Apr 3, 01:19 PM by Steve | Orosi Road Race & Hanford Crit
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report
After missing the registration for the San Dimas stage race, I signed up for a pair of races up north, near Visalia without really knowing anything about them. I later found out that Orosi is supposedly one of the hardest single-day races in California. Furthermore it turned out that many of the northies were going to be over at the Ronde van Brisbeen omnium that weekend instead. I started to wonder what I was getting myself into…
I almost didn’t go because of the aforementioned fever Thursday morning, but I was feeling normal again Thursday evening and got in a good ride to test myself on Friday morning and decided to go for it. Chester and I got a bit of a late start leaving town and hit the usual end-of-day traffic, but still made good time to our model in Visalia. Oh yeah, Chester named the GPS in my car Cheryl… anytime it gave directions, he would say, “Thank you Cheryl”.
Orosi Road Race: OTB, DFL, DNF. Did the fever affect me? Looking at my data from Orosi its hard to pinpoint exactly where I came off. From what I recall, it felt pretty much like climbing up OSM at a 16 minute pace effort (my PR is 18 minutes). Although we were really moving, I didn’t have any problem calling up a lot of power to hang in there. However, I knew I was way over threshold and as we kept going hard I was worried about how long I would last at that effort. I was tempted to look at my HR but told myself if I had to do that I’d already lost. At one point before I blew I thought that if I moved up a little bit I would have room to slip back if I started to run out of steam. I moved up the pack and held on for another few minutes until everyone accelerated and I couldn’t repond. I finally looked at my HR at that point, and it was 186. Not my all-time highest (189) but close.
photo by Jan Snyder
There were several riders behind me, and as the pack continued ahead, a few more fell off as well. My gap to the riders ahead stayed fairly constant and I could see the pack just ahead for a while—I recovered down to mid-170s for about a minute and continued my chase. Later, speaking with Chester, he said that a group got off the front and the rest of the group shattered; what I was seeing was basically the back part of what was left of the group. A rider from behind me caught me right as I was catching a rider from in front, and the 3 of us picked up the pace and rode together rotating for a while through the rollers. We could see singles and doubles scattered all over the road ahead and eventually caught a pair of riders from the same team. After a while I got gapped on one of the descents, not willing to fly so fast through the gravel on many of the turns. I chased back on one of the uphills, as it turned out our mini group had shattered and almost caught the last guy, but when the ground pitched down again, I lost them for good.
I could just see one guy off in the distance when I turned onto the highway, but after about a minute I felt my rear tire bottom out, and a quick hop confirmed it was flatting. I considered trying to nurse it down but realized there was a long way to go, so just pulled over to wait for a SAG. After about half an hour, a truck came by and one of the riders in the truck let me borrow his wheel and ride back to the start. The highway descent was actually very fun and a nice reward for having to endure the first part of the race. Earlier, when I was riding alone for a while, I was considering pulling out and skipping the second lap. In past races I thought I was last but it turned out half the field had dropped before me. As I was waiting on the side of the road, only a two guys from my race passed me, so I think I was pretty much it. I still don’t know if I would have continued onto the second lap had I not flatted.
Average HR 150, max 186. 19 minutes zones 1-3, 20 minutes in zone 4, 24 minutes in zone 5. Includes neutral “promenade” start.
Hanford crit: Didn’t crash, pack finish. I felt pretty good most of the race, started moving up with a few laps to go and was right behind a crash a little ahead and outside of me on the turn. I had to work a bit (but not too hard) to get back to the group which was much smaller after that. I think many of the people caught out on the crash used the free lap and got back on, and others must have caught back on because the field was a pretty good size again the last several laps. I was a little nervous in the corners after the crash and didn’t really make any play to move up, and ended up with another mid-pack finish. It was the fastest race I’ve every done at 25.4mph average (technically tied with Baker to Death Valley, which shouldn’t count because it was one way with a tailwind).
Average HR 164, max 178. 1 minute in zone 3, 37.5 minutes in zone 4, 7.5 minutes in zone 5.
