Results Bros?  We had people in all the races.  

Rode KCC this weekend, my first road race and event with Kissena. I had a lot of fun. I was Cat 5 and accomplished my primary goal of finishing the race. 40th place. Gonna be getting an indoor trainer and going hard indoors so I can be more competitive next season.

Happy to survive the season without any injuries! Started out in front and enjoyed the breeze in my face before the swarm started. As usual, I yo-yoed between being upfront and falling to the back. Found it hard to hang on to any one wheel for very long and the wet leaves added a touch of stress to the mix. I did follow a little break-away from the start line to the bottom of the fast stretch on the third lap, which was fun. After that, I found it hard to maintain a solid position.

On the final hill, I struggled to get up front as the pack was pretty tight and I couldn't easily maneuver or find a good wheel to follow. Then, out of nowhere, my gears started slipping like crazy in the gear I needed most, so I was a bit distracted (funny how it's always something). Half way up the hill, I stood to try and power up the final stretch but I immediately felt my rear wheel slipping on the leaves, so had to sat back down and lost some momentum. In the end, finished 30th and got down on myself for not sticking with the top 5 wheels for the final hill, as planned. But glad to see Andrew execute that hat trick and stick 5th place! 

With these PP races, do folks feel it is a matter of positioning/strategy over fitness? After four of them, I'm not so sure. I feel like my fitness is decent but I can't seem to solve this particular racing puzzle when it comes to that damn hill. Either I can't move in the pack or my HR is too pinned for me to make an explosive move. Next year I plan to strength training to the mix so, hopefully, I'll have a bit more power to put down in clutch time. Being probably one of the oldest goat in these events, at 56, I feel like it's a necessity. 

Now it's 2 weeks off the bike and time to get fat...

I haven't been training and working out regularly this past month, so I didn't have a lot of expectations going into the race. My goal was to stay in the top 15 throughout the race and get experience staying near the front.

I was able to conserve energy during the race and didn't try to make any attacks or bring anything back. The race felt a little slow on account of the wet leaves.

Going into the bottom of the final hill, I was about 30-35th place and the whole field was spread out across the two lanes. I found the wheel of Sam Xu right in front of me. He and I were in a breakaway during the last crit. Since I knew he was a good racer and had some power, I decided to ride his wheel.

It was a great decision to follow him since he quickly moved up from 30th place to top 15 and then 1st over the top of the hill. A couple riders swerved off the main group to get on Sam's wheel and caused me to let up on the gas a little bit (I should have hugged Sam's wheel a little closer). One of those riders passed Sam to place 1st. I was 3rd until about 100 meters to go when someone inched past.

I am not in peak shape, and I had better sprints in earlier races (760 W for 5 sec vs 1100 W for 5 sec). I think I was able to place well because I've learned how to be surf wheels in the last 400 meters and conserve energy.

Kings County Challenge

• Cat 3/4 race had about 80 riders
  
• Including Mike Cumming, Joe, and myself
• Without Sprint or KOM laps, the first few laps feel like it will simply come down to a sprint
  
• Feels like we are moving fast, but anytime I look down the computer has us below 40km/h
• Mike and I take position towards the front, Joe is up there too
• Feels like moving up in the climb is easier than usual
• Someone puts in a real hard dig as we get 3 to go, and now we are really racing
• I expect Mike to come thru and get on that group, as it is looking promising
• He never comes by, so I'm like oh shit, guess it is on me!! 
• gotta get on it!
• I dig, riding thru exploding riders, making it to the group split of around 8ish
• Oh cyclocross form, so you do exist!!!
• Once I get there, been years since I said this: "This is the race, guys, let's go!!"
• Everyone is burning and not really working..., we get caught a few minutes later
•  :'(  
  
• This will happen again with 2 to go, this time I'm a bit conservative, and just stay towards the front, expecting the split to get caught by the temple, which happens
• I ask Joe, and find Mike dropped out earlier with a flat
• Joe and I set ourselves up for a good position up the hill, right before the bell
• A few seconds after we get one to go, we get neutralized, there's a flying 1/2/3 break and they are letting then thru
• This sucks for a few reasons, but mostly the dynamic set by those hard splits is now gone... :'(  
• Wait, wait... let a bunch of category 3 and 4 racers find a way to suck it even more
• Someone touches wheels or whatever and about 10 riders go down. While neutralized!!
• Joe and I get caught behind it, and we see the group disappear in the horizon
• except we are still neutralized, so we make it back no problem
• The moto ref lets us race again from the bottom by the temple
• Our appetite for risk a bit low, Joe and I roll in safely in the 30s
• Still honest, fun times.
• Charlie's last last official race as Kissena's Race Director. The end of an era.
• We will never be here again
• Perfect opener for Sly Fox CX the next day

Let's go race bikes!!



Photos by Dave.

@AdamYaffe

You wrote: "With these PP races, do folks feel it is a matter of positioning/strategy over fitness? After four of them, I'm not so sure."

