On the drive down to Mason Lake, it was raining quite a bit, constantly. At about 40 degrees, I knew it wasn’t going to be a super-fun race. Plus, racing out here without teammates sort of sucks. Teams in the NW actually employ useful tactics, and being alone against a field composed of about 30% First Rate Mortgage riders is a pretty tough billing.
I was also trying out my new carbon wheels with Zipp brake pads. Unfortunately, I was having a few problems with them that distracted me for the whole race. First, the braking sort of sucked. Maybe this was just the downpour, but when I touched them lightly, they just made a small scraping sound and nothing happened. When I really locked them up, I got sort of halfway decent stopping power, but certainly not what I’m used to. Is this normal? I’d actually really like to know, and I don’t have much experience with it. Also, something was making noise in my wheels, even without pedaling. Pretty annoying. Finally, the powertap rear hub wasn’t working at all, so I got no useful power data, which is really a shame.
In any event, I was feeling pretty timid about my brakes, so I hung out at the back for the first 3 laps. Nothing really went, but I did lose feeling in my hands by the start of the second (of 5 laps). This became a problem around lap 4, when I stopped being able to reliably shift because my hands were so numb. This has never happened to me with 2009 Campag stuff, as the levers are very distinct (unlike Shimano) and easy to shift independently. I was pretty seriously considering pulling out because I was worried about frostbite after I hadn’t been able to feel anything in them for about an hour.
The last lap, I moved from the back to the front for a few miles. I didn’t mean to be at the front, but I wanted to move up, and there wasn’t a good spot to slot in out of the wind, so I soft pedaled on the front for a while. Eventually, some folks came around and I got to sit in again. With about 10 miles to go, I went sort of hard on a hill, and ended up with about a 20-30 second gap. Since there were no First Rate Mortgage guys with me, I sat up and waited. And waited. And waited. I was getting very seriously impatient with the race at this point (seriously bored, wet, numb hands). So I just put my head down and forged on for about 10-15 minutes. I thought there were only 4 miles left, and thought after a couple of miles that I might seriously hold them off. Unfortunately, there were about 7 miles to go, so I got caught with about 4 left. I moved myself back on to the front, and with a kilometer to go, someone got about a 40 meter gap. Since I was still feeling great (I’m pretty surprised about that, actually - a solo attack with a couple miles of recovery should have tired me out), I stupidly jumped on it. The guy I caught peeled off immediately, and I ended up leading out the field from 400-200 meters. At 200 to go, a bunch of people came around, and I ended up sprinting from the saddle for 8th. 400 meters is definitely too long for me in a sprint right now - I hope to improve that a great deal as the season goes on.
All in all, I was a bit mad at myself for being so stupid tactically - I was just so bored, felt pretty good, and just wanted to do anything to liven up the race and take my mind off of my freezing hands. I actually had to have someone else help me get my car unlocked, since I couldn’t work my hands. Warming up my hands after the race was one of the most painful things I’ve been through in the last couple years, oddly enough - 20 minutes of pretty intense pain. I won’t be wearing those gloves again below 50 degrees anytime soon.
0 comments:
Post a Comment