Westlake #5

Always Be Moving Up, ABMU. That's not very catchy, but that's what my plan was for Westlake this week.

I was tired from the weekend ride to Hiram, so when I rolled around the course for my usual warmup and saw "23" to go (46 miles) on the lap cards, I had my doubts that I'd hang in for the finish.

Since the weather was nice, a big crowd turned out for both fields. Combined there were 63 riders. There were probably about 50 in the "A" field. That's a lot on that course, from head to tail, the group probably ends up being 30 bike lengths long.

The race followed a predictable pattern. There were lots of attacks at the beginning, and it was very fast for the first several laps until a breakaway group got away. Pretty much every time I looked down at my speed, I was going over 30 mph. I felt really comfortable, though.

I saw the break forming, but had minimal chance to try to get involved, since the pace of the field was blistering and I was far from the front. The window for jumping across the gap is really small. If you wait too long at 27 mph average speed, it's pretty difficult to bridge. At this point in the season, after transitioning from B to A, I'm not worried about getting in a break. I'm just trying to build the fitness to finish the race consistently.

Instead, I just focused on riding smoothly and trying to move forward in the field at every available opportunity (without burning extra energy). It worked pretty well. I was consistently at the front of the group and never felt in danger of getting popped off the back. The trick seems to be: watch the riders at the front, accelerate when they accelerate, and try to be a little faster than the riders immediately around you.

There was one nail biting moment for me during the race. Swinging onto the home stretch somebody bumped up against my knee while we were heeled over doing 28 mph. I was relaxed, so I absorbed the blow without any problem, but I thought the bumper was going to go down and take out a swath of people.

The average speed was 26.3 mph for 46 miles. Average power was only 206 Watts! I took a couple flyers off the front of the second group for TT practice. The first effort was pretty solid, nearly a full lap. The second effort, I followed a group that jumped out into no man's land, we had a huge gap, but weren't able to work together. I was pretty happy with how I handled turn 2 onto Ranney Pkwy. I did a good sprint every lap, but was really efficient, so I was usually able to move forward in the field without digging too deep.