“You got to just DRILL IT!” – Jeff Mandell
Life allowed me to be selfish and race today. It took some creativity and I found a way to use my broken race bike. Having to wait three months for a frame warranty isn’t fun. So I figured out how to make it work and rode the broken frame to second place today.
The morning’s race routine went very smooth and I arrived at the venue at 7:45am for a 9:00am start time. I grabbed my number plate from registration, ran back to the car, grabbed my chair, cooler and setup up my bottle station just past the start / finish line before the bridge.
I never raced this place before and apparently they decided to run the course backwards this year. On my way back to the car, I ran in to a fellow racer friend (Nick) who gave me a pro tip that the course has a lot of climbing. With that, I smile cause I can climb well and that helped me refine my race strategy AND this tip paid huge dividends.
I jumped on the bike and took a quick spin to check out the beginning portion of the course. I quickly notice, it’s a fast and flowy ripper and my bike feels amazing. I made some last minute tweaks to the suspension yesterday anticipating a fast and flowy course and I am very stoked with the setup.
It’s was 8:25am when I returned to the car and I setup the road bike on the trainer and did my warm up. All good feels…
At 8:50am, I rolled down the hill to staging and make my way through the pro field to our staging area, I snagged a front row middle position and sparked up some good conversations with a few guys in my class – mostly we were joking about farts and sharting up a chamois… Ya know, normal staging banter – Good times!
9:02am… “15 seconds…. 5 seconds… GO…” We took off up the hill, I was struggling to get clipped in but still able to pedal the pace.. I finally get clipped and am pleasantly surprised I am very comfortable at the pace of the start. I was running in second until we crossed the bridge and another guy comes around on my left and then we settle in to the single track. Dude off the front was out of sight quick. I noticed I forgot to hit start on my gps when I looked down to check my heart rate.. Woops!
We settled in to a nice flow and I’m noticing the guy leading our train is a little twitchy so I back off his wheel a little in case he makes a mistake, I also noticed his pace is on the tame side so I took that time to get my heart rate down and rest. We caught the tail of the Pro class and I seized an opportunity to pass both guys.
“ON YO LEFT SON!”…
I switched styles to flow at my pace with slight apprehension because I did’t know the course. I opened up a nice little gap for myself and am calling out some tricky sections for the group behind and I noticed a race friend of mine (Timmy) is making his way to my wheel. Nice… He and I paired up, chat a little bit and then we checked out from the rest of the group. I pushed the pace a little bit and made up enough ground on the leader to get him within reach. I noticed I would gain on the leader in the climbs and he would pull away in the downhill flowy sections. I make a mental note of this…
We made our way out to the start / finish gravel road climb to complete lap one. Joe Thomas (winner of our class) came around on my right and I jumped on his wheel and we pace lined up the hill. We sucked up and spit out the leader on the climb like he was going backwards. Just past the start / finish line, I ate a GU which caused me to loose ground on Joe and within a minute, he was out of sight – GONE, never to be seen again…
Lap 2 – I flowed through the awesomely first flowy section of the course and the guy we sucked up and spit out is back on my wheel talking all kinds of stuff… “I like your pace.. We got a long way to go… I pushed too hard on that first lap”. Through out the second lap, he and I worked together and yo-yo’d – He was a pretty cool dude to race with.. I wish I remembered his name.. He would let me by on the climbs and I would let him go on the descents. We would gap each other and reel each other back in. I was able to catch and pass him on the short punch climb on the back side of the course and hold that position all the way in to lap three. I got the feeling he ran out of gas as I went by.
Coming through the start / finish to start lap 3 – I’m setting up to swap bottles in this pic.
Lap 3 – I pushed real hard up the hill to the start / finish line to open up enough gap on the others to comfortably maintain that position while I stopped at my chair and swapped bottles. I swapped bottles in record time and was quickly back on the gas. I ate another GU after crossing over the bridge. At that moment, I switched to… it’s the last lap..“You got to just drill it!” mode and I kept repeating that mantra in my head throughout the entire third lap. I drilled everything.. All the descents, all the flowy sections, all the climbs… I laid it all out there. Timmy managed to bridge back to me for a little while until we hit the mid lap switch back climb… until I drilled it and stayed on the gas all the way to the other side of the course. I peeked back and there was no one in sight. I felt fatigue setting in and stuffed a couple GU gummies down my throat with hopes it would help. The fatigue was also affecting my bike handling in the trickier sections. I decided to be very conservative and cautious to prevent a mistake and crash. This hurt me because I would slow down for the tricky sections and accelerate back up to speed which was taking a toll on my quads and I started to feel hints of cramping. Thankfully, I know how to manage that for a long time. I also asked my quads very politely to not lock up on me and they obliged.
I crushed the last punchy climb with everything I had and drilled it to the last gravel road. I kept looking back to see if I had any threats and couldn’t see anyone as far as I could see. As I hit the last gravel climb to the finish, I look back and I see two guys working together to catch me and they were closing in on me quick. I put my head down and pushed with all I had and thankfully, I held them off.
Second place!
That was my best race to date. To start this season with a podium in CAT 1 felt really good and proved that all the work I put in during the off season paid off. I improved significantly since last year. I am stronger, lighter, smarter and better bike handler.
Life is really good right now!
Mike Williams 