Dilworth Crit 35+

I made the short drive up to Charlotte yesterday to race on a fun course that features a nice long hill leading up to the finish. I didn't have any teammates today, and had to go up against the loaded Carolina Masters team. The race started fast and nothing got away for a few laps. That 50 second or so climb wears down the field quickly.

Charlie from Carolina Masters rode off the front a few laps in. One more bridged up. I missed out, so I tried several times to get away and go after them, but it wasn't working. All I ended up doing was wasting a ton of energy. Eventually, I did get away and hammered out a whole lap at 386 watts and 26.8 mph. Ryan from CM had followed me and together we increased our gap on the field but made little ground on the two leaders.

With 1 lap to go we did catch Gordon, but Charlie was up ahead soloing to a win. The field was so close to us, that I didn't mess around and took a big pull down the hill before the climb to the finish. I couldn't stay with the other two on the climb, so I finished 4th. The sprinters from the field zoomed by me about 20 meters after the line.

Interesting race file to look at. The normalized power for 49 minutes was 353 watts, which corresponds to 110% of FTP. I took a quick look at the file from last year's Dilworth and at was actually higher - 356 watts!