Great intel, JP. Will keep in mind next year!

btw @AdamYaffe this is pretty good indicator of what you might want to incorporate in your workouts next season

-- strategy and positioning are 1000% crucial. Still, if your hr is pinned everytime up the hill, then you can also improve your fitness. The hill takes about 50 to 70 seconds, often including some surges. Building a plan and workouts that will help you deal with that stress should be easy enough.

To state the obvious: You want to minimize your effort up the hill, specially in the earlier laps, while at the same time expecting this will be when you need to go the hardest. In Prospect Park, the hill will be the hardest part of the lap, every single lap. 

@AdamYaffe I think that both Eloy and JP's comments are on point. As another "old goat", (I'm 60), and relatively new to racing, (4 years/30 races), I think that I may have some insights that may be helpful. I found that in my first three seasons racing in PP I too would yo-yo wildly from postions near the front to postions near the rear. This was most often not do to a lack of conditioning as much as a lack of confidence and inexperience. Try as I might, it would happen time and again - I couldn't seem to find a way to pick a position and hold it (or defend it, as JP put it). Every time I'd find myself further back than I wanted to be I'd look for ways to fight my way back into better position. Moving up inevitably meant an expenditure of effort, detrimental, when the name of the game in PP races seems to be conservation of energy and positioning, until the last hill and sprint. (What % of Cat 3/4 breaks succeed in PP races? - I can't think of any in any of the races I've been involved in. That seems to be  more common in the Cat 5 and Cat 123 races. I'd love to work on building a group of Cat 4 riders who could attack as a team regularly...) Anyway, I spent a lot of the 2019 season watching how Eloy and Patrick would postion themselves near the front and hold that position over the course of the race. I made it my main goal this year to figure out what it took to ride like that. No doubt about it, those races get hairy and scary, so building bike handling skills and experience over time that led to confidence have helped me in this season to be more confident in riding towards the front and better at holding my position and not needlessly wasting energy. Identifying riders to follow up the hill who don't poop out and decelarate, causing one to lose momentum and break your cadence, has also helped - here, again,  it helps to be near the front with the more predictably steady riders. I've found that when I'm stuck in slow and unsteady traffic going up the hill- when I have to break my cadence and and then accelerate to bridge gaps is when I get in trouble. Next year's goal - work on my spinting to try to have some stronger finishes. When, at age 56 I started racing I didn't know what to expect. I'm glad that Kissena welcomed me onto the team. It's been a great group of people to learn from and grow with.  At age 60 there's still much to learn and hopefully some more races to race - perhaps the upward slope of confidence and experience will help to counter the downward slope of age-related fitness potential...

eloy said:

Kings County Challenge

• Cat 3/4 race had about 80 riders
  
• Including Mike Cumming, Joe, and myself
• Without Sprint or KOM laps, the first few laps feel like it will simply come down to a sprint
  
• Feels like we are moving fast, but anytime I look down the computer has us below 40km/h
• Mike and I take position towards the front, Joe is up there too
• Feels like moving up in the climb is easier than usual
• Someone puts in a real hard dig as we get 3 to go, and now we are really racing
• I expect Mike to come thru and get on that group, as it is looking promising
• He never comes by, so I'm like oh shit, guess it is on me!! 
• gotta get on it!
• I dig, riding thru exploding riders, making it to the group split of around 8ish
• Oh cyclocross form, so you do exist!!!
• Once I get there, been years since I said this: "This is the race, guys, let's go!!"
• Everyone is burning and not really working..., we get caught a few minutes later
•  :'(  
  
• This will happen again with 2 to go, this time I'm a bit conservative, and just stay towards the front, expecting the split to get caught by the temple, which happens
• I ask Joe, and find Mike dropped out earlier with a flat
• Joe and I set ourselves up for a good position up the hill, right before the bell
• A few seconds after we get one to go, we get neutralized, there's a flying 1/2/3 break and they are letting then thru
• This sucks for a few reasons, but mostly the dynamic set by those hard splits is now gone... :'(  
• Wait, wait... let a bunch of category 3 and 4 racers find a way to suck it even more
• Someone touches wheels or whatever and about 10 riders go down. While neutralized!!
• Joe and I get caught behind it, and we see the group disappear in the horizon
• except we are still neutralized, so we make it back no problem
• The moto ref lets us race again from the bottom by the temple
• Our appetite for risk a bit low, Joe and I roll in safely in the 30s
• Still honest, fun times.
• Charlie's last last official race as Kissena's Race Director. The end of an era.
• We will never be here again
• Perfect opener for Sly Fox CX the next day

Let's go race bikes!!



Photos by Dave.

I will add that I did bridge a gap between the peloton and my friend Will who got ahead of everyone, by what seemed like maybe 15 seconds. Pulled the field back but unfortunately with 3 laps to go if memory serves right my rear tire said: "time to explode". The hole was just large enough not to be fortunate to seal the tire to 60 psi and still continue racing so I was out for the count and bummed as I felt strong for a good finish with everyone seeming taking it easy. Good on everyone for staying as safe as possible with the crash. Amazing to have Charlie as race director and looking forward to next road season!