Colavita-Norcal Grand Prix (criterium)

No, this isn't the finish–just another shot at a prime
photo: Jennifer Kinion

Event	Colavita-Norcal Grand Prix (criterium)
Date	7/20/2014
Group	Masters 45/55+ Cat 3/4
Bib #	952
Result	tbd
Course (per flyer)	Located in Novato, CA at the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company Campus. The Course is 1.1 miles, totally enclosed, private property, excellent pavement, lots of parking. Long straight finish.
Details of Race	It wasn't until the day before that I decided to do this race. While I want to race as often as possible, admittedly I try to select events that offer the best potential for accumulating upgrade points. This race had two strikes against it: category 4 mixed with cat 3. And the fact that it is a criterium. I figured that the chance of placing well among cat 3 racers wasn't great. I've done okay in crits, but I'm certainly no specialist. I pre-rode the course the day before the race and found it to be relatively flat, fast and non-technical. No sharp turns and the road surface is excellent. I decided to race. After a long, dry summer and spring, race day was muggy and humid with occasional drizzle threatening to grease up the course. Our race was not only a combination of cat 3 & 4, but the 45+ masters were combined with the 55+ masters. While the two age groups would be picked separately, the categories would not. I couldn't count riders but I'm guessing there were at least 40 of us. photo: Jennifer Kinion

The combination of a subtle elevation gain and coincidental headwind on the backside of the course had a huge impact on rider speed in that area. I often used this section to move up through the peloton and a couple of times launched attacks here also. There were two or three breakaway attempts by others which didn't stick. I resisted the urge to chase, trying to sit in and conserve energy for my silly “prime-dreams”.

photo: Jennifer Kinion

By the bell lap, the pack was still together. The average speed increased to 28-29 mph as we all attempted to maneuver into the front of the pack. On the backside of the course I was about to accelerate when two squirrely jackasses cut sharply across from right to left, missing my front wheel by less than an inch. Yeah, this is racing and it's a crit, so sure there's going to be some knocking around but that kind of disregard is inexcusable. The rider who nearly clipped me was big but I launched my acceleration and on the way past him I really got in his face with some foul language that I'm not proud of. I think I hurt his feelings, but my main message was “Watch your @#&!ing line you d#ck!” Because of the slight delay in launching my acceleration I was not in the front ten riders by the last turn. I was too far back on the 300-meter straightaway to be anywhere close to a good result. As we gathered to see posted results, the finish official apologetically informed us that the camera “choked” and didn't record the riders crossing the line. He asked us to help him sort out the finishing order by recounting what we saw. A still photographer who had been shooting photos also helped out by showing his shots on the small LCD panel on the back of his camera. Everyone was certain who the top three riders were, which was good enough for distributing prizes. Eventually after comparing the photographer's pictures with riders' kits, and even tattoos, a partial, hand-scrawled, semi-official result sheet was posted. My number was nowhere on the sheet. I knew I was at least twelve or more riders back of the winner, but in all of my results to date, I'm really proud and feel very lucky to not have any DNPs or DNFs (Did Not Place or Did Not Finish). I didn't want this to be my first, so I chatted with the official after he was walking the results of a later race over to be recorded and posted. I mentioned that my dad had his GoPro camera recording near the finish line and the official's eyes lit up. He said if I could send him that video file he might be able to use it to confirm some more of the results. He gave me his business card and I drove up to dad's house to copy the file. That evening I sent it to the official via one of my online file transfer services. I haven't heard back from him and as yet there's no evidence that he has downloaded the file. No official results have been posted yet but from the looks of the frame-grabs that dad made from the video, I came in about 20th in the group. That's me back there with a big old "20" underneath image: Tim Kinion For the heck of it I'll update when results are posted.

