After a crazy week of mountain roads, near-crashes, and very FAST racing, I'm happy to be back in PA in one piece. My weekend in Ogden began with the long flight to Utah on Thursday, where I met up with an old friend in Salt Lake City for a late dinner. On Friday, I decided to skip the individual time trial (never my strong suit) but still had a chance to ride for a couple of hours and test my legs at altitude.
Before travelling, I made the mistake of checking the altitude difference between my home in Philly (a massive 36 feet) and the top of Ogden pass, where we would be finishing the road race (over 6000 feet). This difference was very obvious on my warm up ride, which generally consists of "openers" a relatively easy 2.5 hour ride with about four hard 2-minute efforts mixed in. On those short efforts, I was quickly gasping for air, trying to convince myself that my legs were just feeling dead from the flight.
Saturday marked my first day of racing, which consisted of running laps for 75 minutes on the 8-corner, t-shaped criterium course in downtown Ogden. As if riding in my first national race wasn't intimidating enough, looking at some of the amazing team trailers, thousands of dollars of carbon fiber gleaming in the sun, and spotting several "stars and stripes" logos on jerseys indicating that the rider was a former national champion, it was pretty clear that a couple of the other competitors had been doing this a little longer than me. Nonetheless, I was ready to give it my best shot. I found a couple of fellow ECCC riders warming up on the course before my race and got some motivational last words from a few of the guys who had raced at nationals last year: "It's a huge field, plus everybody is fast and motivated and sketchy as hell. If it gets as bad as last year I'm probably going to pull myself." Super.
So I finished my normal pre-race routine of slamming an enormous coffee and eating copious amounts of carbs, got a few last warm up laps, and headed over to staging. This was also my first experience with "call ups," where each rider gets announced before the race and rolls up to the start line. With a pretty big crowd of spectators and hearing "From Lehigh University..." over the loudspeaker, I have to admit I was pretty pumped up for the start of the race. Apparently the other 80+ riders in the field were pumped up too, because the first five laps of the race were insane.
The course proved to be less technical than I thought, with generally good pavement and very wide streets and corners. I quickly realized that this would be a very fast 75 minutes, with our speeds in the straightaways consistently well over 30mph. In bike racing, and especially criteriums, you get used to occasionally making contact with other riders at high speeds - bumping elbows or shoulders in the corners. However, I made more contact in the first five laps of this race than I did in the rest of my season combined. It was a constant battle to stay near the front of the field and there were the usual idiots diving into the inside path on the corners, putting everyone else in danger.
After about 20 minutes of chaos, I started to feel frustrated and claustrophobic, so I decided to move to the front and stretch my legs. I used some of the longer straightaways to move forward, eventually to the front of the pack. One of the first rules of racing bikes is to never use energy unless you have a good reason for it. My reason to be on the front of the race here was to push up the pace, hopefully encouraging some attacks and stretching out the field to keep it more safe and predictable (on a side note, it was also pretty cool to hear my name get mispronounced over the loudspeaker and, I later found out, to get a Twitter shout out from USA Cycling). Luckily, my tactic worked and the first attacks started to go off the front. I was able to drift back to about 20th place and let the bigger teams do the work while I sat in more comfortably.
As the race wore on, several more attacks went up the road and were pulled back. About two-thirds into the race, I could see that the pack was getting smaller as several riders fell off the back and some of the guys around me looked pretty exhausted. I felt ok, so I decided to try my own attack. I saw a strong-looking rider from Western Washington U move make a move, so I followed, stood on the pedals, and jumped as best I could. We got a quick 5-second gap on the field with one other rider and slowly started to pull away. After one lap we were joined by three additional riders, we worked and rotated together fairly well, and the gap started to grow bit by bit. However, once we had reached about 10 seconds, the field seemed to get alarmed and started to chase. After about 3 laps off the front, we were caught. I quickly noticed how exhausted I felt and wondered if the altitude and speed were catching up to me. With about 15 laps to go, I decided to sit in and wait for the sprint.
An important key to finishing a race strong is following a strong, steady wheel. When I drifted back to the pack, I was lucky to find a big rider from Mars Hill College, widely known to be one of the best teams in the country. The rider was sitting about 15th, seemed to be rolling steady with little effort, and had stars and striped on his sleeve. Perfect. I latched on to his wheel and battled like a honey badger to keep it for the last quarter of the race.
The last five laps of the race were even more insane than the first five. There was more bumping and two big crashes in the last two laps. If you haven't heard the sound of carbon fiber slamming across pavement at 30mph, consider yourself lucky. With half a lap to go, we were absolutely flying. I waited for the guy in front of me, who still looked steady, to start moving up...nothing. Quarter lap to go...nothing. Shit. Wrong wheel. I jumped around him on the second to last straightaway, scrambling to find shelter in the top 10 before the sprint, but I had waited too long. I blasted through the last corner and into the wind way too early, was able to pass a couple more riders, but was only able to manage 15th in the end.
I wanted to be disappointed, but I had to put it in perspective. At the start of the season, it was a huge leap to think I would even qualify. Now I had just cracked the top 20 at a national race, I was safe, and I was happy.
-Brandon K
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