Monday, November 3, 2008

Pilarcitos #2: The Stick

Yesterday was the Pilarcitos series race #2 at Candlestick state recreation park. This is always a fun venue and this course was a treat after getting a bunch of rain in the 24 hours before the race. By the time I got there (@ around 10:30 for my noon start) the skys were more or less blue and there was no sign of rain. the air was warm and it even felt a little humid: perfect conditions for my nice short sleeve series leader's jersey!

I signed in, pinned, chamoised and socialized. There is no on-course warmup allowed at the Pilarcitos races except in the 15 minutes between races so I got on a trainer and spun my legs for about 3 minutes. I've decided that as long as I do a hard prep in the 2 days before the race, warmups are basically unneccesary so I haven't really been warming up much these days. I did jump on the course to be sure my tires were at a good pressure (25 lbs, seemed great) and to rail into some corners and twist the throttle at least a little bit. Because the course inspection is tricky at these races, there's like a million people from all cat's out there trying to see the track so I didn't get to try out most of the lines that looked best as I was just trying to avoid people the whole time. Whatever, I've raced here before so I mostly knew my way around.

Got the first callup and chose a spot on the far right. Most of the fast local guys were present, but no Ben or Andy J-M and no Justin Robinson. There were 40 guys total I think. At the whistle, my teammate Scott Chapin got the hole and I slotted in behind him with Cody Kaiser on my wheel. Scott was pinning it and we were ripping the corners pretty well, getting a little gap on Cody and a few others who had gotten on.

Scott was doing a good job of dragging me around and making gaps for Cody to close on the first and most of the second lap. I came around Scott at some point and was first on to the long pavement at the end of the second lap. I wasn't feeling super good and I was noticing that I felt saturday's race a bit, but I put it in the big boy gear and cranked it up through the the paved bit.

This gave me a bit of a gap, which wasn't truly what I wanted so early in the race, but I could see Scott back there clogging things up for Cody and the others so I just kept on the gas and tried to ride smooth. Scott and I have been talking about how to ride for one another when these situations occur so I thought I should do my thing since he was back there doing his. He looked to be letting them chase hard on the fast parts and going to the front and riding slower tempo through the twisty and bumpy bits.





(photos: Jon Suzuki)

I got my gap up over 20 seconds and kept it there for the next few laps. I yelled to our mechanic Ryan to try and give me the time splits so I could meter my efforts with 4 laps to go. At this point, the wind and loneliness was taking its toll on me and when he told me 25 seconds, it felt pretty small but I was hopeful that I could maintain it. There were a lot of people cheering loud for me and my parents were out watching as well so I was getting ready to really hurt myself for those last few times around. With 3 to go, Ryan said the gap was under 20 seconds and Cody had gotten free of the group. I was pretty worried that he would come across to me so I tried again to dig as deep as I could and try to go hard while he was back there going hard.


(photo: Jon Suzuki)

At this point I was feeling pretty bad and I could tell my lap times were coming down. I had to really be firm with myself and stay focused on riding the course well and digging as deep as possible on the pavement particularly since this was where I seemed to be stretching things back out. I was too tired to ride the 12t cog there by this time but I was just trying to get down low and aero into the wind and just pedal as hard as I could in the 14t which was still damned hard into the wind.

I was struggling on the last lap and feeling that I might or might not be able to get to the line without cramping when Ryan told me the split was 30 seconds again! This was a big relief and I was able to roll into the line and enjoy my win. I am pleased with my new level of determination in the late part of tough races and I was very happy to get off my bike after this race. I feel like I rode well with the leaders jersey on and it is great to get to keep it for next round! I just hope I can continue like this- I'm reaching my goals this year so far, but there's 3 more rounds to go and a lot can happen.


(photo: Jon Suzuki)

Thanks to everyone who came out and yelled for me, and special thanks to Ryan for helping me from the pits!



(photo: Ken Conley)

4 comments:

cxwrench said...

nice job josh! glad you're still in red. i couldn't believe how long it took to get the kit clean enough to put in the washing machine! keep doing what you're doing and you'll have that jersey at the end of the series.

liquidwrench said...

Holy crap, you're not kidding! My whole driveway was totally covered in mud, it just kept coming out of my skinsuit! Once I got as much mud out with the hose as I could, I threw it in a bucket of cold water and let it sit before I put it in the wash. When I poured the water out there was like a cm of dirt in the bottom of the bucket!

Nick said...

Once again a job well done!! Congrats... Good race reports.. What a fun course huh?

Ben said...

great write ups, congrats on the domination!