Waterloo Classic

Today was the Waterloo classic, the second stage of the Tour of America's Dairyland. It's a long crit course, at 1.6 miles. Long stretches with no turns kept the average speed high, but it was not a very intense race for the cat 3s. Windy conditions kept breaks from sticking.

But the race was dominated by a series of crashes which even continued after the finish line. I avoided all the crashes, but I saw several. I seemed to be unable to maintain a decent position in this race, and finished 17th out of 30 starters.

I was carrying a video camera for peleton-pix.com. Watch for that to be uploaded when it's complete.

This was my first race with the new powertap. Data:

And then there are the good days

I'm back from my one day vacation. I'm rejuvenated. (juvenated before, lost it, and then juvenated again. rejuvenated.)

Nothing like a performance enhancing red bull to get things moving. I got my race bike back from the shop. The wheels are true, and the cracked carbon is all covered in epoxy.

Awesome.

I started my ride just as the red bull was really kicking in. After the warmup, I did my prescribed 30 minute effort. Train your weaknesses they say. I've been doing a lot of 20 and 30 minute work. Even though I'm still relatively weak for these durations, it's fun to do them on oft-traveled bike routes. Most people aren't really doing hard efforts, so you just cruise past people with a 10mph speed differential.

Awesome.

After I cooled down from that, I unleashed a sprint just for fun. I haven't measured one in a couple of months. Because I've been training my weaknesses. And I don't race with a computer. Anyway, in one try, I increased my best 5 second effort by over 150 watts.

Awesome.

And I was paranoid that I was losing strength with all this long training. Then I saw a comparitively fast looking guy. Ususally on training rides, I'm able to pretty much ignore everybody else. But I was on the home stretch with no further particular plan, so I chased him down. When I passed him, he sped up. It was on. Definitely not a race, but fun. He hung on my wheel for a mile or two. I rode on. I had a gap. I rode on. He was gone.

Awesome.

CSG wants help picking out a bike.

Awesome.