Saturday, May 24, 2008

BCMCA Cedar RR - 3rd/4th


This is the alternate Cedar RR course. About 7.5km. We where supposed to do 9 laps but (fortunately) there was a mis-count and we only did eight. This is a mostly flatish/rolling course with a couple of sharp short sprint climbs. Michel Pelletier and I did it as a park-n-ride from Horseshoe Bay. Ferry over to the island and then about a 15km commute down to the venue. Arriving (well warmed up) with about 20 minutes to spare.

Right from about the 1km point two of the riders in my group (50-59) took off and we then did the short sprint climbs and by the time we where two thirds of the way around 5 of the 11 starters had dropped off. The 6 of us remaining setup a pace line and kept the pace to over 40km/h for the first three laps. One rider dropped out so he could get some pictures... The rest of us kept the pace fairly constant, dropping the average just slightly over each lap until the end of the race.

We caught pretty much everyone ahead of us and kept away from everyone else. So our group of five took the top five spots overall. Only Gerry Van Ganz was in my catagory and he sprinted away from the field to take first overall and first in our catagory. My legs where just on the verge of stopping from cramps (hot day, probably didn't drink enough, although I did go through two bottles of sports drink in 1:30...!!) so I was happy with a fourth overall and second in my age catagory.

Tomorrow if I can drag my carcass out of bed at about 4:00AM we will be back to the island on the 6:30AM ferry to do a 33km TT..

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