Hell's Kitchen

Fayetteville overlook.

Last weekend I drove up to Fayetteville, AR for a dual-conference collegiate race that also offered a non-collegiate Ca.t 1/2/3 race. We had only two of the Tulane riders, Ben and Katie, for this trip, I guess mainly because it's a 10-hour drive each way. Well, that's not counting the extra mileage to and from the hotel that was another half-hour plus from Fayetteville and practically within walking distance from Oklahoma. Anyway, unlike last year, the weather was great, which is to say it wasn't freezing cold and/or raining.

First up on Saturday was a 6.7 mile TT with a bit over 1,500 feet of climbing. I was planning to put in a decent effort on that, but didn't want to trash my legs too badly since there was a far worse road race that afternoon. I rode this one watching my heart rate, keeping it generally in the 170 range which is around 90-92% max HR. The course was pretty steep for the first half, but the second half offered slightly easier grades and some short downhills, so it wasn't really as bad as I'd expected and I finished with my legs none the worse for wear.  Couldn't say the same for my lungs, however.  They wouldn't recover from the cool dry air for another day and a half. As expected, my time placed me DFL among the mere 5 riders who had registered in that category.  No surprise there. Dustin, who started 30 seconds behind me, passed me I guess within the first mile and a half and placed 3rd, finishing I think around two and a half minutes faster.  I'd know for sure if they had ever posted my TT result, but in typical collegiate race fashion, and despite more blueshirts than you could shake a stick at, I was listed as DNS and without a bib number. Ben finished a respectable 10th out of 17 in the Bs and Katie 3rd out of 4 in the Women B.

Yeah, I thought that seemed hard.

So that afternoon was the dreaded road race with the even more dreaded Hell's Kitchen climb. This is one of those climbs that always makes me wonder if maybe I should just stop and walk the rest of the way up. For the non-collegiate racers (there was a A-Cat. 1/2/3 group and a B-Cat. 4/5 group) we were all lumped together. I thought that might prove to be a good thing for me.  You know, more wheels to follow. Wrong!  I guess a couple of the teams (yes, there were a couple of teams with significant numbers) decided it would be prudent to shell the slower riders immediately rather than risk having them muck up the race, so the second we got out of the brief "neutral" zone the pace went to around 30 mph and just stayed there. Immediately, gaps started to open, and as usual I was near the back having gambled on a nice big group to draft off of. Within a couple of miles a fairly big group split off the front and I found myself in a much smaller group of maybe eight making an extremely disorganized effort to chase. There was one women in with us who was strong and trying to keep things organized but it wasn't working very well.  We weren't going very slow, averaging around 25 mph, and made some brief progress closing the gap, but from my perspective it was clear our race was over by the time we were seven or eight miles in. We hit the big climb at around 10 miles and as usual things kind of blew apart. I was down to 6 mph in the 39x27 for a bit. Like last year, I came over the top in-between two small groups and eventually we came together to make a group of maybe seven, I guess.  The second lap was a little slower since it was clear to everyone that the main group was long gone, but it was by no means easy. The race was only 44 miles and I had over 2,900 feet of climbing. I was feeling OK most of the time, but definitely hurting on the steeper climbs. The second time up the big Hell's Kitchen climb, which was around a kilometer I guess, three riders separated and, once again, I found myself in-between them and a group of four or so behind me. When I made the left turn, about half a mile after the top of the climb, and felt the headwind I decided I may as well wait for the second group to catch me because there was no way I was going to close what was by then around a 40 second gap to the three riders ahead. Once we got back together things settled down a bit and there was even a period of actual paceline where almost everyone was taking pulls. I figured since we were all probably ten minutes OTB by then we'd just roll back to the finish line in civilized fashion. Then, just as I'd finished taking a pull, one of the riders went sprinting up a hill to my right with a few more on his wheel. I was pretty surprised and under the circumstances never really had a chance to go with them. That left me alone with a few riders behind me. As I soon realized, the attacking riders must have known that was the last climb before the turn to the finish about two miles away. Since I had entered this race with a "training ride" mindset, I didn't even know for sure how long it was. Anyway, I rode in to the finish for 18th place in the Cat. 1/2/3 race and I don't know what place overall among the combined field, but despite the unimpressive placing I felt like I'd gotten the good hard training ride I'd come for. As I found out later, Dustin had gotten into a late 6-rider break from which he'd won the sprint, which I found very impressive considering the competition and course profile.

Ben finished with a 3-man group either 9th or 14th depending on whether you believe the results they sent out this morning or what he actually believes to be true. How they managed to screw up the registration and results in a race like this is beyond me. The RR finish area was basically a nightmare with farm equipment, hay trucks, and numerous ambulances and fire trucks going past on the narrow country road. Again, I think there were at least five officials at the finish line. They scored one of the B women who had bailed after the first lap of their 2-lap race as winning, so Katie and Ben had to protest the finish order that was eventually posted the following day. I think they also had Ben as a DNF initially.

So that brings me to the ill-fated criterium held on the University of Arkansas campus. We took our time getting there that morning since there were some junior races scheduled first, and when we arrived I was surprised to find that none of the races had started yet.  They were already about an hour behind schedule. The course looked fairly brutal with a very steep two block climb to the finish and a fast downhill turn a couple of corners earlier. It would have been exciting to watch, if only for the inevitable crashes. When it looked like they were finally getting ready to start the Cat. D men, we went down to the downhill turn to see how the new riders negotiated it. What we found was disconcerting.  There were probably ten cars still parked on the course, one of which was on the inside of the fast downhill corner, and the other on the outside of the final corner.  Pretty much the worst places possible. We waited as they were apparently trying to get the cars towed off the course, but the only thing that was happening was that other cars, along with three or four full school buses, were randomly showing up driving on the course. It was almost two hours past the original start time that I said to the hapless corner monitor that if I was the official I'd be thinking about cancelling the criterium about now.  Well, as it turned out that's exactly what the official was thinking. I gave up waiting a few minutes later and rode back up the hill to the parking area to find out the criterium had been cancelled and that Ben and Katie were planning on going for a training ride with the LSU guys instead. Other teams likewise packed up and headed home or went off to find someplace to do a ride. I'd been told we were going to ride out highway 17 for an hour or so and then come back to load up and head home. Well, apparently the plan changed and so I'm following the group as Dustin is leading them up steeper and steeper little neighborhood roads. It turned out they'd decided instead to ride up to this scenic overlook about 500 feet straight up. So I'm in like the 39x27 wondering where the hell we're going as the guys are sprinting up the climbs. I ended up doing under 8 miles that was a far cry from the nice recovery ride I'd been promised.

Thanks to the cancelled criterium, we got back to New Orleans as the relatively reasonable hour of 10:00 or so instead of 1 am like we'd been expecting, so that was kind of nice.