2011 Season Wrap-up

2011 is coming to a close and I wanted to wrap up the racing I didn't get to in my previous posts. I had a great season this year, definitely my best yet. I already wrote about my wins at Elkhorn, Rist Canyon and Mt. Greylock, but I had a lot of other good rides in there as well which I didn't get around to writing about. Some of them ended with good results and some didn't, but overall I felt like I was on a higher level this year - in addition to the local/regional races I won, I was in the mix at a lot of the NRCs we went to instead of just trying to survive, which was a great feeling. Of course, I'd still like to do better and spend more time thinking about how to go faster and what I could have done differently in races I lost than I do resting on the laurels of the races where I did well, but I think this is probably true of most bike racers unless they're already winning the Tour de France.

The last race I posted about was Elkhorn - after that the team headed to the National Championships in Augusta, Georgia, a place that can only be described as hell on earth. Scorching hot, humid conditions, narrow high-traffic roads and endless strip malls make it a place to which I hope I never go back. The racing was decent enough, though, with an 80-km downtown crit and 120km road race over a rolling course on a nearby army base. As a side note, why on earth is the National Champs crit always 80km long? That ends up being just under 2hrs long. I am all for longer races, especially at championship events, but it's pretty ridiculous for a Championship to be nearly double the length of most normal events of the same type. I think it would make a lot more sense to standardize the championship crit at 90 minutes. And the road race at 200km ;) As far as the racing went, I burned up my whole matchbook in the crit in a late break with a couple of other guys, but we got caught with about five laps to go. In the road race, the team rode perfectly with DB getting into the early break and Dan Harm and I conserving energy for the final, with Steve and Ian (pulling double duty after racing U23s the previous day) helping us out hugely with bottles and ice socks. We were a little out-manned in the final, however, and despite our best attempts Dan and I didn't make it into the winning move. It was an extremely frustrating and negative final but I salvaged what I could in the 1km uphill sprint to the line and came home with 12th (the top 5 survived from the late break). My best showing at Nats so far, but definitely not what we wanted out of the race - I've replayed the last 2 laps of that race in my head about a thousand times. After that we had a few weeks off from big races until Cascade, during which I did a few local crits.

Local Crit Action
More Local Crit Action
EVEN MORE local crit action

I've typically found it difficult to prepare for Cascade because you have to deal with heat and moderate altitude when you race there. Luckily it was pretty hot in Seattle during the first part of July this year, and I also experimented with some hypoxic workouts to prepare for the altitude. It paid off as I had a great ride there (aside from a couple of terrible TTs) and I was in the mix in all of the road races, making the splits over the climbs and getting into moves off the front. I never got in THE move, unfortunately, but it was great to finally be in the actual mix in that race instead of just hanging on for dear life (or getting time cut like I did in 2008). I had especially good legs on the last day's Awbrey Butte circuit race - I burned some matches getting off the front before trying to ride a little smarter and it felt good to make the split over Archie Briggs every time, even when the group was pretty small, watch Francisco Mancebo ride the break back almost single-handed, and try to get in moves.

I finished somewhere in the 30s overall right along with the top amateurs, my best result yet, but I definitely would have traded overall consistency for one day in the break. The problem at these climbing NRCs, though, is that all the big teams are so intent on trying to get away from a climbing hitter like Mancebo that they keep trying to get the perfect break going. Instead of letting something go early that may not be exactly perfect for them, but which would put pressure on Mancebo and RC, they keep attacking and attacking trying to get the perfect break going. This actually ensures that the race stays together and nothing goes until very late, by which point it is too late to pose an actual threat to RC and everybody is pumped for the finish anyway. In a way it's exactly what's been happening at local stage races recently - instead of sitting back and gambling and forcing the leaders' team to work from a very early stage in the race they play into the leaders' hands by keeping everything together until it's too late to put in any damaging attacks. They almost cracked RC on Awbrey Butte, but Bissell missed the move and their efforts to try to get into it ensured that RC had just barely enough guys to keep the race in Mancebo's hands. Anyway, long story short, it was basically impossible to get into THE move every day because there was SO much attacking you had to basically have 10 Steve Fishers to get into THE move.

