Lessons learned in the wind
Breakdown
This is stage 2 of the Tour de Bloom cat 2/3 race this year. For this stage, I was in the leaders jersey as I had won the first stage. Read my stage one recap here. The main team goals of today were to defend the leaders jersey, and vie for the stage win with a teammate. The course was 70 miles of a squarish circuit. There was little climbing, slight rollers, but the landscape is wide-open farmland. This paired with the weather forecasted to be windy, would make this a long hard race of position and attrition.
At line up I had came late and was positioned near the rear of the pack. This was suboptimal as the race had a short neutral that you couldn’t move up in, and being combined with an open crosswind section to start, I had put myself in a pickle. I was forced to use my legs to move myself to the front of the race on the unsheltered side to avoid missing an early split. This ended up being a 6 minute effort at 340, a short above threshold effort from the gun.
After this I was able to settle in and draft. A lot of todays race was a fight for position to protect yourself from the wind. I was mostly effective at this, however at one point I was called back to the communications truck as I had crossed the centerline. This was at an unfortunate time as it was near the end of a crosswind section. I then chased for 3 minutes at 380. Once I had made it back, we turned into the headwind and the bunch swelled. This meant I was unable to reposition myself near the front of the race for a while. It proved to be difficult to gain ground on a 90 person field who were stacked and compressed in a one lane headwind section. This was concerning as there were near crashes multiple times, as well as I wasn’t present to respond to any attacks. Luckily there was no crashes and nobody attacked away from the group. I was able to move up in the next cross wind section.
This was the pivotal crosswind section, and I wanted to split the race. Ideally I would finish in as small a group possible to minimize the chances of loosing omnium points. It is worth mentioning that the overall classification was scored as an omnium, giving points to places as opposed to time gaps in a timed race. This meant I not only had to finish front group but be placed well enough to get enough points on my competition. My sprint is known to be bad so this makes it difficult for me to sit and rely on my strength to finish the race. I would need to whittle the group down for better chances to finish in the points.
This meant the race needed to split on the cross wind section. After I moved myself to the front of the race, I started attacking and pushing the pace for a split. Myself and perhaps ten other riders were interested in attacking and slipping away. My efforts were eventually rewarded when my teammate countered on a tailwind rise and we broke away. The group comprised of strong motivated riders, as well as 2 riders from PNW. PNW is a juniors team who undoubtable brought the strongest riders. We were able to roll the breakaway for a bit, before getting caught by the peloton. It turns out that PNW chased the break back as their designated GC rider had missed the split. The whole effort to breakaway and try to stay away lasted 25 minutes and I normalized 300 watts.
Once the catch had been made, the pace came out of the group and riders kept coming back. At this point the group was maybe 60 riders. I was also missing teammates. One had crashed, one meched out, and 3 other had dropped. This left myself, one whom we were riding for a stage win, and one more who was on his last legs. It was looking not ideal as we came into the headwind section, in a large group without teammates.
At some point a PNW had snuck away. I missed this as did my teammates. When I realized, he had a 20-30 second gap. I and my teammate immediately started attacking to form a chase group, but this proved extremely difficult. PNW had assigned one rider to slow ride and the front of the peloton and cover attacks. This meant that any attack myself or another rider made, PNW was able to jump on the wheel and prevent a gap from forming. This section was also a headwind, making it difficult to ride hard enough to hurt other riders. I tried and tried but simply was unable to get a gap. In this phase of the race I had attacked half a dozen time, and others had attacked over and over again but nothing established. I should also say it didn’t make sense for me to sit on the front and chase, as I would only be counter attacked, and my teammates were not in a position to chase for me. The PNW rider rode away and took the victory.
Coming into the final 10 km we began setting ourselves up for a sprint. In either frustration or desperation decided to attack with 600 meters to go. I knew I had bad legs, but I decided to risk it all to try to podium. The other option was to try to top 5 or top 10 the sprint. I decided to risk it, and was unable to hold it to the line. I got passed with 100 meters to go, but I wasn’t anywhere close to making it. I was passed by 15 or 20 riders before I made it across the line. In reflection this attack was the audacious thing to do, but undoubtably the wrong decision to make. The correct decision was to not vie for the best spot possible, but to safely take as many points as possible without risking too much. This meant sitting in and trying to sprint for top 5 or 10 was the correct play. My move had essentially put me out of contention for the jersey.
Analysis
This stage was 76 miles and 4700 ft of vertical gain, which I completed in 3 hours 9 minutes. I averaged 24.2 mph. My power was 192 average and normalized 252 for the 3 hours. My average heart rate was 162 bpm. This was a very punchy and surgy race, as shown below.
These numbers are about what I would have expected for a 3 hour race in the wind. I am somewhat disappointed in my hard efforts. At the times when it mattered, trying to attack to the solo PNW rider, and my late finishing attack, I lacked the legs to accomplish what I wanted. The other 3 stages of the race I cannot say the same. On the hill climb and the races to come, my legs and fitness felt very good, however this race this was not the case.
Summary
In sum, stage 2 was a difficult stage to control. We knew this from the start and attempted take an offensive strategy in hopes of being on the right side of the split. This unfortunately was foiled as PNW was uninterested in keeping the race split. They simply had too many strong riders who were willing to pull. All in all I cannot be disappointed that another team was so strong and capable, I can only be disappointed in things under my control. It would have been nice to have better legs to fight harder or to have been there when the PNW rider got off the front, but I think regardless PNW was strong enough they would have won anyway possible. This gave me motivation to fight back in the next two stages!
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