Lincoln Park Criterium 2013 - Race Report

My 2013 bicycle racing season kicked off with the practice crits at Gaper's Block and then the Burnham Racing Spring Super Criterium.  Both race reports will be up soon, I wanted to get Lincoln Park up while it was still fresh in my mind.  I spent the week before Lincoln Park doing a lot of short intense training and taking off Friday to recover.  I only had one race on Saturday, Cat 5 only had filled up so I opted for Cat 4/5.  I probably wouldn't have done both, it was a cold and windy day, the races were quite a few hours apart and spending that much time just didn't appeal to me.  As it was I got up Saturday, went to breakfast and came back home to sleep for a couple hours and try to get the chill out of my bones that this late winter recurrence has induced.

Ready to warm up

The afternoon was mostly sunny, low 40s but windy, at least it wasn't coming off Lake Michigan like it was at Gaper's Block.  The course wasn't your normal Criterium loop, it had some decent power climbs, sweeping downhills and a tight 180 degree corner.  Being racing age 47 I have no idea how I'm going to feel on a given day until I bump my heart rate and power zones into the red zone and come back down.  Fellow Roadkill club members Luther Gulseth and John Orleans joined me in the 4/5 race.  Scott Winsett was providing Soigneur services (no massages) and holding jackets after the warmup lap.  Paul Goc provided some last minute advise to all.  We had watched the Cat 1/2/3 race being broken apart by the wind and hills so I was expecting something similar but on a lesser scale, generally Cat 4/5 is not quite so aggressive.  I'm trying to do as many USA Cycling events as I can this year, they have a nice online ranking system and before this race I was ranked 7th in Illinois in Cat 5 so my main goal was to go Cat 5 hunting and place as high as possible to try to move up.  

The race started with the standard beginning, a rider in front of me had a hard time clipping in, he definitely was not using Speedplay Pedals.  I normally try to get at least on the second or third row on the start to prevent this but staying warm on the warmup lap was a priority, this was my third race series of the year with bone chilling weather, uncontrollable shivering waiting at the start is not my idea of fun.  Oh yeah, the whole point of this exercise is to have fun, number one goal!  Cat 4s are not fond of racing with more inexperienced Cat 5s so they tend to start fast to string out the field and send weaker riders to the back.  On the first lap someone let a gap form mid field and immediately we had two separate races.  With hills and a headwind crossing that gap is almost impossible.  The back group strung out but still was maintaining a serious pace.  At the Gaper's Block practice series I would commonly find my heart-rate below threshold in the mid 150s, here it was over threshold at 166-170 and I had 30 minutes of racing to get through.  

I lost Luther somewhere in the back pack but I could see John Orleans in his Alchemy kit out of the corner of my eye most of the time, we ended up swapping pulls for a few laps in the chase group we were in, I think out of a field of 75 we were somewhere in the lower third.  With around 4 laps to go I lost John (at that point I was seriously questioning my motives also) and the chase group had shrunk to 4 or 5.  We were all running near max effort but were still keeping a good pace going.  That kind of riding hurts but you know every rider you pass is hurting more!  The course was counter clockwise and the finishing straight was after a downhill 30-35 mph left turn, as soon as you hit the straight there was a nasty crosswind.  I finally found that since it was coming from the left I could maintain an echelon position (moving about halfway even with the rider I was following) to get some respite from the wind.  The group I was with followed suit and I think that was the only chance we had for recovery, maybe a drop of two or three heartbeats for the length of the straight.  

I found that I wasn't feeling too bad, normally my max threshold is 162 but after this I think I need to bump it up to 166-168 or so, I maintained that average for 30 minutes so it must be doable, albeit in race conditions.  The first hill after the start finish I decided to make a move.  I went from the back of the group to the front in a full sprint and planned on carrying that speed down and around the corner and taking the time to recover.  It worked great, no one was able to follow.  I caught another group before the 180 degree corner and hung with them for a lap.  I noticed that they were swinging way wide on the 180 so I dove to the inside, moved past them and onto the next group as they hit the start finish straight.  With two laps to go they were just trying to maintain so I made another move to get around them without them tagging on.  I took another group at the 180 on the inside and managed to team up with a Half Acre guy.  We traded pulls around the course, at this point I think we had made it into no man's land that the split had formed.  Near the end of the last lap he had a little bit more in the tank than I had and I had to let him go.  I was running on empty and I could see a group behind me racing for points.  The announcer was kind enough to egg me on and I pulled out the stops for one final sprint and stayed ahead.  Race over, one of the hardest I've ever done.  The closest to it was the Matteson practice crits last year the B group was send out with a head start and the A group had to chase.  Me and a few guys in the B group were highly motivated to stay out in front as long as possible and I had set my all time 20 minute power record that held for the rest of the season

USA Cycling events are great for data geeks.  Almost as soon as the race is over and the high speed camera footage is reviewed you get an email with your results.  Those results are posted to the USA Cycling website that evening and your ranking is updated.  I finished 21st out of a field of 75 and 7th of the Cat 5 racers.  This moved me up to 6th in the state for Cat 5s and made me wish I had made it into the 5 only class to get more points.  

Post Race Results

I knew this would be a much more aggressive event, I should have taken the hills and wind much more seriously.  That is what Cat 5 is for, to learn by experience and build your skills and strength.  I'm in the upper end of Cat 5 power output now but not solid enough in Cat 4 range to upgrade yet.  Many racers spend most of their careers in Cat 4 because it takes a serious commitment and effort to get to Cat 3 so I'm biding my time moving up.  Generally Cat 4 races are at a much saner time of day than Cat 5s so that might be a big motivator.  USA Cycling races are generally few and far between in Chicagoland, the ABR is a fairly active sanctioning body, I did more of them last year than USAC.  

Time to head home