My Collegiate Road Nationals Experience (a.k.a. How you Shouldn't Race a Bike)

Where's Brendan?

Well, I hope I don't sound like a crybaby too much. My last two posts have pretty much been me complaining about my road racing and this one's not much different. It's about today's Collegiate Road Nationals race in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The lollipop-style course consisted of a long, steep climb right from the gun, followed by hilly loops at the top, then back down for the finish. Conditions were OK, but not that great for me - temperatures in the 40s and 50s and high wind. As we stood on the starting line, the announcer told us they were going to shorten the course by ten miles because a snowstorm was coming.

The race started out pretty hard with the whole group nailing the pace right from the gun. I slowly drifted back in the pack as the strong winds baked me (any sort of wind pretty much destroys me - I guess that's why I'm not a time trialist). Once we reached the climb with a tailwind I started flying past suffering riders. A gap opened up and I found myself and a bunch of other riders off the back of a 30+ rider group. Not discouraged, I pressed on, passing more and more shelled riders. A group of around ten of us formed not too far behind the peloton and we settled into a chase.

We eventually caught the peloton after the first lap. It felt nice to be relieved from chasing and to sit in a big draft. After five minutes or so of riding with the peloton, we came around a corner and another rider tangled his bars with me. We both went down. Uninjured, I quickly got back up and jumped on my bike. Unfortunately, the peloton had just started an acceleration, so despite the fact that I was 30 seconds back, I just couldn't catch them.

Eventually, another chase group with two of my U of M teammates, Mattison and Kyle, caught me in a headwind section and I jumped in with them.

This second chase group finally caught the peloton in the feed zone after two more laps of chasing. I decided to chill in the back for a while, which turned out to be my biggest mistake of the day. As soon as we exited the loop section of the course, the road turned up and the group started climbing hard. A bunch of gaps opened up ahead of me and I found chase effort futile. I continued to ride hard to the finish, picking up a few riders here and there. I rolled into the finish in 72nd - about mid pack.

Despite all of this complaining, I'm still glad I did this race for several reasons:
1.) I now have experience in a national-caliber road race so I know what to expect in the future.
2.) I learned a good lesson about riding in a pack.
3.) I had fun.

I'll probably post another update after tomorrow's criterium.

(For the photo: I'm in the middle of the field of riders. My head's popping up and you can see my white-rimmed sunglasses)