Nationals...Recon and Rest
No racing for me today so I decided to check out the road race course. I'm thinking that was not the best idea. Lately I have not been able to climb to save my life and this course.... damn. It's going to be a suffer fest. I'm thinking I want to make something happen at tomorrow's crit because I don't see it happening at the road race.
The course starts and finishes at Seven Springs Ski Resort. Bad sign #1. The first section is OK. There's one "moderate" climb up to the golf course which I don't think it will be too bad. Then, it's a nice downhill/rolling run to the beginning of a loop that we do 3 times. The loop is weird. It has about as much rhythm as me when I dance. You turn right onto the loop, go around a curve to find a short, steep roller. OK, not too bad, but to borrow a saying from Doug, the road is dead. About three miles in, you take a left turn (without much momentum)to hell and find yourself at the bottom of a half mile hill/climb. I've been trying to think of what, if any, climb it may resemble in New England...no particular one comes to mind. It hurt though and I was trying to take it easy. It's not exactly gradual. After that, it's just a lot of rollers and not a whole lot of momentum. After three joyous laps, we get to go back up the hill that we rode down. We take a slight detour near the top so that we have a bit of a descent before a finishing climb. I think it will be a race of attrition. Alas, I'll worry about that later. Tomorrow is the crit.
After my ride and some lunch, I headed out to the crit course to watch the Masters Men 55-59 race. Those guys were fast. They averaged over 26 mph. It was fun to watch as I have seen many of them racing in New England. Tom Officer was off the front for awhile, but he was reeled in. Lots of attacks. The eventual winner attacked with 9 laps to go and stayed away. Field sprint for 2nd place. From what I heard, it was the only race on the day that was not won in a field sprint. I don't think that our race will be quite so fast tomorrow, but hopefully it will be as aggressive.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully tomorrow will yield another good race tale.
The course starts and finishes at Seven Springs Ski Resort. Bad sign #1. The first section is OK. There's one "moderate" climb up to the golf course which I don't think it will be too bad. Then, it's a nice downhill/rolling run to the beginning of a loop that we do 3 times. The loop is weird. It has about as much rhythm as me when I dance. You turn right onto the loop, go around a curve to find a short, steep roller. OK, not too bad, but to borrow a saying from Doug, the road is dead. About three miles in, you take a left turn (without much momentum)to hell and find yourself at the bottom of a half mile hill/climb. I've been trying to think of what, if any, climb it may resemble in New England...no particular one comes to mind. It hurt though and I was trying to take it easy. It's not exactly gradual. After that, it's just a lot of rollers and not a whole lot of momentum. After three joyous laps, we get to go back up the hill that we rode down. We take a slight detour near the top so that we have a bit of a descent before a finishing climb. I think it will be a race of attrition. Alas, I'll worry about that later. Tomorrow is the crit.
After my ride and some lunch, I headed out to the crit course to watch the Masters Men 55-59 race. Those guys were fast. They averaged over 26 mph. It was fun to watch as I have seen many of them racing in New England. Tom Officer was off the front for awhile, but he was reeled in. Lots of attacks. The eventual winner attacked with 9 laps to go and stayed away. Field sprint for 2nd place. From what I heard, it was the only race on the day that was not won in a field sprint. I don't think that our race will be quite so fast tomorrow, but hopefully it will be as aggressive.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully tomorrow will yield another good race tale.
posted by Michelle at
4:39 PM
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