WMSR_CAT 4

John Starvish     Posted Jul 17, 2009 6:36am

WMSR is a 3 day stage race w/ an ITT, Circuit Race and Points race at a track. Points are awarded for placement rather than time.

BRC: Starvish, Sweda, DiSciullo, Hebert, Rock.

ITT:

6.6 miles. I do 1 ITT a year (this one). I have no gear. My plan was top ten/ 60 seconds from the leader. Warmed up on the trainer w/ my deep dish carbons (my one advantage). Dismounted the bike from the trainer w/ 5 minutes before my start. Flat tire. Change out of wheels (losing my 11 for a 12 on the cassette). Made the start w/ 90 seconds to go. I felt strong, felt like I hit the inclines and the wind hard, recover on the downhills. Finish w/ a smile on my face.

Results put me @ 14th, 90 seconds from the leader, 68points for me, 100 for the leader. Cr@p. Confidence really took a digger here.

Circuit Race:

Hebert was sitting 7th after the ITT. Cambridge had 3 in the top 11. Threshold had Corey @ 2nd. Having no shot of picking up any major points in the crapshoot that is a field sprint, I decided this would be my first committed attack. The team discussed. I would go lap 1(4 laps total) if the move involved Threshold or Cambridge or both. If nothing happened lap 1, I was going to force the issue on lap 2. Race rolled out and an attack went off. Didn’t smell right and not the right mix. It was hauled back shortly. Hebert and I were top 10 on the back side of lap 1. About 5 or 6 miles in (8.8 per lap or so), Threshold went off the front w/ a Noreast guy. This was it. Time to go. I went and a guy from Hammer came w/ me. We got a gap. Up the first climb, Threshold dropped off. As we crested the climb, the gap was still there. The noreast guy looks at me “Are you serious about this?” “Yes.”. Off we went w/ the Hammer guy (brett). Brett disclosed to us on lap 2 that he was in 3rd after the ITT. Cr@p. We were committed at that point, so we gave it everything. The 2nd lap was full gas the whole way round. We worked really well together. Brett from Hammer is a strong man. He def. took longer pulls then us, but we were all working. For his efforts, we agreed he got the KOM and if he kept it up, the finish was his as well. Do to my placing on GC, I offered up no BS on the final lap, I’ll gladly take 3rd if we can make this stick. We looked back periodically, nothing. We did not once receive a time gap from anyone. For all we knew, they were right behind the last corner. Final lap, final climb, Hammer takes off. Matt Fowler (Noreast) and I stuck together. Hammer put 30 seconds on us and we rolled in 2:30 up on the pack, avg. speed @ 25mph. I took 3rd and was elated. I had never been in a committed break, much less one that stuck. High fives all around.

But…….here in lies the beauty and the actual story: BRC (Rock and Hebert) moved to the front of the pack post break. They new it was coming and they were ready. They blocked the entire race. They did such an amazing job, that Cambridge was completely wiped trying to chase. So much so, that one of their guys took a DNF because he was cooked. Threshold tried as well, they ended up exhausted. Gary Bavolar (Cambridge) had won the ITT. His team cooked from their efforts, he took 17th in the circuit race knocking him back to 8th overall. Hebert, having only to sit in, block, and having to half-heartedly apologize to Cambridge for not pulling through, took 3rd in the bunch sprint. He would now sit 4th overall. I went from 14th to 5th. We had a plan, we executed and it all came together. Confidence meter went back up.

