Monday, March 17, 2008

Blown Away...



Remember this poster? Ya, me too...makes me feel old. Anyway...

For the second time this season Mother Nature has added an obsticle to one of our classic bike race courses. Yesterday at Bariani the wind was howling. It made the winds at Snelling, earlier this year, seem like a gentle breeze. And like the Snelling race, once dropped many a rider packed it in early rather than grind out the miles alone.

I was a little eager to start the suffering and wasted some valuable energy early. After getting gapped right after the climb, it was a long slog to finally reconnect with the main pack. The second time it happened I knew I wouldn't reconnect. I considered calling it a day but decided to grind out another lap. I fell in with some other stragglers and we raced well together in all shapes of rotating pace lines. Once I was 'racing' again all thoughts of stopping vanished. Over the course of the next few laps we caught other cast offs, some latched on, others fell off.

In the end I finished 24th. It was brutal and fun...in a twisted, biker racer kind of way.

For you data junkies out there, my power output was almost identical to Snelling but the race was 30 minutes longer. 2300 Kcals burned in 2.5 hours of racing.

4 comments:

Itinerant Rick said...

Your race sounded a lot like mine: end up on the wrong end of a selection, fight back, get selected out again, pedal some laps with new found friends to the end. I felt good about how it went, too.

I put in an order for less wind for next year. We'll see how that goes.

Merkeley Bike said...

No, keep the wind. Wind is good. It's a lot more fun with the wind. Last year no wind=not fun ;).

Unknown said...

Wow, your race report is almost a duplicate of mine from the M35-4 race. I averaged 247/275 normalized. Our chase group had a couple of guys who wanted to work and knew how to echelon but mostly it was just frustrating. At least I didn't get DNP'ed like at Snelling after working my butt off to stay with the front goup. See you out there....Dave/Now Direct

Dr. Xeno said...

Against the wind we are all team mates! Yes, that was fun... in that special sort of way. I'm learning to enjoy the wind and agree that this race with no wind would be no fun.