Riding on the Edge

It was cooler this morning, and as usual that also meant a gusty north wind.  For some reason, it took me forever to actually get myself out the door, which resulted in a little bit of a time trial out to the levee.  Fortunately I made it there just in time to roll out with a slightly smaller group than usual.  The pace remained rather civilized for the first ten miles or so, but then Woody randomly decided to attack a crosswind section, taking a couple of riders with him.  I made the snap decision to go after it, and although I'd reacted right away, between the crosswind and rapidly lengthening gap, it took me forever to make contact.  I was kind of hanging on by the skin of my teeth for a mile or two, and although I was able to pull through a few times after that, I was also skipping pulls when the going got hard.  As we approached the little dip there was another big acceleration that left Rob and me a bit off the back.  As I'd suspected, they were turning around early, so that left just the two of us. We continued on until we got the The Dip and eased up until the rest of the group, which wasn't too far behind, caught us. The rest of the ride out to the turnaround was a bit less severe, but by then the relentless wind was starting to take its toll and there weren't exactly a lot of people pushing and shoving to get to the front.

As it turned out, the ride back was a lot harder than I'd expected.  At some point fairly early on I dropped all the way back down the paceline.  It was pretty much the last I'd see of the front.  For most of the return trip there was a strong crosswind that was providing a draft for the first five or six riders and practically none for the rest of us. I spent what seemed like an hour riding behind Big Richard right on the edge of the asphalt trying to get a sliver of draft.  I figured that I was at least getting a good workout.

So I have to recommend that you take a look at Brian Toone's heart rate and speed data from last weekend's Pro/Cat.1 Sunny King criterium.  Keep in mind that he wasn't one of the guys who was attacking off the front.  A 42 mile criterium at an average speed of 27.5 mph and an average heart rate of 181 bpm.  That's hard.