So part of me likes the idea of bike races and triathlon just for the road trip side of it. I love road trips. Sequim was our first real road trip of the season. We even got to take a ferry.
We stayed at a place with a pool. Extra fun.
At the start. Miles is taking notes for his future races.
Waiting in between laps. I was thankful for a grassy field.
Post-race with Papa and watching the Cat 1-2 races. They were REALLY fast.
Another race report from my guy…
Wow. This race was a lot of fun. If you read my Mason Lake #1 report, you’ll note that I and a lot of other folks had a lot of challenges in that race (first of the season). At Sequim, there were no crashes, no ambulances, no broken hands and no accordion effect. It was just a great race, with great cyclists.
Boring and Silly Pre-Amble
As always with these things, there is a back story. I didn’t share my back story with the earlier race since it was too damn embarrassing, and this one is bad enough. The race was at 11:45AM on Saturday, which meant that we could travel morning-of, but decided not to. I left work at 5pm (AKA early) Friday to start the journey. Unfortunately, my back tire flatted out between B42 and B86 going to a meeting earlier in the day, which meant I had to bus it home. Grrr. I’d also left my flat kit at home, which is very atypical for me. We were also in the process of having work done on our car, so I actually took the bus to the dealership, and picked up the car. Anyway, I arrived home, had a quick supper with the fam, did some last-minute packing, and then we all took off for the ferry. Unfortunately, we had to pick up my bike back in B42, which didn’t speed up the process. I rarely ride my race bike to work, but wanted to give it a once over ride on Friday to validate that it was in good working order after the Mason Lake crash. I don’t think that I’d ridden it since the last race, just my Jake for commuting.
On Saturday (race morning), we woke up in the hotel and headed downstairs for the free breakfast. Not sure that I can handle that again. I practically get an allergic reaction to bread and waffles made with cheap refined white flour. Give me some wheat-germ, man! After breakfast, I’d started to have this uneasy feeling. Did I bring my bike shoes? Did they get forgotten due to not biking home on Friday? After a check in the car, my feeling was validated. Damn! I fired up Bing Maps 4 iPhone and found the one bike shop in Sequim: Mike’s Bikes. We checked out, and booted off to Mike’s Bikes. Turns out that they only sell MTB shoes. Ahhh! I make it clear that I’m in a real crunch with a race in just over 60mins. One of the guys pulls out his well-loved and mean-looking MTB shoes out of a drawer and happens to have the right cleats, which he attaches for me. They push me out the door, don’t even ask me for any ID, and I’m off to the races (literally). My wife always tells me that I was born with a horse-shoe in my back pocket, and I continue not to disappoint in that regard! Here are the shoes, below. Contrary to what you might think, no endangered species were harmed in the making of these shoes. Also, under those tongues are some pretty manly laces. That all being said, in jest, I’m super thankful to the guys at Mike’s Bikes. Thanks Mike! I patronized them with a sale, on returning the shoes after the race, and won’t hesitate to do that again, when we’re back in Sequim. You also now know where to go for gear in Sequim!
Race Strategy
I was racing with 2 buddies (B1 and B2), and they strangely arrived at the exact same time (they came morning of via the Narrows Bridge), so we parked side-by-side. Nice. One of the 2 buddies won CAT5 last week in Sequim, so we hatched a plan on how we could make that happen again. The basic plan was that I would attack the breaks on lap 1, B1 would attack the breaks on lap 2, we would break early in lap 3, lead well away from the peloton, and then B2 would win the race (again) with a late sprint. And all that should be just the first leg of a day of exercise for three super-fit tri guys, right? Right.
The Race
Like last week (although I wasn’t there), they broke CAT5 into two races, separated by ten mins. The evens would go first, and the odds second. The nice thing about being a newbie and renting numbers, is that a small unattached team of 3 can all request even numbers (in order to race together). This trick won’t last long though, as I’m soon going to buy some numbers.
