Weekend Goals:
- Win the State TT
- Make the winning break in Elgin
- Don’t crash
Success, failure, success – a failure sandwich. Which actually doesn’t taste that bad when success is the bun.
***
Heading into U23 Nationals – my biggest goal of the season – I decided to do one final block of racing: the State TT and the Elgin RR.
State TT
Everything was perfect. I won – that’s all that matters, really – but there’s a lot more that goes in to it than one might think.
This TT would serve as a practice run for U23 Nationals. Both courses are exactly 31 km, or about 40 minutes at race-pace, and rolling but not hilly, fast but not flat. My effort would be almost the same today as it will be next week. And I wanted to nail it.
My start time was 9:43AM – not bad, I thought, until I remembered that it was a 2-hour drive to the venue. Great – alarm set for 5:30! But in terms of Nationals preparation, this could not have been better – the U23s are the first group off in the National TT, meaning that my start time will be somewhere around 8:00AM. Better get used to these 5AM wake-up calls!
I was so nervous that I woke up at 4:45, no alarm. Pants, shoes, oatmeal, and out the door before I had time to remember I was tired. I showed up at the race venue with plenty of time to spare, and garnered lots of confused attention as I sat 100m from the start line, dripping sweat on to my stationary trainer.
“Do you think he already raced?”
“What is that guy doing?”
“Does he know how long this TT is? He’s already trying way too hard…” were a few of the comments I heard from people riding by on their way to the start line. I noticed, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. I know what works for me, and I’m going to stick to it, whether you like it or not.
I rolled (not blasted) off the start line, and settled in to a hard but sustainable pace for the first part of the effort: 10 minutes into a ripping headwind. Ouch. I made it through, and had already caught my minute-man before Turn 1, 5 miles in. I then prepared for the gradual climb up to the top of the course. As a climber, an uphill is no problem. I was more worried about the steep, and somewhat technical descent. It was more technical than I realized, too, and I came around a blind corner at 45 mph with my heart in my mouth! Whew. Deep breath. Still 10 miles to go.
I headed out on to the second loop of the lollipop course, and now there was no holding back. I gave it everything I had in those last 20 minutes, and when I finally crossed the finish line, my face was covered in salt, sweat, snot, and everything else that my body tries to rid itself of during an all-out effort.
13 seconds; I won by just 13 seconds. 31 km, 40 minutes of suffering and pain, months of training, planning, worrying, and finally executing…it all came down to 13 seconds. It is an honor to be a 3x Wisconsin State TT Champion, but I am more proud of my effort than anything else. Going 30 mph by yourself is hard – pushing yourself for 40 minutes, alone, out on the open road, with nothing to motivate you but your own mind, is even harder.
Elgin RR
Was this a road race, or a crit?
78 miles – road race.
3.7-mile circuit – road race…kinda? Circuit race-ish?
Non-stop attacks for the first hour – crit.
Liquid gels was the only sustenance I saw being consumed – crit.
Normalized power of 303W – crit, right?
Well, after nearly 3 hours, many failed attacks and one successful one, I crossed the line in 11th place, more happy to have stayed upright than anything else. After months of training, racing, traveling, and sacrifice, the last thing I wanted to do was crash out in a race just four days before Nationals – and it nearly happened.
A few laps into the race, the field squeezed through a right-hand turn just before the start of the course’s main climb, a short, punchy hill with a maximum grade over 15% – it was barely ‘big-ringable’. As I sprinted over the top of the climb, I heard the blood-curdling cracks of broken carbon and helmets and bodies hitting the ground behind me. Ouch. I hope everyone is OK. I didn’t hear much about the crash after the race, and I didn’t see or hear any ambulances, so I think everyone made it out OK.
An hour into the race, and I’ve already missed the break. A few riders got up the road, and they quickly got up to a 30-second gap. My saving grace: the big American pro team missed the break too. So for the next hour, I sat-in and waited for the catch. If and when the catch was made, the winning break would go. I knew it would happen, most of the field knew it would happen, but only a few guys would be good enough to make it. Today, I wasn’t one of them.
It all came down to positioning, being in the right place at the right time. As has happened so many times before, I was close, but not close enough. The catch was made, and 2 minutes later, the winning break was gone. I was sitting 20th wheel when it happened, but I needed to be Top 10. I realized my mistake almost instantly, and attacked out of the field to get across. I didn’t make it more than halfway before the field chased me down and I resigned to the back of the field. I was pissed, but there was still a long way to go, and I wanted to get away.
At one lap to go, the field was strung out, and I knew I needed to go. I wound it up in the 53×11, and was about to attack when a rider swerved out of the line, right in front of me – he was in his biggest gear too. We had the same idea.
30 seconds and 800 W later, we had a gap, and only one lap to go. I pulled as hard as I could – I actually dropped my breakaway companions twice, when I pulled up the climbs – but it was a flat finish and I wasn’t expecting to win the sprint. My gears slipped in the last corner – I wasn’t going to win the sprint anyway – and I rolled in at the back of my group in 11th place.
An hour later, my brother and I are on our way to U23 Nationals in Hagerstown, Maryland. While missing the winning break was a bummer, I didn’t flat, I didn’t crash, and I think I might have actually had fun.
Up next: U23 National TT