BCMCA Comox RR, TT, HC

Great weekend... Hot... but lots of fun.

Saturday was the Dove Creek RR. This was the Comox Cycling Club's race weekend, so BC Masters riiders fit in with their catagories. Up to age 54 raced in the A catagory, 55-69 in the B catagory and 70 and up in C.

Dove Creek is a 16km loop with a single short climb and some rolles (about 100m total climbing per loop.) We did four loops. I spent a large amount of time at the front... Which was a lot of fun, but I ran out of fluids (two bottles...) and ended up with leg twitches in the last lap, which made the final sprint a bit difficult. Pretty much everybody sprinted over me... But I had a good time regardless.

This morning was the 16km D0ve Creen ITT. Same course... I was hoping to beat my time from two years ago, 23:15. Managed 23:03. Average speed 42.4 which is not bad given the 108m of climbing. That was good enough to win the B catagory, the 55-59 Masters and 3rd overall masters.

This afternoon was the Mt Washington HC (abridged version.) This was 10km, 607m of climbing. But unlike Cypress or Seymour Hill Climbs which have a very steady and consistant grade, this has everything from short downhills up to 10-11%... I did it in 35:30, which I think was a couple of minutes faster than next over 55 BC Masters... 1st in B catagory, 1st 55-59 group.

While not an exact comparison, I looked up my climb from two years ago and last year... And then looked at the equivalent last 10.13km to compare times... Remember though that those had 6.3km and 427m of climbing BEFORE doing the last 10km that we did today...

• 2007 - 36:54/59:37 - fresh legs,
• 2008 - 41:08/1:07:37 - tired legs, RR day before
• 2009 - 35:30 - tired legs, RR day before, 16km ITT same day

So I would say I probably was on about the same form overall this year compared to two years ago, and definitely better than last year.

Also interesting is to compre to the Cypress HC a few weeks ago...

• Mt Washington 2007 - 58:37, 298PAvg, 306NP
• Cypress HC - 36:54, 288 PAvg, 299NP
• Mt Washington HC - 35:30, 266PAvg, 274NP

From this it looks like the tired legs cost me probably about 25watts overall. So estimated time to do this ride with fresh legs would be about 2:00 minutes faster.

The HC was fun, it started fast with Dave Mercer jumping to the front (except for some of the young A guys...) I stayed on his wheel for not quite a km... Mike Sevcov then went to the front and picked the picked the pace up a bit... He lasted almost 2km... seven minutes.. but I could see he was getting tired. Just as we where coming up to a slightly flatter bit (5-6% grade instead o 9-10% we where on..) I jumped past and got a good gap, pushing up to some juniors. I then worked with them to pull away from everyone else in my catagory (B and 55+ masters.)

I don't have the rest of the finishing times, I'll update when they are available.