Take a look at my Garmin data from the race; heart rate and speed shown in the graph. For reference, my max heart rate is ~175. Ya think maybe some intervals might have been a good idea sometime before this one???Anyway, the race was great like always. As has been the case all year in NorCal, the masters was a battle between Safeway and AMD/Disco with some skirmishes from CVC too. From the gun there were little moves with representation from all the above, and at about 20 minutes, we were just bringing back one such dangerous escape when billy-goat Chris Phipps decided to eat some hay in "The Corner" and unfortunately took down Bob Pasco too. That bit of chaos provided just enough diversion for Hernando, Dan Martin, and Jeff Angermann to scoot on up the hill. Later, Angermann would take himself out of that move on the same corner, only he ate pavement and not hay. (I think everyone is ok btw.)
Half way through, the Safeway duo had 30-40 seconds on our rapidly decreasing group. I kept my eye on 45+'er Kevin Metcalfe since he was twitching to get up the road, which he finally did. I had nothing to respond with. In the closing laps, the only 45+ guy left in the group was big Bubba Melcher who I have about 0% chance of beating in a sprint, so my only option was to attack. Just one problem... I was already maxed on the up-hill (i.e., I *was* attacking ...just to keep contact!) and the downhill is so fast that a light-weight like me goes backwards unless on a wheel.
So Hernando won--good job Mike!--and Dan Martin got 2nd. Nice that they share the wins. Metcalfe barely held on to get 3rd overall and 1st 45+. Bosch from CVC won our sprint (3rd 35+) with Angermann next, and maybe another 35+'er in there. I tried to come around Bubba, but he just laughed and beat me by a bike length.
Click the pictures below if you care to see the score board...
5 comments:
Well Bronze is close in color and texture to Gold. Congrats! I also like the sinusoidal looking heart rate plots...looks cyclically painful.
Heh.... my average HR for the P/1/2 race was 176 BPM, max 196. I think i should prob mix in some intervals too.
~ je
JE- enjoy it while you're young 'cause that old rule-of-thumb of losing a bpm per year sure has applied in my case!
Marco - Congrats - From GAry D's DAD back east.....
Thanks Steve D'Velo! Funny thing about bike racing... sometimes you have minimal expectations, and you do really well... other times you expect a lot from yourself, but you ultimately flail! Obviously my expectations were a tad high this time around!
'tis a great sport 'cause you can always try again the next weekend, or the next year.
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