Michael Matiasek, Mt Hamilton RR Cat 4

Executive summary: I am pleased to report that we all survived Mt Hamilton this year. We being, myself, Will, Lee, Lorne and Bruno. Now, if you do not get a kick out a long detailed race reports, hit delete now!

For those who have not looked at this course... it is a BEAST! It far exceeds any other cat 4 course I have seen or done yet on the calender. 63 miles with 6,000 feet of climbing! It is also one of the few point to point races, so the race started in San Jose, climbs immediately over the 4,200 foot Mt hamilton, descends the backside of hamilton, then rolls along to the finish for 40 miles near livermore. The main climb is broken into 3 stages which have short breaks in between each one.
The race started at a moderate pace up the gentle grades of hamilton with Will controlling the pace for about half of the first stage of the climb. At the start of the second stage there was some confusion in the pack about who was going to set the pace, and to prevent the pace from slowing too much I moved to the front and brought the pace up several miles an hour... another rider interpreted this as an attack and exploded up to and around me. Albeit so early in the race I was game for a little action, so I matched his effort and away we went. I thought we would start the selection into a core group of climbers but when I looked back it was only us! We maybe got as much as a 20 to 30 second gap from the next riders. I rode with him for about 1-2 miles and could see right away he was going to be a stronger climber than I, and we were not gapping the field enough... and we would need more help later in the race to make it stick... so decided I was working a little harder than I wanted to for such a long race, so I dropped back to the chase group. Once in the chase group I tried looking back for teammates but I could not see any orange and blue. In the chase group it was much easy to recover a little bit... even at 11 mph the draft was noticable! The leader was still off the front but falling back from time to time, and I made an effort to try to take more people off the front of the chase group, but no one really wanted to push the pace since they knew he would be caught later in the race. So up, up we went... a 20 mile climb! in the final 1 mile of the climb a few webcore guys pushed the pace and added one final selection to the group which cut us from about 25-30 to around 15-20 riders.
Next the course descends rapidly 2,000 feet in about 5 miles down some fast and exciting terrain, with great views... if you can take your eyes off the road! We managed to get down with no one crashing in my group, although we passed at least one crash from another race that officials were already attending to. At the bottom of the main decent there was neutral water and then our group of 15-20 made an effort to organize and paceline which worked reasonable well... at one point someone was all upset that there were people in the back that were not pulling through but after a few miles they were dropped anyway. At this point in the race, I should say I am already very concerned about the state of my legs... they were already subtle cramps in my calfs since the top of the main climb and from this neutral feed there is around 35 miles to go still! Still no sign of our race leader! So on we went rotating pretty well. There were some short climbs but most of them were just short enough to keep the legs from completely giving in! Then with about 20 miles to go there is the feed station and we were lucky to have Lauren out there, to hand us bottles! When I came into view of the feed station I could see Lauren on the other side of the road and there was oncoming traffic coming! I started waving so she could see me coming... once she saw me she started running, burst in front of the oncoming cars, then right in front of our pack of riders, and in one continuous motion grabbed my bottle which was waiting on our side of the road, spun around and hit my open hand only just as I came by... with not even a moment to spare!!! It was great! I can only imagine how bonked I would have been without that bottle! So, from that feed station there is actually a substantial climb in its own right and had it been on any other course would look big enough... but since it was on a profile with hamilton it looked like a bump in the road! I think it is like cardiac only a little longer... maybe 2 miles long, and with it came the final selection... our group of 15 or so strung out on the climb into maybe three groups. My legs were really giving up now... no matter how hard I tried they had very little left to give! So this is where the final selection occurred for me and I was dropped from the lead group. Although I forgot to tell you that the lone dude who had broken away on the main climb was still off the front, although with about 2-3 miles before this climb, we were reeling him in and he was in sight... and panicked! We could see him looking over his shoulder every thirty seconds... and then getting out of the saddle! So to wrap this up, I rode in the last 20 downhill miles with a group of 5 in a reasonably good paceline... and settled for last place in my group which was good for 14th overall. The race leader was caught in the last 20 miles and got 6th... a heart breaking solo effort! Even more so after talking with him... turns out he needed to get 5th place or better to get his upgrade to cat 3... so he missed it by one place or one point! Bummer! Just goes to show you that the strongest rider often does not win! As for me, my condition rapidly deteriorated as I got off the bike and dizzily wobbled over to the drinks and food. I pounded 2 bottles and still was not feeling any better... so I sat down and continued to drink and eat, but still was feeling light headed and cold. I had given everything on the course and could barely hold together upright at the finish. The worst thing was I was starting to get very cold. I had enough sense left to realize this happening and I got some blankets from the support staff who were slowly getting more and more concerned about me. It was at this stage that Will arrived and almost did not even see me wrapped up in 2 blankets and a sleeping bag! Finally they put me in a car to accelerate the warming process which helped immensely... and after about 45 min since the finish I finally felt able to walk around without collapsing! Thanks to Lauren again for being at the finish and driving my sorry butt back to pleasanton! The other guys, Lee, Will and Lorne rode the casual 12 miles back to the house... with Lorne winning the final sprint at the house! We all agreed that if we had had to ride back to San Jose it would have been a total Death March... especially for me! We still have not seen the result for the other guys but I think we all should be proud for racing such a burely course!
Lessons learned:
1. I do not have enough miles to race that long of a course and profile! So I am looking forward to getting some more long rides in, in the future! 2. I needed to feed more, I consumed 3.5 bottles (mostly cytomax), 3 GUs and one cheer pack over the 3.5 hours but after doing some research since the event, I think I could have used more "sugar" to keep the legs from cramping. I just read something about 240-300 calories per hour... this corresponds to about 60 to 70 grams of carbs. I think I averaged about 150 calories per hour. Be great to hear all your thoughts on effective nutrition strategies for these longer events.