March 17 - Land Park Criterium
Race info

Results

Pictures:
Hanns Hartman
Jen Bone

Report: by Dennis Pedersen, Santa Cruz County Cycling Club

Report by Dennis Pedersen, Santa Cruz County Cycling Club


Land Park Criterium, Sacramento, CA USA, 3/17/2007 It's more fun to be the one dealing out punishment than the one receiving it. For this race my goal was to deal it out! Following my structured training program supposedly put me in my first race peak of the year, so l should have been in good form for this race.

I had several friends who were planning on racing there, though none from Team Santa Cruz, and carpooling to Sacramento would be much better than driving there alone. That made entering this criterium more appealing than entering the Zamora Road Race the next day. But some of these friends backed out in the end, and only Rob Evans and Erik Ostly (of LGBRC) went. Perhaps racing Zamora would have matched my strengths better, but I doubt I would have enjoyed it any more. Still.

Erik and I ended up carpooling. Since there was such a long time between my breakfast and my 11:10 race start, I ate an egg white scramble with ground buffalo and lots of vegetables and coffee. Pretty much zero on the glycemic index, and yummy. But I brought some big high-GI cookies and a banana to eat just before the race for instant energy, and that worked out great.

The race venue was a pleasant surprise; I'd pictured it being a sun-baked anonymous business park, but it turned out to be a really pretty private neighborhood green park. Erik and I were very impressed with the huge shade trees and big old mansions bordering the park. The weather was gorgeous too, maybe 72 degrees or so.

As we got ready I noticed my rear tire was flat. Fortunately it was on my regular wheel so I just swapped in my race wheel, and we were able to visit the nice restoom and get signed in for our Elite 4 race. We saw Rob there, but he'd forgotten his USCF license so was jumping through some hoops to get signed in. My warmup consisted of a couple of laps of the course at a moderate pace after they opened it up for us. The course was gorgeous, with tons of trees and a meandering, smoothly-paved course. There wasn't a straight line anywhere, or any Bott's Dots thankfully, though several of the turns were really sharp and maybe 135 degrees.

The start was delayed a few minutes while an equestrian cleared the course; this park is very popular with the residents and is used for a lot of activities. The starter blasted his whistle about as hard as we blasted off of the line: Though the pace wasn't really all-out, it was still pretty fast. Even though this was just the Elite 4 crowd, and the field was huge with 100 riders, they all seemed to ride pretty cleanly, and there were no crashes at all for a long time. I pretty much just settled in and rode in the draft, ignored the primes, and considered the influence of the course on the evolution of the race.

The hairpin turns were a bit unsettling, though we rode them nicely, but I worried that they would be a massive bottleneck on the last lap when everybody started fighting for a good position for the final sprint. Also, since I was all alone with no team mates I couldn't count on anybody to be there to block or lead for me during the critical last lap. I had to simply do my best to get to the front before those hairpins, I felt.

On the last lap the front row of riders sat up, causing a big jam as the rest of us crowded in behind them. I had a lot of momentum though, and was on the outside left of the crowd, so I just let myself roll ahead to the front. When I got near the front, they had slowed so much that an improvised plan popped into my head: Attack!!! And that's what I did!

There were only about five guys ahead of me as we started the back stretch on the final lap. It curved gently toward the hairpins for 300 hundred yards or so. I quickly blasted ahead of the point man, at maybe 10 MPH faster than him, and shot ahead. My hope was that I would catch everybody by surprise and hopefully be able to be first, or nearly first, into the hairpins. Then I would be able to catch my breath as we coasted through the tight hairpins and be recovered enough into the final sprint to be able to contest it. Sounded safer, with maybe the possibility of a top-10 finish at least! Well, plans are great to have, but become obsolete as soon as the battle starts...

As I sped down that back stretch, hunched over in an aerodynamic tuck, I kept an eye on my pursuers by looking under my elbow. Sure enough; about halfway down the stretch I saw the front wheel of my nearest pursuer about 15 feet behind me. I tried hard to keep going, but as we neared the first hairpin, I was blown out completely and about 10 guys shot past me. I wasn't very surprised, though I was disappointed. I wish I could have launched my attack a little later. That was really long for a sprint.

Anyway, as we rode through the hairpins a few more guys passed me, but when we reached the last turn I had recovered enough to be able to answer some of these attacks, and gained a few spots back. Just before the finish line a guy in purple crashed at full sprint speed onto the pavement, and slid for maybe 30 feet! I was well away from him though, and managed to get in around 15th. Not too bad, but not quite what I was hoping for either. On the other hand there was a crash behind me in the hairpins, just as I'd feared, and I avoided that.

So, did my attack work? I don't know. I really doubt that allowing the typical bunch sprint finish to form would have worked any better for me; they never have, and I haven't been training for sprints as much this year. Plus, perhaps I prevented the field from bunching up in the hairpins, thus sparing us a huge pileup. Who can say? At least it was really fun, so it worked in that regard! I'd felt great the whole race, so I was confident that my structured training program works as advertised.

After our cool-down lap, Erik and I were going to help run the Kiddie Race, but I noticed that my tire was slowly going flat. Geez; two flats in one day! Since my spare rear wheel was also flat, it was lucky for me that it didn't happen earlier! We cleaned up, stopped at Starbucks and had a very nice drive home. Now I get a break from the action while I prepare for my next peak.

This text is a spacer to fix a browser compatibility issue with netscape and safari. This text is a spacer to fix a browser compatibility issue with netscape and safari.