I unquestionably did very poorly at the A&M Criterium, having been pulled 9 minutes into a 30 minute race. It was a bit discouraging, to say the least. As a rather analytical person, I have trouble with judging myself in a kind light after a failure that must be attributed to me in one way or another.
Well, what went wrong? Daylight Savings, waking at 5AM, and my natural propensity for insomnia got me a full two hours of bed sleep, so that could have definitely been better. Also, when we got there, I had trouble registering, since the guy doing that didn't show up until about 20 minutes before the race; and I accordingly spent a lot of the time leading up to it running around instead of getting ready or mentally prepared, and then ended up on the starting line while hearing nature's call. None of those situations are ideal.
I suppose a lot of skill in dealing with this will come with more race experience. Either I will become better at preparing for races, or I will become better at mentally dealing with that sort of physical and mental stress caused by those sorts of pre-race conditions. (Hopefully, both of those skills will develop).
Outside of that, my leg (the injured one, which has atrophied a bit and has a calf full of scar tissue) is bothering me. I dunno why, it comes and goes. I hate wondering if I'll be in pain like that forever. Additionally, today I felt more strongly the emotional problems in our team structure, which isn't always super supportive. Sometimes I feel like I could just hang up my jersey indefinitely and some people wouldn't miss me. I know that's not entirely true, but a more psychologically developed team would have devices in place to prevent those feelings from occuring. I wish I had the resources to change our team for the better in that respect, but the saying "it takes a village" has validity. One person can't make a team. Regardless, I definitely appreciate the support from people like Sean, Michael, Jacob, and Miguel. (Update: also guys like Clay and Kenneth. I feel compelled to complete a name list when I start one.)
On the Upside, I really enjoyed meeting people from all the other teams. I met some nice guys from MSU, and I really enjoyed meeting the Texas State team; which is full of friendly, laid-back people. I'll enjoy seeing them again, and as always the A&M guys were great. Also, I met one of the photographers shooting the race, and I look forward to seeing his work from today. (Update: I found some pictures of me.)
I should chill out on judging myself so harshly, but it is discouraging to see teammates who have been racing and training as long as I have meet with seemingly immediate success. Then again, most of them haven't been injured, don't have maladaptive physiologies, or have come from more athletic backgrounds. All I can really do is note the things that prevent my success and attempt to overcome them. Hopefully experience and time will make me fast.
Showing posts with label post-race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post-race. Show all posts
08 March 2009
07 March 2009
La Journée de la course et après la.
Wow, it's been quite a while, and my apologies for the delays in writing. Life has been hectic for the last couple of weeks, marred by issues with school (had to drop that photo class over camera issues), my family, and my living situation.
Before I get started, though, I want to just acknowledge some of the people who really helped me out over the last couple of weeks; chiefly my good friends who were there when I needed to talk or get out of the house, and the people at school (surtout le département français) who were flexible with the problems I was having. It really made a big difference to just have that bit of support.
Anyway, onto a Walburg post-race report. The wind was even worse than predicted, with gusts hitting a ludicrous 35-40 MPH! Some of our riders didn't even race in it because of the rough weather. At the end, only Josh and I ended up riding in the group. I felt I was as prepared as I could be, considering the hardships of the preceding week and my inexperience, but that didn't equate to immediate success.
The race began with a "neutral roll-out", which means that from the parking lot and meeting area, the race begins slowly and noncompetitively, with all of the riders moving to the beginning of the race area in formation before the agressive riding begins at a designated point (in this case, coming out of a turn). In this instance, however, I was being treated agressively in the pack during the roll-out, with people riding closer to me than they would during the race, and passing me over the center-line (which was against the rules in this race and in several other races, for safety reasons involving open road races). I am not sure if this struck me as unusual due to my inexperience, or because the other people did not have very good peloton etiquette. It's always hard to tell in a Category 5 race.
Anyway, I was unsure what to do in response to that, and had accordingly been sifted from mid-pack to being closer in the back by the end of that rollout. Being in the back of the pack is rough, especially with other inexperienced riders. The guy in front of me was keen on slamming his brakes, so I didn't want to stay and closer than a foot from his wheel. This presents a paradox, though:
In a race such as Walburg, with horrible crosswind, it is essential to the rider to find the advantage of a group's aerodynamics to remain at speed. The peloton can go much faster than a single rider, because they can distribute and break up the wind more easily, with only people on the outside of the group having to deal with it directly. If you do not want to deal with the wind, just get out of it and stay inside the group. I was doing this for a few miles, but the hazards of staying too close to those in front of me fond of quick deceleration began to cost me that aerodynamic edge. The cutting wind began to erode the peloton's integrity, slowly but surely. Every time a crosswind blasted us, the guys at the end would shudder and try to hang on. Right as the tail end containing myself began to string out a bit after a quick accelleration by the main group, a crosswind came again and literally blew me two feet to the right. In that moment I knew the group was lost, and I jumped up out of the saddle to try and catch them, but the lack of shelter from the wind was costing me more in effort to catch the group than they were spending to leave me there.
