Toni Morrison once said "if you surrender to the wind, you can ride it." When it comes to bike racing, that is totally bull. I surrendered myself to a breakaway on Saturday and I all I got was the joy of dodging a couple crashes and 1200 watts in a field sprint. I watched the break go at Fort Ritchie. I wanted to be in. I tried to be in. I tried jumping to it twice. Both times I came back a little more broken then before.
If I couldn't be in the break than I wanted to bring the break back. I tried joining in the chase at the front of the field. The break was right there the whole time, it was just 15-20 seconds off the front. One or two more guys on the front and maybe, maybe, maybe. The tail of the tape is that I maxed out at 1200 watts and 36 mph in the race. I put in a lot of effort and in the end it wasn't enough to bring them back. However, it's clear that I can still turn my bike and that Ben Coles' old adage, that "there is always room on the inside," holds true.
A couple points emerged from 60 minutes of racing. The first is that if you come with me when I'm bridging up to a break, I'd like it if you'd help pull a little bit. It's great to have a buddy suffering with you to get up to a breakaway. It reduces the workload and makes it all so much better. However, if you jump me to finish off the gap then you better make it up there. I realize it's bike racing and people are going to do that, so I cool when it happens. It's part of the reason why you learn that lesson to always conserve enough energy for one more jump. However, if you jump me to bridge the gap and you subsequently fail to get to the break...well then...maybe you should rethink your strategy because now both of us are back in the field.
The second point is, when are we going to start pulling riders who are out of contention? This season has seen a lot of lapped riders in the field in a lot of different crits. About 20 minutes or so into this race the main field started catching lapped riders. Fort Ritchie is a 1.5 km loop with 6 turns in it. It was technical to a degree and the attrition rate was high. It was clear from the beginning that some of the riders weren't going to make it the whole way. I appreciate that the officiating crew likes to leave riders in as long as possible, but when they get lapped by the field, then it's just dangerous. Especially when while in the process of getting lapped these riders don't move to the sides of the road and end up going backwards through the field like a bowling ball down a mountain.
At some point in time the individual rider needs to admit that they are beyond their capacity and it is in his/her best interest to pull the plug. We've all done it before, I've pulled myself out this season. It happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, it's just a sign that tomorrow will be a better day. However, if you get popped and stick around to get lapped and take someone down in the process of getting lapped...well then that's just a plain bad decision on your part.
4 comments:
I thought those bowling balls were people with mechanicals who were trying to jump back in. Didn't realize they were lapped riders. Wow did they clutter things up and ruin our chase a few times.
One time this dude came right back through the middle at about 12mph....it was crazy.
Oh, I'm not exactly sure, but I think that dude who jumped on you had a guy in the break.... so he wasn't about to help you.
If that dude was me I am sorry. I rode somebody pretty far and saw we had a gap. I tried to bridge myself up to the small group because we had nobody else and I am not going to drag anymore people up to the break. I had to help my teammate stay in the small group of 4. I could have killed myself to catch them and had nothing left but that would have signaled others could do the same.
BTW how did you fair at bunny hop. I was talking to you in that horrible rain(i think it was you,haha).
I have to disagree with something you said. Getting dropped is something to be ashamed of. Which is what makes it so hard to understand why the dropped insist on compounding their embarrassment by staying on the course.
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