Leesville/Lodoga Road Race - July 5, 2014

Start of the breakaway

Event	Leesville/Lodoga Road Race
Date	07/05/14
Group	M45+4
Bib #	711
Result	1st of 13 (2nd in the combined field of 26 riders: combined with M35+4 and two additional solo category riders)
Course (per race flyer)	New course due to a 13-mile gravelling of Leesville Road. A 70-mile out-and back course using the second half of the old course, with one major climb up Grapevine Pass (the old downhill) instead of Leesville Gap climb. Pavement is good to moderate (no bad pavement like in the past). Route: 7th Street (old Hwy 99W) north to Freshwater, west to Danley, north to Maxwell-Sites (jog to left at ca- nal), west to Lodoga, and past lodoga 5 miles to the current end of pavement for a turnaround, then back (north on Leesville/Lodoga Road, (becomes Lodoga/Sites, then Maxwell/Sites), south on Danley (jog to left at canal) to Freshwater, turning left to finish on Freshwater just before old 99w). Finish is 1 1/2 miles from parking/start area.
Course (my notes)	The only comment I have is in regards to the “no bad pavement...” remark. There is a 3 or 4 mile stretch of very bad pavement that you cover in each direction, prior to the turnaround.

Details of Race	This is likely the longest road race course for my category in the season. In preparation I made sure I rode several long, hard trianing rides over the previous 3 weeks. At the time of this race, two large brush fires are burning to the southwest: The 7000 acre Monticello Fire near Lake Berryessa and The 4300 acre Butts Fire in Napa and Lake Counties. A thick layer of dark smoke stretched across the highway as I drove north. Luckily my race course was 40 or 50 miles north of this, so the lungs were spared. The geography of the region is pretty fascinating–starting in the agrigulture-based, near-sea-level, northern central Sacramento valley where rice, sunflowers and other vegetable crops grow, the course climbs northwest, over some rocky wrinkles, over a 1750-foot rim, dropping into a 1300-foot plateau to the west of the central valley. Once on this plateau, we travel south, over extremely rough, patched asphalt before turning around and returning via the same route. This year's incarnation of this race is a few miles longer than the traditional course, which had to be altered due to new gravel on the much-loved old course. Veteran riders of the classic course were blasé about this version prior to our start, but I have a feeling some have changed their opinion, even though the precious gravel section was missing. Everyone speaks fondly of this gravel section, but I'm guessing that it had to be omitted because generally it takes some months for roadbase gravel to settle once it's distributed. I've driven a newly graveled, nineteen-mile section of highway 20 and the loose drifts of gravel were barely negotiable by motor vehicles, let alone bikes with 25 mm tires. We rolled out with about 26 riders in a combined field of thirteen m45+4, ten m35+4, one or two m45+5 and one w4 due to some low turnout. We were all allowed to work together. A lead vehicle took us through a 1-mile neutral lead-out. At Freshwater Rd. the race was on. The pace was fairly relaxed, since everyone was aware that one significant climb was coming, which summited at about mile 27 in our 70-mile race. In researching the preregistered riders' road race rankings, I figured that my friend Rob Easley (iRT-Reactor p/b JL Velo) was my closest competitor, but since we were combined with the m35 group, there were several unknown players to watch. The weather forecast indicated that the high temperature would be 100° at 4pm. We'd be finishing before 1pm so I calculated that we'd have mild, 90° breezes in our faces over the final 24 miles. At around 20 miles we passed the neutral feed zone (why they call it a “feed zone” I'll never know, since there's only water). I planned to take on a bottle, since I try to drink at least one per hour. I quickly tossed my empty into the pile, but was too far to the center of the lane to reach for a hand-up. We would pass here on the way back, but the bulk of the race was yet to be ridden before then. A gracious Cushman & Wakefield rider shared his bottle with another rider and myself who missed hand-ups. I don't see his name in the results, but “thanks!” Shortly after the feed zone, Rob and I led the pack up the main climb. We didn't have a plan, but we pushed the pace (because that's how we climb). We were careful to keep our pace manageable for a handful of riders so that if we had a gap at the summit, we'd have the potential for a successful breakaway. It wasn't yet clear whether the real climbers were "flying their colors" so we kept studying the group. Both of us knew it would