I raced the pro/1/2 crit in the Vista today and finished 6th. Officially I am being scored as 7th, after initially being scored as 10th. I'll go into more detail about the officiating screwups in a future post.Here's a brief recap of the 50 lap, 28 mile race. This was a very hard course. It was a rectangle with one long uphill straight and one long downhill straight. I got into an 8 man break early on that lapped the field. After that I got away from the field again with the same group of 8. Then I launched a solo attack, got about 15 seconds and then dangled off the front for 3 or 4 laps and came close to lapping the field a second time, but was reabsorbed by my breakaway group. Then we finally caught the field for a second time. With 2 laps to go I attacked on the hill to try to get a way solo before the sprint. They called a gambler's prime of $100, which ended up foiling my move as I was chased down by the end of the lap. I did manage to stay in front to pick up the money as we crossed with 1 to go. From there I was only able to slot in at about 7th place as we raged down the hill on the backside, queuing up for the final sprint. I came by one rider just before the line and was about even with the 5th place finisher.
Now onto the good stuff - the power numbers. There were some crazy numbers in this file. For starters I raced 1 hr 8 min at 112% of FTP or 354 watts normalized power. That's 5.2 watts/kg! Yes probably my threshold power is a little higher than 315 now, but no where near 354 watts if I was to ride a well paced time trial effort. Some other things that jumped out were a 5 minute effort at 443w NP and the final 2 laps which were at 405w average power.
To those who were at the race and may have seen the finish, what place do you think I was?
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4 comments:
Jay, Great race last night! You guys were flying. I saw the finish and thought you ended up about 6th or 7th. I'm not sure how they scored you with 10th place though. I thought there were some lapped riders in the mix as well... sounds like the judges may have been confused.
Thanks Justin. The officials said that they thought I had been lapped, but admitted that they lost track of me and assumed I must have gone off the back. The confusion happened at a point where the break sat up at the top of the hill and I took off and got a big jump and came back around 15 seconds or so off the front. After talking to people, it seems even the announcers didn't realize I was off the front at that point, so they must have lost track of me and didn't get counted on that lap. The officials did agree that they made the mistake and put me in 7th, since they said I was the 7th to cross the line, but I kind of think there had to be at least 1 lapped rider up there. Regardless of my exact place, I was right up there at the end, so I'm pleased.
Great race!
Your numbers seem to be the prototypical "NP buster" ride. Still pretty dang impressive.
Yes, I agree that the course was a set up for an NP buster. Each lap had a 30 sec or more climb at high power followed by some coasting to recover. This was quite a shock, since I've been doing mostly steady state stuff in training.
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