Saturday, August 25, 2007

BCMCA Cedar 63K RR - 1st

RR on Saturday... not terribly hard, less work than my typical threshold workout (aka Anmore tour...), but ended up doing a big sprint off the front to take 1st in my age group and 2nd overall.

The course is 21km, done three times. Rolling small hills, about 200m of climbing per lap. But nothing high enough to take more than 20-30 seconds to get over. Slightly downhill to flat, straight finish.

This race was run as an Australian Pursuit. Each age category (70, 60-69, 50-59, 40-49, 30-39) is started separately, oldest first. The number of minutes you wait after the previous group is your age category divided by 10. The object is to catch the group ahead and not get caught by the group(s) behind.

You are effectively racing two different races. For first in your age group. And for first overall. These objectives lead to an interesting race as you need to help your group work to catch the next (and not get caught.) But that means you'll have less left over for the finish within your category.

In this race our group (50-59) managed to stay off the younger guys and caught up to the 2nd last 60 year old (teamate John Sullivan) with about 3km to go. With the last one (Dave Mercer) about 300m ahead. Unfortunately by that time the rest of our group was starting to tire or was more interested in getting ready for our finish. So he was able to stay off and finish just ahead (50m) of our sprint finish.

I made the a jump at a little over 600m. I saw what I *thought* was the 200m sign and went 200m out from that... but it was a 400m sign, which I soon realized... but still managed to keep the competition off. There where three other riders who all have, in theory (and practice), better wattage in the 10-20 second range.. But by the time they (Duane Martindale and Mike Sevcov) got back on my wheel and went for 50 seconds, they where starting to tire and didn't quite manage to pass me at the line.. although apparently it was close...

The year to year comparison on this course is interesting. Norm/Avg power 228/180 went to 276/247. And overall I remember being quite fatigued over the last lap last year. This year the last lap was easy. I even got off the front for a couple of km. But couldn't get anyone else to come and work with me. So drifted back.

Bikely route for Cedar RR.

Current BCMCA results and individual races.

Cedar RR:

Duration: 1:38:13
Work: 1457 kJ
TSS: 121.7 (intensity factor 0.862)
Norm Power: 276
VI: 1.12
Distance: 63.291 km
Elevation Gain: 592 m
Elevation Loss: 595 m
Grade: -0.0 % (-3 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 937 247 watts
Heart rate: 0 185 154 bpm
Cadence: 29 138 86 rpm
Speed: 9 65.6 38.7 kph
Pace 0:55 6:40 1:33 min/km
Altitude: 98 156 129 m
Crank Torque: 0 86.8 27.3 N-m
Temperature: 19 30 21.6 Celsius




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