Coal Miner Classic Criterium
June 27, 2004
I doubled up on the bike races this weekend, trying to make up for lost time spent hiking around in the mountains. This race was on the Storage Technology campus and only a mile from my house, so I couldn’t resist. I’m still not too strong at criterium style races, but that’s a good reason to try more of these. This was a pretty good course for me since it had a significant hill. I rode over to register and then rode back home to use the bathroom and roust my friend, who came back with me to watch.
For the first time ever, I started on the front row! This course is easy to move up on, so it wasn’t that crucial, but it was nice not to have to chase right at the start. The course is a 1.4 mile loop that has four corners, most of which are easy to take, but the corner on the northeast is particularly sharp and you enter it from a long downhill. Here things bunched up quite a bit, but there weren’t any crashes.
I worked pretty hard most of the race and tried to stay near the front, but at times I slipped well back. It was the usual yo-yo effort for me. I’d move way up on the hill coming into the start/finish and hold it over the top and into the start of the downhill. Here I was usually in the top five. About halfway down the hill and before the sharp corner, it seemed the pack and fully reformed and its momentum was so great that many riders would swarm by at high speed. I’d slip back quite and bit and then regain my position going back up the hill. This was an ideal course for Eric Coppock and I think he’d have had a real shot at winning this race.
I led through the finish, briefly only, on one early lap, but other than that always drafted a wheel. Going up the hill on leading into the “2 laps to go,” I attacked hard up hill and got a pretty good gap, but was totally gassed at the start finish. I was able to hold the lead over the top, but knew it wouldn’t stick and moved over on the way down the hill and sat up to rest. The pack flew by and I couldn’t get on until well back. I rested up, and moved up going into the next turn. I tried again going up the hill for the penultimate time. I figured at least I was out in front getting my sponsors some exposure. I went hard, got a good gap and even had a Lee’s Cyclery guy with me. Once again, I went too hard and blew sky high, but I had launched the guy into a great attack. Apparently these hard attacks did some damage to the field as we cut the lead group in half in the final two laps.
I still worked pretty hard and was fourth wheel in the chase pack going over the top of the hill with less than a lap to go. I was following James, of Trek bikes, and he was worried about the gap to the Lee Cyclery guy. He yells up to the Swift rider who is second wheel, “Swift, are you going to pull through?” The Swift guy just shakes his head. He’d later get second in the race and say afterwards, “Why would I pull through? For someone else to win?” It was the right call and he was right to be patient, because the Lee rider was coming back, but only at the very end. James hops around to the front and I’ve still got his wheel. The usual swarm, bunch-up occurs at the sharp corner and I’m back in the group.
We go through the final corner and have the long hill to the finish. The Lee’s rider is dying up ahead. It was a valiant, gutsy move and won I wish I could have stayed with, but I wasn’t strong enough. When I go hard, I can’t drop back to a high tempo, but need too much recovery time. Anyway, I was hoping to repeat my attacks up this hill that I used on the previous two laps, but now everyone is going, of course. I’m totally blown with 200 meters still to go and just put my head down and try not to lose too many more places. James ended up getting sixth and the Lee rider dropped to tenth. Another Lee rider, who was trying to do some nice blocking for his escaped teammate got up the hill for 4th place. I hung on for 12th place, out of the lead pack of 19. 39 riders finished in the Cat. 4 race. I see in the results that there were 40 finishers in the Cat. 3 race and my teammates Jeb Dunnuck and Andy Couch finished in 16th and 26th respectively. Joe of Rocky Mounts finished 18th in the 35+ division. In the 35+ / Cat. 4 Rocky Mounts Jerome Contro won! He’s been doing really well in that division. I would have raced that category, but it was much later in the day. I raced at 8:45 a.m. and they didn’t go until afternoon. Also, they only raced for 30 minutes, versus our 45 minutes (actually we raced 41 minutes, but it was supposed to be 45). Eric Levinson, also of Rocky Mounts, finished 23rd in this race. You can see the full results here.
Figure 1: My heart rate, race profile, and speed versus time for the race.
We averaged 24.5 mph with 840 feet of total climbing. My max speed was 37mph and my slowest speed was 16.3 mph. My average heart rate was 163 bpm, with a maximum of 171 bpm.