Race Report - KW Classic

Well it has been over two weeks since my last post and almost a week since my last race, so I think it's about time to write a post.

Last Thursday, I was coaxed into riding the local O-cup bike race. 9 laps of 6.5 km with a bunch of tight corners and a pretty steep climb. I thought "hey I own a bike, maybe I should do that!"

As is the tradition with O-cups, I registered about an hour before the registration closed and the next day my preparation began. The Friday before the race was the culmination of the last 6 weeks of training in the form of a 3 hour ride that included 4x30min just below LT with a hard run off the bike. That went well, but I would've preferred to have a bit more time to recover from it.

Anyways, Sunday came and I jumped out of bed at the crack of 6:15, demolished some power-cheerios and exploded out the front door to meet a couple of guys who were also racing. We rode south to he race and made it to the check in before it closed. Once we figured out how to mount our numbers on our jerseys, there was no turning back.

The warm ups came off with 10 minutes to go and with 9 minutes to go I was shivering almost as violently as the cycling that was about to be dealt out by the likes of Tim Rhodes.

The start was really anticlimactic. Just as soon as the pack got moving, there was a 180 degree turn around that we would have to take on at the start of every lap. Everybody was really jittery, especially a couple of equally inexperienced triathletes who obviously didn't realize bike races are about looking cool because they were wearing compression socks. I immediately saw that I was far superior, at least in fashion sense...

Once we got up to speed, the real fun began. Corners in a pack are pretty exciting, especially at 60km/h with people on either side of you. So yea, that happened. Then came the hill. I didn't get a good look at it the first time because some clown fell off his pedals and was subsequently ripped on by the entire field. Poor kid.

The next lap was about making my way to the front, because the pace felt so pedestrian that I was sure the people I was riding with would be dropped. The hill still felt pretty manageable at this point. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry, so I hopped out of the saddle and everything was gravy.

Lap three came and with it, a couple of accelerations that made the pack really jittery. People seemed to be slacking off half the time and sprinting the rest of the time. I was starting to get confused.

I can't quite remember if it was lap 4 or 5, but at some point I missed the memo that one of these accelerations would be the real deal. It was a downhill where people were just grinding the biggest gears. I wasn't feeling that kind of power in my legs, so I had no response. The field slipped by and as soon as I realized this, I set about the impossible task of bridging back to the pack.

It didn't take long for my entire body to be bathed in lactate. I put my head down and pedaled. And pedaled. I got to about 100m of the pack. A lap later, still 100m. One more lap. Still 100m. Then they started to slip away.

At this point I realized I wasn't going to be catching them, so I decided to wait for somebody to ride with. It had been about three laps since I'd seen a rear wheel up close, so I was pretty tired. The only problem was, nobody was in sight behind me.

The rest of the race wasn't that exciting. I was more worried about recovery at that point, with Welland half iron coming up on the 26th. I found a couple of guys to ride with and on the final lap, showed them how to ride up a hill and finished with a bit of dignity.

All said, I had a good time and learned a lot. I would definitely race more bike races, but I'd prefer to have some more specific training first.

Another thing I learned is how to clean water bottles that have been left with a bit of gatorade in them over the weekend. Rice, baking soda, dish soap, shake.

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