Points Race:

80 laps on a ¼ mile track. Points every 5 laps, double for halfway and finish. Most points wins. Jeff wanted to try for sprint points and if that didn’t work, he would try to go off the front. My goal was to preserve my 5th place and try to get Jeff into 3rd overall and maybe me into 4th overall. I didn’t know what was left in the legs after the circuit race. Warmed up w/ Hebert on the trainers and lined up. I contested the first sprint coming out of the final corner before the finish sitting about 7th wheel. Too far back. There was a headwind on the finishing straight (Tornado warning in the area, seriously). This was not going to work. Next sprint I decided to move much earlier, much much earlier. I went down to the 12 just before the start line of the bell lap. Nose to the wind and took over the pack lead into the first corner. I now had a tailwind and hammered. I made it. 5 points and very surprised. I repeated this move every other sprint lap (10 laps) and it worked everytime. Most importantly, on the halfway lap for 10 points. I was starting to get cooked so I tucked in. Everytime I made this move I would pass Hebert and shout at him before I went through. The first time I startled him a bit, but we got the mojo going and I got him a few leadouts. Cambridge had been waiting for everyone to tire. Gary lit up the race the 2nd half scooping up points and taking the final. Hebert was also on a mission and took his fair share of the points. We left early as the mosquitoes were deadly. I was fairly confident that I had secured my 5th place GC and top 3 in the points race. I wasn’t totally confident, as I didn’t do too much in the 2nd half of the race and loss track of who was doing what. Hebert e-mailed me this morning: 1st place points race, 2nd place GC. Hebert took 7th in the points race, 4th place overall. 2 BRC in the top 4. Atta boys.

Jeff Hebert (Administator)     Posted Jul 23, 2009 7:44am

Time Trial:
I was really hoping to win the TT this year. My previous TT finishes here were 3rd and 9th and I had done a bunch of practice leading up to this one, including a 35-mile not-so-flat ride at over 23mph. I warmed up for an hour beforehand and put in some efforts during the warmup that I hoped would get my lactic acid recovery systems firing. I was sandwiched between two very strong riders in the starting order and had an unfortunate start (my chain kept rolling off my chainring when I pedaled backwards to set up for the start, so I left the gate a second or two late). The awkward start got my heart pumping and I immediately tried to settle down into a groove. The front third of the course was mostly downhill, but into a headwind and with one small climb. I kept the cadence high and maintained about 26mph during this section (which was my target speed). I think I lost some time in the next third of the course as I just couldn’t seem to pull over the top of my pedal stroke with much power. I was pretty happy with how I climbed the only real hill, maintaining good speed through the steep section. On the false flat after that, I couldn’t seem to accelerate and lost more time before hitting the descent. At that point, the 30" rider behind me caught up. I only lost 5 seconds to him over the rest of the course, but that was enough to slip me down to 7th overall.

Road Race:
This was one of the most fun road races I’ve ever participated in. After a few years of riding with team tactics and plans never playing out, everything went right on this day. The legs felt great and I watched for Starvish to throw an attack early on. When he made a promising move, I got up into the top few wheels and interrupted the rotation. The only motivated teams were Cambridge (4 guys), Threshold (2 guys), and Colvativa (1 guy). Nobody else would do much work and it made it very easy for me to keep blocking effectively. It didn’t take long for the break to get out of sight and we weren’t given any time checks for the rest of the race. The same few guys from those teams kept hitting the front and pulling for a while before looking over their shoulder to see me and the other BRC guys. They completely cooked themselves in the process as John mentioned. I’ve never felt better for a sprint and avoided getting boxed in on the inside of the turn to come around a bunch of people for 3rd in the bunch sprint. 6th place for the road race put me in 4th overall.

Points Race:
I wanted to try and sprint for points during the first half to see if that was working for me. If it wasn’t, I planned to go off the front as I’d done in the previous year’s race to pick up some points. Starvish was an animal during this race and yelled for me to grab his wheel a number of times. We were pretty successful and I picked up a number of points in the first half of the race. The legs felt increasingly like wood as we went on and I didn’t do the best job of saving my efforts for 100% committed sprints—this was a killer and zapped much of the energy I had left. Nevertheless, I picked up 7th by the end of the race and maintained my GC position of 4th (3 points away from a podium).

It was an awesome race with excellent results for BRC.