Sunday May 15, 2011
Field: 22 Cat 3 riders, 27 P12 riders (we raced together, but 3s were counted separately)
Results: 11th in Cat 3
Teammates: None
8 laps of 9 miles each: 72 miles
Course: as flat as it can get! (according to my Garmin I climbed 272 feet in 72 miles!)
Average speed of 25.1

The day before I had raced the Modesto Crit with Jonathan Lee, Patrick Zahn and Nick Kersmarki. Nick is going to write a race report on that day as he won that race and I finished 2nd. I was coming off of that high coming into Sunday.

The weather was expected to be rain and thunder and lightening. Sunday morning came and there were some spectacular clouds but no rain. It had rained a bit overnight though as there were lots of puddles everywhere. Temps were a bit chilly and my start was at 8 am, but I ditched all warmers thinking it would warm up a bit which ended up being a good call. It was comfortable once we got going.

The first 2 laps were hard. The P12 guys were trying hard to ditch us lowly 3s and the wind was getting much stronger. By the start of the 2nd lap there was a break of 3 guys off the front and then the rest of us.. By the 4th lap, apparently one of those in the break stayed solo all the way to the finish and the rest were reeled in by a new break which consisted of mostly all P12 guys. Behind that there was the next group which I was in and we were a good 1+ minute off.. We decided to go after the guys in the big break ahead and a group of 6 of us started to work very hard rotating to reel them in… We succeeded one full lap later.. They were actually shocked when we caught them.. That was fun to see the look on their faces actually!

Now things were much more in control. Often times I found myself in the front 10 just drilling it. It was fast and hard. But I won’t bore you with all that.. Fast forwarding to the last lap..

8th and final lap: I was feeling very good. I knew that if I stayed in the front group of this main pack with only one guy in the break, I could easily capture a top 3 spot in the E3 group. I had one marked man from Davis BC (Michael Claudio) that I know I had to stay with. He is strong… There was also a SJBC guy who I thought was a 3 but he is a Cat 2 now (Kenny Strickland?). He and I had been riding a lot together all day and shared the work bringing the field back to catch the break.. I had to stay with them and was doing it just fine.. But on the last turn before the long straight finish of 2.5K to go, Kirk Evans ( a well known TT specialist, and a friend who is scared of riding in packs and is not comfortable with bikes “turning”) suddenly comes up and sits in front of me..I know Kirk well enough to know that I was in trouble. I was boxed in going into the last turn with HIM in front of me!… But I had no where to go.. Low and behold, we are going into this turn hot and Kirk just hits his brakes and slows him and me down by at least 5MPH.. I was in trouble.. I had lost momentum and this was not the time to be burning matches to catch back up with the fast moving group.. But I did go around him and caught back on, however, now I was blocked behind a ton of somehow slow moving P123 group who took up the entire road’s width. I have no idea why the group bunched up like that.. This was killing me.. I was anxious to get out of this situation but could not find an opening.The far left side of the road proved to be waste of time.. I noticed ex team mate Charlie Schnider (whole athlete) finding a hole on the right and going away.. I wish I was on that side!
I finally gave up and moved to the middle thinking a hole is about to open up, instead, two guys started banging bars and were about to go down.. That was devastating to be right behind that.. I was losing the pack that I was trying to go around on earlier and now again I had to play chase.. Out of the saddle and BAM, both hamstrings locked up on me… I gave it all and I had and limped through the finish.. I was so bummed on how the past 2 to 3 minutes completely destroyed my seemingly perfect race.. Kirk Evans came up after the race and apologized to me for that move on the last turn as he knew what it did to me and how costly it was for my race.. Ironically he finished 7th!

To see all the guys I was working very hard with finish from 2nd to 8th place in the P12 group, and the rest of the E3 guys that worked with in the top 5 or 6 position and finishing 11th was very frustrating.

Luckily, I still have great memories of Saturday to chew on. All in all, a great weekend, I am in one piece, had a great time, got a great work out and learned a ton..

Thanks to Nick, Patrick and JLee for an awesome race on Saturday.
Kashy

Congratulations to Jonathan Lee on his overall victory in the road edition of the 2011 Double Dare Duathlon. You may wonder why a duathlon race is being reported on our website. Well, not only did the duathlon have a cycling portion, many of us actually participate in duathlons, triathlons and half marathon/marathons that we like to celebrate from time to time. Below is Jonathan’s recap of the event.

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Report by: Jonathan Lee
Result: 1st place overall
Event: Road Duathlon

On a whim I decided to race this event 2 weeks ago. I used to run middle distances pretty fast in another life and hoped my cycling fitness would help get me through the 4 miles of running.

The course was a 2 mile run, 15 mile ride, then a 2 mile run with the running legs being on trails through Cellar 8 vineyards…beautiful as crap.

There were about 100 entrants for this mass start. Off we went pretty fast from the gun…i was told not to hammer the first run and save something for the last run. Still our first mile was just under 6 mins. i backed it off pretty quickly. Second mile was at a 6:18 pace…more like it i think. There were 5 guys ahead of me, the leaders about 45 seconds up the road. i thought i’d see them in the transition, but nope i was surprised to be the only one of the top 6 in transition when i got there. Wow! those multisport people are good at transitions! well somehow i was fast there too, and was on the bike in about 20 seconds later. When i got onto the road, the guys in front of me were out of sight!! really?! wow

My philosophy for Time Trials is to ALWAYS start out slower than you think you should ALWAYS. i started very calmly and let the pace come up gradually. By mile 4 i had caught them all. I turned onto the Canyon Rd Climb and switched to the little ring in front. The chain jumped both pulleys in back derailleur. Sheeeit. i had to dismount and fiddle with things. 2 guys passed me, one of them yelling “sorry man that sucks!”

I got the chain back on and remounted. Shifted to the little ring up front and wham, it jumped the pulleys again. %&$*#)!! dismount, fiddle for a bit, remount and climb Canyon in the 54 X 21 grrr. i thought my chances for win were over at this point. the 2 guys ahead were again out of sight. I hammered away and caught them both on the Dutcher Climb at about 10 miles into the bike. i was hoping they would be impressed when i passed them in the big ring up the hill. probably they weren’t

I knew i had to gain more time on them to make sure i could hold them off on the run…so i hammered the descent all out trying to get as small as possible. I entered the Transition with about 60 seconds on the 2nd place guy. The final run went well and i felt ok but i m sure i wasn’t that fast. i finished with about 45 seconds to spare on 2nd place. Nice event, i think more cyclists should do runs…it really develops things that get neglected on the bike. But Heck does this mean i m going to run more? not at all! haha

I finished in 57:59 i lost at least 2 mins with the chain fiascos grrr

I will be back for this next year…hope to see some real runners from you all out there to show em how to do it!

Compliment to make the head expand came when one of the guys i passed came up to me and said that he thought i was a car coming up on him as i was going fast. i think it was the noisy disc wheel though heh heh