Spring Valley RR: cat 4

First things first: I like this course. It's fast, and curvy, and not too windy, and the big hill is just on the cusp between a power rise and a sit-down-and-grind-it-out honest-to-goodness-climb. After that hill (and the ensuing false flat), the road levels out and even drops a bit, and suddenly there's the 200m to go sign and if it's your last lap it's time to wind up with whatever's left. The other significant hill really only becomes noticeable after two or three laps, when your legs get a little weary and you hit it and think "now where did this come from?"

The course is 9.2 miles (that's 14.8 km to you, Adam), and the 4s race was five laps. We rolled (climbed) to the start-finish line for staging, where a few key players were missing. Most notably, Dayton was down to five from their usual 10-12. But Abundance and Cyclesport had the usual suspects, and there were a number of solo racers who would be quite active during the race (from Team Hungry, Buckeye Cycling, National Engineering/COBC, Echelon, Justin from Jeni's Ice Cream, and Mark from Ohio Orthopedic/Moro). I mentally committed to not doing anything rash for at least two laps, and we were off.

And for two laps, I sat between 6th and 10th wheel, taking it easy as we cruised around the course. On the hill I stayed toward the front but didn't kill it. A few pairs went off the front, but I made no moves: it was early, and they were always missing a key component (in this case, a CycleSport or Abundance rider).

And then, at the top of the hill beginning the third lap, Rodney Roof from CycleSport drilled it -- hard. I hesitated, but then Ian Newcomb from Abundance went and I thought here we go -- time to race. We bridged up to Rodney with an Echelon rider (in his first cat 4 race after riding away solo from the 5s for a few weeks running) and started to swap turns. We got a good gap, and a decent rotation, and suddenly we had over a 100m gap. It held there for a while, and then just like that the field was out of sight.

And then we came up on the 3s. I happened to be pulling as we came up on them, and then the driver of our pace car was telling us to hold on, hold on, hold on until he could neutralize the 3s for us to get around. Hold on? We knew we had a good gap, but didn't know how much it was, and we needed to keep building it or at least maintain it: if we could get to the top of the hill and start the 4th lap still out front, we had good odds of being the top 4 finishers.

After what seemed like an eternity, we got to roll past the 3s and get back up to speed (the 4s stayed out front of them the rest of the day). We still felt pretty good, since we knew our 4s field would have to get past them to get near us. Apparently they had no similar holdup, though, because halfway up the hill we were reeled back in. So close. I think.

I left the fourth lap for others to duke it out and caught my breath. On the final lap, it got punchy again, and another CycleSport rider went off, again with the Echelon rider. As we got closer to the line, most folks were watching the winner of the past two races, Andrew Prickett (Dayton). We pretty much stuck him on the front: no one wanted to pull him up to the front of the field.

The finale started to play out before the sharp turn to the hill, when a Buckeye rider took a hard dig, and from there it was a full-on chase. We made it around the corner safely (I smelled burning carbon all day long in that turn), and I thought okay, one minute, maybe two, of excruciating pain to see what I've got. I big-ringed it up the hill, not getting passed (much), but not gaining on too many others. Ian, who's got a good kick and whose wheel I'd been watching, had a shifting problem, so I left him earlier than planned. Through my lactic haze, I saw young Jonathan Freter (Turner) scamper up in a gear I just didn't have. He caught the two breakaways before the line and won a well-earned victory. After the crest of the hill, I put it in gear and tried to sprint, but I'm not sure my butt left the saddle. I managed to pip Mark Farmer (Ohio Orthopedic/Moro) for 6th (sorry, Mark!), and then went about trying to stuff my lungs back into my body.

Oh, and because of a morning mechanical to my lighter rear wheel, I raced the PowerTap. So Chip, I've got some data. I'll spare you most of the boring details, but for the "sprint" I was putting out a whopping 496 watts, my speed was 51 kph (31.7 mph), and my heartrate at the line was 198. I looked like this. I'm beat.