Whitewater Road Race

UWW Road Race. 54 miles.

Coming off a successful day at the track on Saturday, my legs were still feeling the sprints but I also had no expectations coming in, so no real pressure. My knee feels like it may be on the upswing, but it's not 100% and the lack of anything resembling training for the last couple of weeks had me prepared for the worst.

The omnium competition for the weekend was coming to a head, and the contenders were conspiring with and against each other, and generally knew who they needed to mark. I had one teammate in the race, and neither of us had raced the other events so were free to try and capitalize on how things unfolded.

The race started off in a fairly tame manner. For most of the day there was a rider or two up the road, but several attempts were slowly brought back without any real coordinated chasing. I found myself staying in the front few positions most of the time, a couple of times pulling the group; not chasing the breaks, necessarily, and there was no real reason for me to ever be at the front, but I was feeling pretty decent and wanted to keep things moving. I had to get back for 24MOTAB in a timely fashion, after all. I charged up a hill at one point and found myself with a little gap. This might have been a good chance to try to sneak away, but a couple minutes of dangling there confirmed that my lack of threshold work would be an obstacle and I willingly came back to the peloton.

Eventually it became clear that the lone rider who had gotten away would not be caught, and the field began ignoring the time gap and settling in for the finish. I was still feeling remarkably good; I was enjoying the course, the race length, making sure to eat and drink enough. It dispelled my (mostly irrational) fears about losing all my fitness from being off the bike. I certainly don't have the speed I did earlier in the year, but I wasn't totally back to square one.

In the closing miles there was some shuffling and surging, but nothing too hard to deal with and I kept myself in the top ten. With about a mile to go, somebody jumped and the group followed. I got swarmed a little bit but didn't panic, and opened up my sprint at the bottom of the finishing climb. I must have timed it well, because I was gaining positions and was almost clear of the group toward the top! One rider was ahead, but unfortunately I started to fade in the last 20 or 30 meters and held on as best I could. I ended up taking fifth in the field sprint, and with the winner soloing in that bumped me just out of the money at 6th place.

I can't help but think that maybe all the time off the bike has caused some sort of inadvertent mini-peak in my fitness, or at least some freshness in the legs. This was my best sprint and certainly best finish of an otherwise mediocre season, and is a welcome morale booster. Hopefully I can start putting in some harder work in the next few weeks and keep the ball rolling.

Next weekend is the Elm Grove crit, which is a fun one if I remember correctly from last year.