Rodale Park

Today's race was held at the Rodale Park course. This is the bike trail that is located right across from the Trexlertown Velodrome; 1 mile in length with a power hill and no 90 degree turns (you get very dizzy with all the twists and turns). 25 laps for 25 miles. Decent size field in the Cat 3/4 race (but too many hairy legs and guts that hit the top tube for my liking).

I decide to try and stay in the top 20 the whole race to stay out of trouble. Every time I would find my self in mid-pack, I would sprint up to the top part of the pack. I got in some breaks all brought back. With 2 laps to go, about 8 racers get a 100m-150m lead. Looks dangerous. Me and one other racer bridge and as soon as we get there, they all sit up (and we were still at least 50m clear of the field). Shit I think, I'm toast. I give it my all to stay in the top 15 when 2 racers get a nice size gap. With 1 lap to go, I find myself out of the top 20 spots. Shit, I sprint on the hill and force my way into 4th in line. The field starts the sprint and unfortunately we catch the 2 riders about 100m from the line. I say unfortunately, because they sit up and come flying back at us like they are standing still. One comes right at me and starts taking me to the left. I have to hit my breaks (50m from the line in full sprint). A bunch of guys pass me and now I have to restart my sprint and swerve around as many as I can. I end up in 9th. I feel I would have finished higher if either the break stayed away or the riders just gutted it out and not 'stop' trying with 100m to go and get in my f'ing way.

At least I felt that snap that was lacking yesterday.

Here is my PowerTap file. The numbers are very simliar to yesterday with average power of 220 and Normalized Power of 262 with an average MPH of 25.8mph. Today seemed harder though (maybe because of some of the work I did or the wind).