Cascade Photo Montages from Winger Studios

After Cascade we had some more down time before heading to Chicago for the Tour of Elk Grove, a big-money NRC/UCI stage race. It was a crazy race because all 200 miles of racing that weekend took place within about an 8-square-mile area of the town of Elk Grove. The courses were crazy circuits with a ton of turning and doubling back on each other, and we did something like 900 turns in the 150km road race. The race was crazy fast and all the turning made it like a big 150km crit. I was on the rivet the whole day and with about 4 laps to go I felt like I had to get off the front, or I was going to get dropped responding to all the accelerations out of the corners. I got to the front and attacked at what happened to be the perfect time - Christian Helmig and a few other guys were off the front - I got up to them and then after a short period Freddy Rodriguez bridged up, along with a bunch of other super fast guys. Pretty soon the group was 15 or 20 guys and that turned out to be the bike race as all the big teams were represented and the pack sat up.

Tour of Elk Grove Prologue

It wasn't really any easier off the front and I spent the next few laps trying to save as much energy as possible while avoiding getting yelled. It turns out big time pros get real cranky when you don't pull through EVERY PULL, even when you don't have 3 teammates in the move like they do, and especially when you point out that they aren't pulling through either. I also wasn't getting any bottles as the Comms never brought our car up from the caravan and despite several attempts I couldn't snake any from the feed zone as there were no neutral feeders. With about a lap to go I was cramping extremely badly and could barely follow the accelerations. I made it to about 1km to go before my legs seized up completely and I had to settle with 20th or so. While they can be painful, I can normally ride through cramps if the race situation is good and there is light at the end of the tunnel for suffering through it. But this time the cramps were worse than I've ever experienced and my legs simply stopped working and wouldn't be told otherwise. So I basically coasted the last km of the race; luckily we had a 15-min gap or something crazy like that. The next day was a 100km circuit along the same lines as the previous day over some of the same roads. I mixed it up trying to get off the front but in the end got caught in a crash with 1 lap to go. My teammates Steve and Gabe helped me out a ton getting around the last lap without losing too much time and I actually ended up moving up a few spots to finish 19th overall for the weekend, which was awesome as I'd never been in the top 20 at a NRC or UCI race before. I definitely got lucky with an attack at the right time, but that's how bike racing works sometimes - I definitely wish I'd been able to get adequate nutrition during the race so I could have contested the finale, but that's also how bike racing works sometimes. Elk Grove ended up being my last NRC race with the Elite team for the season as I wasn't able to do Univest, but I stacked up plenty more racing. I've already written about some of those days, but also did races like the Mt. Spokane Hillclimb in Eastern WA, where I took 2nd with a ton of help from Gabe, and then Green Mountain, where I tried to repay the favor in helping him win the KOM jersey at that race, while also taking home 17th on GC.

After some East Coast racing at GMSR, Mt. Greylock Hill Climb, and the Prospect Park Crit in NYC, I traveled down to the Caribbean to close out my season in Trinidad and Tobago. As I touched on earlier, racing there is a little hectic but still pretty dang hard and fast. I was riding with an international composite team with 2 Danes, 2 Dutch, 1 German, 1 Brit, a Colombian, and two Yanks, and we started off with a couple of crits in Trinidad's capital Port of Spain. After that we did a 4-day stage race on the sister island of Tobago, followed immediately by a one-day UCI road race. I had a couple of good rides in the first two road race stages, making the winning break on both days and taking 2nd on Stage 2, the hardest stage aside from the last day Tour of Tobago, with a bunch of steep, punchy climbs. After the Tour of Tobago I was scheduled to go do another couple of races back in Trinidad but due to some logistical snafus with the team I ended up just going home and calling it a season. It was a little bit of an anticlimactic ending to a great season, but overall I'm really happy with the way things went. I ended up with fewer races this year, 76 days as opposed to 94 in 2010, but obviously results are more important than my simple tally of race days. Results aside, I made some big steps up and it's pretty awesome to look back on the progress I've made in the past few years. Races where I used to just hang on for dear life I can now actually race, make splits, and be in the mix, and races where I used to be just in the mix I was able to win this year. That's a good feeling.