be very hard work to maintain and build on such a gap with so many miles yet to go. l to r: Don, Rob, Glen, Rich At the summit, there were four of us: Rob, Rich Gonsalves (unattached), Don Dumaine (Team Revolutions) and myself. After the short, one-mile descent into the plateau, we quickly established a very slick rotation. Several miles of very rough asphalt caused each of us to skip a turn or two in our rotation. At the turnaround one of the guys spotted a box of neutral bottles next to the course marshal. I looped around again and grabbed one while the other three agreed to soft-pedal until I caught back on (thanks guys). We rattled back through the rough stuff while we saw a chase group of about five riders on their way to the turnaround. One was a teammate of Don's, who seemed to be asking us to ease up and let them catch on to help our breakaway effort. I'm not sure if there was a vote, but the four of us continued our strong pace, which had produced a two-minute gap since the top of the climb. Don has raced the original course at least once, and was really forthcoming and helpful in sharing his knowledge of the distances and other details of the roads we were yet to cover. This was a great psychological aid to me, as it helped to break the rest of the race up into manageable chunks as the fatigue and cramping set in. For two of the 3-1/2 hours of the race I was at threshold. By now we've been off the front for 20 mi. with a gap of about 3 minutes. We had our own moto official. We summited the short one-mile climb over the lip of the plateau. The two-mile, non-technical, 40-45 mph descent was restful, but harmful, as it allowed the legs to rest, which, once spinning again, produced calf cramps. Since the Mt. Hamilton road race, my remedy for this is to shift into a higher gear and hammer even harder out of the saddle, allowing other muscles to share the work. This seems to work pretty well. In fact I had to do this occasionally over the remaining twenty miles. At 52 miles, we came to a small rise which coincided with a new wave of cramping. Don was also having an issue of some sort. Rich and Rob maintained  the pace and opened a 250 meter gap. I recovered a bit, checked to make sure Don was with me and began reeling in the other two. We were 200 meters away from regrouping when up ahead we saw Rob hit the pavement. I could see Rich slow up to see if he was ok, then he rolled on (it's a race after all... and he checked on Rob, so that's cool). I picked up Rob's ejected bottle as I approached, to hand over. I came came alongside to make sure he was able to ride. He said he overlapped wheels with Rich. He had some road rash on his hip and elbow. He got going and the three of us started chasing Rich. For these remaining 18 miles Rich plowed, solo, into a 10-12 mph headwind with a 30-second gap. We only gained on him briefly with 4 miles to go. Don reassured me that Rob and I would still finish “one, two”, since he and Rich were in the m35 group which would be picked separately. I thought “yeah, but it would sure be nice to catch him!” While Don and I didn't hesitate to mention it when we were hurting, Rob never let on if he was fatigued. He looked solid all day. I wasn't sure if we were going to challenge each other for the line. Over the final kilometer I was overcome with another wave of leg cramps, so I got out of the saddle again. This carried me to the 200m-to-go marker, where I just kept hammering (mostly to look good for the finish line folks). After a short, painful ride back to the cars at the school where the race started, I had a shower in the school locker room before waiting for official results. Yup, first place! What did I win? This t-shirt. No podium photos at this event though, so I have to be satisfied with the free watermelon they were slicing up. And so there's my first 1st place finish. With thirteen riders in the category, the result is good for seven more upgrade points (current total: 16). Of the sixteen official races I've ridden since last September, this makes nine top-ten finishes... for whatever that's worth.
Advice	Don't miss the bottle hand-ups (or stick an extra in your jersey pocket). Don't expect to stay away if you get away alone on the climb. Be smart about easing back enough to take a few riders with you over the top... you'll need them. In our case, four was a perfect number. The rough pavement section is significant, but probably not long enough to worry about running wider tires at lower pressure for the whole race. I had 23 mm clinchers (110 psi front, 120 psi rear) and was glad of it for 80% of the ride. The rest of the time I was looking at Rob's 25 mm tires enviously.

Results     http://www.usacycling.org/results/?year=2014&id=1802&info_id=78183