Nelson Frink, Wente RR, 45+ 4/5

"Thirty seconds to the whistle", the ref announced right after Darin Salk, Jim Kuphaldt and I pulled in from our warm-up ride into the 45+4/5 group of 75 racers. Whoa! That was close! We rolled out casually at first, and soon I see orange and blue move to the front and pick the tempo up to racing speed. I assumed it was Jim, but then saw him further back, and asked Darin who our teammate was on the front. It was Hal Sloane, and he led for at least a mile.

I was dropped on the first lap on the second portion of the climb on the more gradual stretch after the Freeway Overpass. When the other scattered riders around me on the descent weren't trying to catch the 15 or so riders 100 yards ahead, I burned a couple of matches to catch back on in the descent and on the more gradual 2nd climb. When we looped back around to the starting point, I looked back and there were at least 40 racers, and I realized I could have sat in and caught back on without working so hard. On the 2nd lap climb, I decided I needn't try to hold the front group but rather keep close enough to get back in on the downhill and flats. About 20 racers in two groups were ahead of me going over the top, but when I looked back there were just a few scattered racers for a long way back, and I realized the reinforcements weren't going to come through this time. I chased hard on the downhill and back onto the 2nd gradual uphill, but couldn't close the 50 yard gap to the 10 rider chase group. I soloed quite awhile until I was picked up by five guys as I looped past the race start. We caught some dropped riders on the third lap, and I came in third of the ten or so of us on the finishing climb for 19th place overall.

On the drive home I was talking with Jim who said it was the most difficult course he'd raced by far, and I was arguing that the course wasn't so tough as the competition. However, as we talked about it more, I realized he was right. The mountain goats would push mere mesomorphs like us over the red line and get a little gap on the steep section before the freeway, and then try hard to extend it on the section after the freeway. The Sea Otter road race had more total vertical over the same distance, but the toughest climb was only about as long as the first stretch before the freeway, and the fast climbers couldn't get a big enough gap to hold off the pack on the long gradual downhill into the wind, so they quit trying after the first couple of laps. The short, fast downhill at Wente was hard to bridge on, and was followed by another gradual climb where they could bury the hatchet. At Copper the climb was followed by a long, flatter section where you could always see the front group and thus be encouraged to work with other riders to get back on. I'm told that the Berkeley road race has more overall climbing than Wente, but they're shorter climbs. Hopefully I'll have a better chance of holding/rejoining onto the front group there. For anyone who's interested, here's my garmin file for the race. I had 53 minutes of 93% or greater of max heart rate, which beat my prior high of 49 minutes at Copper. http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5514115

Lessons learned: 1. Just because the first race is delayed 15 minutes doesn't mean the following ones will. 2. Don't assume you'll be able to get help from others to get back on if you're dropped. It's better to burn extra energy closing a gap than soloing for miles. 3. Frozen water bottles may be nice for long rides, but they're just extra weight in a shorter race. I suppose I shouldn't complain about getting one from Jim's brother Joe who ran a fast forty yards uphill to pass it to me on the 3rd lap. The cool sips I did get from it occasionally were so nice, and I was lucky to get anything at all at the no-neutral-support feed zone.

Nelson