May 12, 10:34 AM by Steve | The Road to Oildale
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report |The interesting thing about doing all these races this year, is traveling all over California and seeing areas I never would have otherwise gone to. I mean, why would I have any reason to go to Bakersfield otherwise, and especially Oildale. I did the Elite 4 district championships in Bakersfield at 9:30 on Sunday morning, for two laps around a 31 mile loop through oil fields in the middle of the desert.
I’m still having trouble with those long hard efforts, and got popped near the top of the climb on the first lap. I was pretty much at my max HR for about 4 minutes, then gave it everything I had to stay with the pack to what I thought was the top… but it turned out to be a false flat, and when we turned a corner and it kicked up again, I was done. I caught a big SC Velo guy’s wheel that was chasing back on, and tried to follow, but I didn’t have enough gas and settled into my own rythmn to the top. I could still see the pack when I crested, but the gap only increased on the descent… I was working with one other guy (LaGrange) and we caught a few others at the bottom. We picked up more as we went along the rollers and could see a sizable group ahead for a while. We seemed to be gaining on them, which was promising, and I thought our chance of catching them was pretty good. We were rotating pretty smoothly, and I felt pretty good (although there was one guy that kept shooting off the front every time he went to pull). Unfortunately, when we made the right turn when we got back into “town”, I suddenly felt like I had no power. The combination of the pace, the road surface, the slight uphill and the wind blew me off the group and I watched them ride away as we neared the end of the first lap. Frustrated when I rolled through the feed zone, I told Kim I wanted to quit but she said there was a group behind me so I pushed on.
The group of 4 eventually caught me, and we had a bit of calm as we did the first descent, then got organized into a nice rotation after turning onto Round Mountain Road and beginning the false flat section before the main climb. We picked up one or two guys from my earlier group, and then a few more of the big motors that were hurting me on the rollers. We tried to stay together for the most part, but a few guys seemed to be hurting and had fallen back before the top. Mark (Mr. Landshark) from LaGrange seemed to be the freshest out of all of us, but he slowed to wait for two of his teammates. The rest of us eased on the rolling top section and then cruised down the descent. That descent was really fun and I got to appreciate it more the second time through, knowing where the turns went and not in full chase mode (I had no allusions of trying to catch the pack). I don’t consider myself to be a great descender, but I easily rode away from the other guys I was still with, and then cruised at the bottom so that I would have people to work with over the stupid rollers.
At that point there were 4 of us. Then all of the sudden there were 3… We saw two guys up ahead (Triathletix and AIAGE) and eventually caught them. The Triathletix guy never caught on but the other one did and we had 4 again, which makes for a much nicer rotation. As we were nearly back into town, one guy (Liquid Fitness) got a cramp and a moment later one other (AIAGE) was back (with him?), leaving me and one other guy (Paramount) to work together to the end. His pulls were getting longer and longer, and mine shorter and shorter, and I was thinking “if you just pull me in I won’t try to go around you…”. I sitll pulled were I could, then when we got near the parking area he accelerated away and I tried to match him (not to try to beat him), but I really had nothing left and just kind of cruised into the finish for 43rd place, out of 60 something starters.
I see people from my first group in the low 30s, which is where I’m sure I could have finished. Mistake #1 was that I rode too much this last week, and especially too hard on Saturday. Mistake #2 was that I didn’t eat or drink enough. When I fisnihed the first lap I didn’t take on any extra water because I hadn’t had any yet! Mistake #3 was that I didn’t pay enough attention to the wind direction and that’s why I got popped from the chase group, I think.
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