RyanHarne.com

Following the first collegiate race weekend of the year, I have been launching through a variety of academic deadlines with practically no time spent on the bike. It may take me a few more of these weekends away to adjust to the absence and the returning frenzy. Though I did do some work while in Raleigh & Chapel Hill this past weekend, my attention was on bike racing, for obvious reasons. On the plus side, I have an active noise cancellation program running now and hours of academic determination to be proud about. I suppose.

So, the first race weekend was hosted by NC State - the Wolfpack Cycling Classic, featuring a road course and a crit for 2008. In the C group, my road race was 36 miles long while my crit was 30 minutes. My performance was probably some of my best ever, knowing how well I generally ride over those distances. However, from day one, I’ve heard that the smart riders win and I made a few bad decisions due to my inexperience that kept me from a podium finish.

I cannot sprint. Partly because I rarely practice those skills and partly because I am significantly better at endurance riding or climbing, my legs put out little power in those final moments in comparison to other C riders, even smaller guys. The road race would have been my time to shine. The pace was terribly slow to begin with, really slow, Blacksburg-Sunday-morning-group-ride slow. Just about 6 miles into the course, I made it to the front and picked up the pace, and picked up the pace a lot. My first bad decision was in not realizing that these guys would be unable to ride at this pace were it not for me pulling.

When a break would take off, it would never get more than about 10 seconds on us. Since I was pulling most of the time and my efforts to get someone else up front were unfruitful, I would wait until a flat or slight negative grade to pick up speed to reign in the break. All of my quick chases, in my low TT position on the tip of the saddle, were at 30 mph or more. What I should have done was make my own break - ramp up the gas to open a gap so that the front riders would lose my draft - and just go. I never made that move. And it really cost me. At the finishing sprint, I began in 2nd place but after 200 more meters, I was pushed back to 9th. I cannot sprint but I could have opened a huge gap that would have practically guaranteed me a victory.

The crit was the same though I didn’t pull for much of it. There were opportunities for me to break but I was unsure of my capacity to hold the field off. After the fact, I realized it wouldn’t have been difficult. The smart riders win - a proverb with truth and great legitimacy. For the record, I tried a break in the final lap and came around the final turn in 1st - just 100m to go! - but ended up sixth. Now do you understand how terrible my sprinting is?

I will take 2 race weekends off for academic and Atlanta purposes and then return for the cross-conference competition in Philadelphia. Hopefully, I won’t miss any other race weekends after that event and hopefully I can begin a better training regiment for those last and determining seconds.

But, I had a great time and bike racing is a blast. Crashes were generally kept to the B groups but a bunch of C riders went down early into the road race. Rollers and some encouraging words on the Blacksburg group rides have taught me how to handle such unfortunate circumstances. Crash or no crash, gold medal or no gold medal, sprint or no sprint - I enjoyed racing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.