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Monday, March 24, 2008

First Race of the Year - Caleb Pike

The race season begun on the island on Sunday, with a jaunt along Caleb Pike, a hilly 2km circuit RR. My specialty..haha

My course description: It starts on a relative flat, with a bit of a false ascent, then a short little glide uphill, into a right corner which begins to go downhill, then full-on downhill, and then full-on uphill, where you can coast/soft-pedal about 2/3rds of the way up, and then generally get out of the saddle to get to the top of. Then it flattens a little bit, and another short ascent, then downhill directly into the other right turn, which brings you back to where this started.

I decided to race A, to try and capture some Victoria Cycling League points (they'll be including track races each month again this year, yay!) despite having done no intensity, and sucking at climbing. ;)

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It started out pretty reasonable, with nine of us. I hung in for the first few laps, but the resistance from my fenders (the weather was pretty crappy when we left home, and i still wasn't even sure i wanted to race, but got decent by the time the race started) and the lack of going anywhere near my 'red line' in my training this year so far made keeping up on the climbs a challenge for me, so around lap five i started to fall off the back of the pack.

And it ended up with me riding solo for pretty much the rest of the race...by the time the pack caught me again, i tagged in for a lap, but was a bit drained from having ridden solo for so long. The next time they'd all busted into a few pairs.. I was lapped by the two leaders three times, and the rest two times...better than last year! Though in some ways last year was better, having Wendy Simms to ride and work with for several laps...ahh well.

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Another mistake was not bringing any food. I'd assumed this was the 'regular' distance, which took about 45mins to complete, but this was the 'Sunday' edition, and i was out for 1hr 50mins..!! Without any food or energy drink, with about 20mins to go, i was on the verge of bonking... Thanks to Nick from AviaWest for handing me my energy drink, and to Kevin for the gel near the end. =)

So i finished 6th of 6, three A's had DNF'd. A good start to the season..heh.. Here's my PowerTap output, you can see i held a pretty steady effort until the last six or so laps...bleh...

From PowerTapFiles

Click on the image to view a larger version.. I did manage to tie or break my wattage PB's by a few points in the 120min, 60min and 30min ranges, so i'm in good form overall, once i start picking up the intensity, i should be looking good!

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Me coming in for the finish..haha..

This was also the first race of the year for Marty and Kevin, and it's great to have a team out representing! In the B's, Kevin finished 8th, and Marty was about 11th - great work guys!! It was really encouraging to see more green on the roads. =)

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Go OrganicAthlete Victoria!!

Thanks to Katie Rabien for most of the shots, the full gallery of pics can be found here, and Katie's gallery site of the race with tons of shots of everyone is here.

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Name:
Dave Shishkoff
aka Dave Noisy
Location:
Victoria, BC
Canada

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