After a 10min delay, the race started. And they are off! That’s me w/o a kit, on the Specialized bike. Note the fine shoes again ;)
B1 and B2 sped past me, and I quickly found myself half-way back. I’m thinking to myself that I’m in a pretty poor position to make good on the race strategy, which has me attacking breaks in lap1. I learned a lot of basics in Mason Lake #1, and also saw how the pack moves, so time to make good on my new-found-knowledge. I was able to quickly move to the outside (yellow-line side), and make my way to the front. A guy had already broken from the pack by a couple bike lengths. Having never done anything like this before, I hesitated for a second, but then just thought “OK … do it”. I then pulled in front of the leader, just 4 or 5 bike-lengths (or so it felt) behind the lead car. Adrenaline is pumping through my body at this point. I then pulled pretty strongly in front for the next few kms. We came to the first turn, and my job was over. The first guy passed me looks over to me and says “nice pull”! B1 passed me and took over the lead. My legs were tired, so I fell to the back. I then had one of those “oh shit” moments, as the pack pulled away. I then hammered away and caught back into the restful draft of the pack and hung out for a bit while I caught my breath.
Again, I reminded myself that I had a job to do. I realized by now that our strategy was a little flawed. We had just 3 guys and most of the other (actual) teams were much larger. There was no way that we were going to be able to do so much work over 36 miles. I decided that I was going to continue with our strategy. It is still super early in the season and I’d rather blow up doing what I agreed to at the start of the race than adopt a different plan unilaterally. So, I moved up to the front of the pack again, and took over for B1. I then led again for a bit, until I couldn’t any longer. B1 then took over again. Suffice to say that this pattern repeated itself a 5 or 6 times during the race. Each time, I would end up a little more exhausted, falling off the end of the peloton and would have to work a little harder to get back in. I knew that it was nuts, but I wanted to make good on our plan. In addition, I was having a lot of fun. I was also learning a whole new set of lessons relative to Mason Lake #1.
Below, you can see us completing lap 2 and starting into lap 3. I’ve marked myself with an arrow.
Fast forward to the 3rd lap … B1 ended up having a mechanical early on in lap 3, so that left B2 and me. Crap. I looked at my Garmin (attached to my bars), and could see that the race was almost over. After 3 laps, I was pretty familiar with the coursescape and knew where we were. I knew that we had about 2-3km left. So, what the hell … let’s give B2 a chance to win again. With about 2km left, I pulled in front again. B2 was in the number 2 spot behind me. I pulled for about 1km. B2 then passed me (as per plan), but so did a ton of other guys. Once again, one of the first guys to pass me looked over at me and said “nice pull”. Nice guys, eh? I was fully done at that point. The pack then passed me, and I had no mental or physical ability to re-attach myself to the peloton. I gave it all I had left solo, and came in 4 or 5 spots from last (modulo DNFs). Even with my hard work, B2 wasn’t able to win again, but still did pretty darn well. Great!!
Closing
Crossing the finish line, I felt incredibly happy and proud. My spot was nothing to write home about (and worse than Mason#1 even w/the crash), but my performance according to our plan was great. I worked hard throughout the race and was able to compete with the pack in a pretty favorable way. Obviously, I need to adopt a fairly different approach next week with way less early work and avoid blowing up at the end. Also, I realized that I didn’t have a nutrition strategy (no nutrition during race); I probably need to take a look at that one. All in all, this race was 100% different than Mason #1. I really enjoyed it and am now hooked on the sport.
For the data geeks, here is what the Garmin thought that my race looked like. I didn’t wear a HR monitor or have my cadence meter attached to my bike. This view certainly tells an interesting tale of its own. That last speed spike, just after 30 miles is where I took the lead one last time to help out B2. You can see that I really was done at that point. The final drop there, just before mile 35, was the end of the race. The race was 36 miles, but I didn’t start my Garmin right away, hence being short by just over a mile.
Here is the spit, post-race. We spent some time there with the kids. It was windy, as per usual on the spit, but fun as usual too.
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