Bethlehem Crit

I really hate this time of year. I'm probably in the best form I have been in for years but my allergies are the same as they have ever been. I was hacking and coughing up a lung all day. The pollen is so thick you can cut it with a knife. The kind of pollen were you black car looks green. This was actually the first race of the year I had to hit the rescue inhaler before the start of the race (I guess that is my excuse).

Today's race was a typical 4 corner crit with a power hill right before turn 4. 30 laps for ~25 miles. Nice thing about today, it was a Cat 3 only race (no racing with the Cat 4s or Cat 1/2s!). One of the local teams had at least 10 guys in today's race so you know what was going to happen (you just hope you were in that break!). I tried to get in some breaks early and they didn't stick. A few guys get up the road I tried to bridge and failed (damn lungs). As soon as I get back to the pack, about 8 more guys go up the road. God damn it, I hate it when that happens. They stay away. That's at least 9-10 guys up the road, so essentially race over. Why bother to even try at this point, may as well save it for tomorrow. 2 guys even lapped us (we were going slow as the average for my entire race was only 24.5 mph). During the field sprint, I really didn't try, I just wanted to stay up front and out of trouble and rolled in ~4th or so.

Here is my PowerTap file from the race. For some reason my Heart Rate monitor didn't pick up. The race starts at ~56:00 and obviously ends at ~1:53:00. For kinda dicking around, my average power was 218 and my Normalized Power was 262.

On may way out the door for today's race, the FedEx truck pulls up. They dropped off my other PowerTap Wireless wheel! Now I have both of my PowerTap wheels upgraded to wireless and can still afford to race.