1st Day of Greenville Training Series

Today was my first race of the season. Cat 4, 35 mile circuit race with five 7 mile laps at the Donaldson Center south of Greenville, SC. I slept well the night before, but noticed that my legs did not have that kick that I am used to when I did my short ride Friday night testing out my jumps on the sprints. My strength in racing is sprinting. That is basically where you sit in with the pack throughout the race and then every man for himself at the end. I can basically hold out a good 300 to 500 meter effort on a good day. Today was not that day.

We lined up and I was about 4 or 5 rows back from the front. After we got going I had maintained a position in about the front 1/4 of the group. I stayed there throughout the first lap without any problems. I noticed that the wind was blowing out of the northeast. And that made the few miles before and after the start/finish line challenging. I tend to stay on the right side of the pack along the white line. This is a comfortable spot for me to bail out if there is a crash in the group.

I hung in there up towards the front on the first lap. At the beginning of the 2nd lap the pace really picked up and the head wind seem to be getting to me. I dropped back to about the last 3/4 of the group. Once this happened I knew it was not going to be a good day. I held that position throughout the 2nd lap. After the start/finish line at the end of the 2nd lap, I fell to the very back of the group. This is not the place you want be during a race. There were no crashes up until this point. About a mile or so into the 3rd lap we hit a short pitch and I fell off the back. I tagged back on for a short time, but that did me in. I didn't have it today. I eventually fell off all together and that was the end of my racing for today. I'm not sure what exactly happened. The average speed at that point was 22 mph.

Once I realized that I wasn't going to finishe this race, I figured I might as well save something for tomorrow. Tomorrows race is a criterium at the BMW test track. I did not do the crits at last years Greenville training series, but I hear that it is a great racing experience. A crit is basically a 1/2 mile to a mile loop and you do that for a specified amount of time. At some point through the crit they take the groups average speed and convert the rest of the time to laps. Then, you're racing and counting down the laps for a sprint finish.

I've registered for all 6 races of the Greenville series. Tomorrow is race number 2. It is supposed to rain. Chance of thunderstorm. I put on my sticky tires for tomorrows crit. Hopefully I will have a better day. And hopefully it will be a safe race.

I talked to my friends Zach and Daniel after todays race. Daniel had got crashed in lap 4, so he did not finish either. He's okay, there is a small scrape on his handlebar tape. Zach got around that crash and finished with the pack. There was about a 2 man breakaway that finished about 40 seconds before the pack. Two guys crashed after crossing the finish line. Crashing on a bike is not pretty and looks extremely painful. My first priority in every race is to be safe and maintain an escape route during every moment.

So by not finishing I avoided at least 2 crashes. But, I would have rather finished. We'll see how tomorrow goes at the BMW track.

Great thing about racing close to home is that you have a good bit of the day free since races are short and do not take up as much time as the long training rides. Those can eat up a good part of your day, which makes other activities in your life difficult to manage.

All for now.....more later.

-Frank