windy it was. I tried to pull off fairly efficiently after every turn at the front, because I knew my legs were a little tired after my 20 mile time trial, but would somehow find myself 2nd or 3rd in line every time to go back up there. Lots of very good hiders in our midst, especially considering it was such a small group. Five miles to go I decided to attack, thinking it was my best option for dropping some of the hangers-on who might have more left than me at the end. My attack lasted approximiately 5 seconds before I was caught. Legs were just! too ti red. The bridgers brought the whole group with them. Thanks for nothing.

Three miles to go and the uphill gets really steep. And I, well, I guess I bonked. Just couldn't hang. It was straight into the wind at this point, group was probably down to 8-9 at this point, since we were minus pokey, minus crashed, and minus the non-hillriders who I had caught earlier, not much wind protection. And then there were seven. Not a very pleasant final three miles for me, riding mostly alone. Non-hillriders were too slow to ride with, remaining peleton was too fast, I was too hungry, my legs hurt, and the regions in the vicinity of my bike seat were screaming. Caught up to a similarly bonked junior guy, gave him a cliff block, and we rode the rest of the hill side by side chatting about what a drag it was to bonk with just a few more miles to go. Good to have the company, that misery thing and all. JP Partland (who had been apparently bonked himself an! d we ha d passed earlier) caught us a the turn to the sprint and the three of us rode the last 100m together, making sure our wheels were aligned over the finish line. A better and more fitting ending to this strange race than others I could have imagined (like falling over into a ditch for instance).

As an addendum, because I'm sure this wasn't long enough for some of you, I noticed while riding with Jenny this morning than my saddle had moved back a couple of inches, perhaps when I hit the bump that gave me my flat tire. No wonder my nether regions hurt. And my knee. And my neck. Mind your bike fit, y'all. Blaming the bonk on bike fit. I'm sure it had nothing to do with lack of food, stamina, nor pulling my competitors along for the last 20 miles after all. Right.

So that's all. Too bad my race didn't end with the flat after all, huh? "Got a flat, time trialed the last 50 miles" would have taken much less time to read...
Cheers,
Erica

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