Not this time! Cloudless skies the last two weeks meant I got to hit the BG trail on my track bike, getting my competitive juices flowing on the way to the track by racing anyone who so much as looked at me the wrong way. Last Friday, I learned that I was waaay behind in terms of my weekday Seattle racing from Joe Holmes. Joe had been competing against a pretty formidable field in the relatively unknown Seattle Stage Race. Here's a link to the race website.
That night, we got to do some scratch racing and some miss-n-out-ing, with me, Joe, Logan, and Waz ready to go. We set things up well: Joe lulled the field into a false sense of security before the race by talking about how bad his legs felt, and he also created a smart diversion on the 2nd lap by dropping his chain, allowing Logan to attack. I thought I had a good moment to jump up to Logan about halfway through the 15-lap scratch, but ended up just chasing Logan back because I didn't go fast enough. Oops!
We collected our bearings after the race, and got ready for the miss-n-out, where I had a much more plush job. I led in the pole lane with Logan on my wheel for as long as I could, until I got le tired from riding 32-second laps and he was left to fend for himself. Quotes from miss-n-out:
Logan, lap 2: "Go!"
Logan, lap 10: "Colin, GO!"
Jamie, lap 11: "Dance, monkey!"
Me, lap 12: "I'm Effed!"
Then we waited for 2 hours until our last race, a 30-lap scratch with a few primes. This time, I waited until after Logan came back to attack, jumping up to a group with Jamie, Matti Herz and Zach Jones about 10 laps in. We rolled it okay and kept a half-lap lead to the finish. I tried to stay relatively fresh, and unleashed a pretty underwhelming all-in attack with 2 to go. Despite having no gas, it was the only way I could see beating Jamie, who kicked his illness and is back looking strong. He took the sprint, and I edged Zach out for 2nd.
That was fun, but yesterday was even better: hand holding night! I talked Grant Boursaw into being my partner on the basis that we're about the same size. Grant replied that I'm a little fatter, but he'd still be my partner.
There was decent turnout, with 10 teams for the 5x8 points race. We figured if we were gonna win, it would be by staying with Jamie and Ian and beating them in the sprints. We did okay for the first half of the race, by which time we and KR had lapped most of the field, but shortly thereafter, we got caught up behind some traffic during an exchange and Jamie got a gap on us. Waah! It was pretty effing crucial to get back up to them, and I managed to close the gap to Ian's wheel at one point, but I got to him right as Jamie came in and attacked straight away. Their gap sat at around 50 meters for the rest of the race, so we wound up 2nd. But look how cute we looked doing it! Thanks to Amara Boursaw for the airbrushing.
(Grant: "I have no upper body, sooo.....")
(Shortly before the ruh-roh.)
(Joe shouted "KatJAAAAA!!" with every exchange.)Okay on to my volvo.
I'll be clear: I really like this car. Without racks of any kind, this car has "successfully" carried two riders and all their gear to a stage race. One of them was Steve, which saved us 5-10 cubic feet of packing space over the average human*, but the Volvo was still impressive.
That said, there are attributes of this car that force you to drive in a certain way. First, it doesn't like to go above 68mph for more than a minute at a time. 68mph is its jam, and it can hold that speed all day, but above that, it gets cranky. This means that long trips usually take a little longer in my car. My response is to mitigate the low maximum by driving 68mph at all times, rather than engaging in the reckless inefficiency of accelerating and decelerating depending on the speed limit, much like an Ironman triathlete who chooses to go slowly for 10-20 hours on account of a lack of ability to go fast for any shorter period of time.
Second, my car's low top speed is accompanied by a lack of "spark" or "jump." Uphill on-ramps make me sweat. However, I see this as a blessing in disguise, as it forces me to hit on-ramps (and hills) with as much speed as I can safely carry through them. While other cars have the luxury of slowly navigating clover-leaves and then accelerating on the straight, I am forced to lean hard into turns while flooring it to avoid scrubbing any precious speed. Again, I'm proud of the efficiency, but it's not always so easy. Often, I'm railing my way through a turn because I know there's a 200m section at 1% coming up, and I come up on a car who's never even thought about the dire consequences of me not carrying speed through the turn. Like seeing a 1984 Volvo DL in his rear-view mirror didn't even carry any significance. Times like these, I either double down, merging early across the double-white, or I touch the brakes, which will take a few minutes to recover from.
Sometimes, it's not other drivers that mess with my strategy, it's the roads themselves. When it comes to passing on two-lane roads, my advantage is on technical sections, not on straights or uphills. The problem is that you only get passing sections on straight roads with lots of visibility, which means that the cars you want to pass might actually be going only 1mph under the speed limit, instead of the 10 under that is common whenever there is a 45 degree bend in the road. So most of the time, I ride behind a long line of drivers unable to navigate anything other than a straight line, then when the solid yellow goes to ticked, everyone accelerates to the point that I can't pass. Catch-22 kind of situation.
*Steve is little.
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