Wednesday's B Race - A Snowball in Hell

Earlier in the day I got an email that the CT Stage Race was cancelled.  WTF.  This was to be my first A Race as a cyclist since switching over from triathlons.  I spent the last two months suffering in expectation of seeing what I can do on a stage race.  There was a combination of anger, disappointment and depression eating at me all afternoon.  I was trying to decide if I should drive to Bethel and ride or just sit home and drink a beer.  Luckily I chose the former!!

Although Ryan's body felt like "the nail" during the A race, his brain was still sharp as a tack.  His strategy got me my first win.  Having never done a snowball race before, I knew that I needed a strategy but I did not know what that strategy should be.  After warming up I rolled over to Ryan asking for some pointers.  He suggested that I let let the first few sprints go without challenging and then on the 3rd or 4th sprint stay up front and attack just as the sprinters sit up.

The other advise I had gotten from another friend was try and break away a few laps before the points start and see if I can pick off the first few laps.  With those two thoughts in mind I rode the first few laps of the race.  Several break attempts went off the front but were brought back so I thought that an early break would only waste energy.  Unfortunately as I was sitting in the pack a few riders decided that they were going with 14 laps to go.  They were several riders strong and stayed away for the first 2 sprints and then the peleton brought it back together.  The 3rd sprint lap was as a group and I rode easy up the hill to gauge what was going on.  The speed started to ramp up on the back half of the loop for the 4th sprint.  I was sitting about 6th wheel and the front riders had a little gap on the field so I figured this my chance.  Just as the first rider crossed the sprint point and sat up I jumped.  The two Pawling Cycle guys who won the sprint took a wide turn around the corner to rest.  I took the corner tight, got in the drops and went for broke.  I looked back on the back straight away and realized I had no one on my wheel.  I went through the 5th sprint solo and then the mental battle started.  Being that I had never been in this position before, I was not sure how long I could ride flat out.  My legs felt good, but my HR was very near max for the 6th and 7th sprints.  Now I started trying to do math in my head to try and figure out how many points I needed.  At this point, there was one rider about 50 yds behind me with the main group no where in sight.  Coming up the hill for the 8th sprint I noticed that the solo rider had made up some time on me so I went all out up the hill.  After crossing the sprint point I was totally spent and almost crashed because my leg hit my seat as I sat down.  After a few wobbles I recovered and made the turn.  I decided that this lap was about recovering on the downhill and then one last burst to the 9th sprint.  I figured if I could make it over first I would have accumulated enough points.  The 9th sprint came up and the solo rider in second was back to about a 50 yd gap and the main group was still nowhere in sight.  Since I had calculated that I had enough point, I figured I had nothing to lose so I buried myself for the final lap.  As I started the climb to the finish line I realized that I had stayed away so I was able ease up and cross the line at a leisurely pace.

I am really starting to like this sport.  It requires a combination of strength, strategy, skill, nerve, luck and guts.