{"id":1121,"date":"2009-05-23T16:35:17","date_gmt":"2009-05-23T22:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2009-05-23T16:35:49","modified_gmt":"2009-05-23T22:35:49","slug":"west-feliciana-classic-stage-race-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=1121","title":{"rendered":"West Feliciana Classic Stage Race: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time Trial<\/strong>
\nThe course was 5 rolling miles. Luckily, most of the uphills were preceded by good downhills, which were helpful for creating some momentum. I ended up rolling an 11:58, which was awesome, because the next person back sat at 12:35 (I think?). Being a stage race (fastest cumulative time wins), this was exactly what I wanted.<\/p>\n

Road Race<\/strong>
\nOur race started a few minutes late, in the rain. That’s OK. I like rain when it’s warm. The 36 mile course had one KOM spot near mile 14, and many more gentle, rolling hills. The race started slow. The Tiger Cycling girls and I took turns pulling for most of the way towards the KOM (King of the Mountain time bonus spot- good for 7 seconds off of your total time).<\/p>\n

Oh yeah- and the instruction we received as to WHERE the KOM was went something like, “you make a couple of turns in the first 7 miles, then it’s about 3 or 4 miles up the road from there, and has either a sign or something painted on the road so you know where it is.”<\/p>\n

So once we started getting close, everyone was a bit antsy. There were a couple of attacks up some non-KOM hills, one of which I countered on the hill just before the KOM hill. The counter softened everyone up a little for the real thing. We passed a “KOM 1K” mark on the road, and the pace quickened. However, the people up front started to blow up. I held steady and passed them. As I neared the line, I looked back and saw that I had ~20 yards on the group. Seeing my opportunity, I didn’t let off of the pace. I got the KOM bonus and hit the drops and began to hammer out my best effort. Did I mention that this was at mile 14 of 36? Yeah. I had a long row to hoe…<\/p>\n

The remainder of the race was pretty uneventful. I just rode my butt off. I yelled at a grcoup of cat 5 men that didn’t seem to understand what “on your left” meant (sorry guys- I was in a hurry!) The rest of the time, I just watched the miles, looked over my shoulder occasionally, and tried to keep the wattage going as best I could. It was a good thing, too, because, though I crossed the finishline solo, by the time I rolled up the road a little and slowly coasted back, I saw my chasers sprinting for 2nd. They’d never given up- it’s a good thing I didn’t, either…<\/p>\n

So I enter day 2 (another 36 mile road race) with a very comfortable time gap: 37 seconds from the TT, 7 seconds bonus for the KOM, 10 for winning the RR, and whatever gap I had on the group from the solo finish- I’m guessing somewhere around 40-60 more seconds. I really just have to finish with the leaders tomorrow to win the GC. It’s a good feeling for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time Trial The course was 5 rolling miles. Luckily, most of the uphills were preceded by good downhills, which were helpful for creating some momentum. I ended up rolling an 11:58, which was awesome, because the next person back sat at 12:35 (I think?). Being a stage race (fastest cumulative time wins), this was exactly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-i5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1123,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}