Anyway, from a competitive standpoint, the race didn't go terribly well. I later found out I was my category's Lantern Rouge, finishing near half an hour behind my teammate who started at the front of the race. I wonder how much staying at the front could have helped me in the race, but the important part is that I learned from it and will try my best not to let that happen again in the future.
Outside of that, I had a lot of fun, and I got to eat a "World Famous" Walburg Meatball Sandwich (along with like two loaves of free sourdough table bread and three sugar packets) soon after the race. I'm not sure what about the sandwich qualified it for world fame, but it did in fact taste like a meatball sandwich, and was in that respect very satisfying. However, a little chip got knocked out of my bike's paint on Josh's bike rack. It's a bummer, but whatever, battle scars are cool.
In the future, I'll strive to make my race reports more detailed, and include information from my Cyclocomputer, etc.
We'll have one soon enough since the A&M Criterium is tomorrow!
Before I get started, though, I want to just acknowledge some of the people who really helped me out over the last couple of weeks; chiefly my good friends who were there when I needed to talk or get out of the house, and the people at school (surtout le département français) who were flexible with the problems I was having. It really made a big difference to just have that bit of support.
Anyway, onto a Walburg post-race report. The wind was even worse than predicted, with gusts hitting a ludicrous 35-40 MPH! Some of our riders didn't even race in it because of the rough weather. At the end, only Josh and I ended up riding in the group. I felt I was as prepared as I could be, considering the hardships of the preceding week and my inexperience, but that didn't equate to immediate success.
The race began with a "neutral roll-out", which means that from the parking lot and meeting area, the race begins slowly and noncompetitively, with all of the riders moving to the beginning of the race area in formation before the agressive riding begins at a designated point (in this case, coming out of a turn). In this instance, however, I was being treated agressively in the pack during the roll-out, with people riding closer to me than they would during the race, and passing me over the center-line (which was against the rules in this race and in several other races, for safety reasons involving open road races). I am not sure if this struck me as unusual due to my inexperience, or because the other people did not have very good peloton etiquette. It's always hard to tell in a Category 5 race.
Anyway, I was unsure what to do in response to that, and had accordingly been sifted from mid-pack to being closer in the back by the end of that rollout. Being in the back of the pack is rough, especially with other inexperienced riders. The guy in front of me was keen on slamming his brakes, so I didn't want to stay and closer than a foot from his wheel. This presents a paradox, though:
In a race such as Walburg, with horrible crosswind, it is essential to the rider to find the advantage of a group's aerodynamics to remain at speed. The peloton can go much faster than a single rider, because they can distribute and break up the wind more easily, with only people on the outside of the group having to deal with it directly. If you do not want to deal with the wind, just get out of it and stay inside the group. I was doing this for a few miles, but the hazards of staying too close to those in front of me fond of quick deceleration began to cost me that aerodynamic edge. The cutting wind began to erode the peloton's integrity, slowly but surely. Every time a crosswind blasted us, the guys at the end would shudder and try to hang on. Right as the tail end containing myself began to string out a bit after a quick accelleration by the main group, a crosswind came again and literally blew me two feet to the right. In that moment I knew the group was lost, and I jumped up out of the saddle to try and catch them, but the lack of shelter from the wind was costing me more in effort to catch the group than they were spending to leave me there.
Anyway, from a competitive standpoint, the race didn't go terribly well. I later found out I was my category's Lantern Rouge, finishing near half an hour behind my teammate who started at the front of the race. I wonder how much staying at the front could have helped me in the race, but the important part is that I learned from it and will try my best not to let that happen again in the future.
Outside of that, I had a lot of fun, and I got to eat a "World Famous" Walburg Meatball Sandwich (along with like two loaves of free sourdough table bread and three sugar packets) soon after the race. I'm not sure what about the sandwich qualified it for world fame, but it did in fact taste like a meatball sandwich, and was in that respect very satisfying. However, a little chip got knocked out of my bike's paint on Josh's bike rack. It's a bummer, but whatever, battle scars are cool.
In the future, I'll strive to make my race reports more detailed, and include information from my Cyclocomputer, etc.
We'll have one soon enough since the A&M Criterium is tomorrow!
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