Jiminy Peak and Hollenbeck's Race Reports

I boosted the season's maximal power curve up a few notches this weekend. I went to the Jiminy Peak road race in Massachusettes on Saturday and then followed up with the Hollenbeck's road race around the Greek Peak ski area just a bit south of home in central NY.

I'm not a huge fan of the Jiminy Peak race. The course is pretty boring, doing laps on mostly flats with one 1.5K climb up to the finish followed immediately by a long fairly gentle descent. The weather has usually given me fits there. It always seems to be raining and cold. One year I decided to go only to support and cheer on Sue in her first road race, and left my bike at home. It was sunny and warm that year.

However, the New England riders always get a jump on us in central NY due to their better late winter weather, so the competition is always stiff and a good test. And this year, I was crashing at my good friend Joe's house near Albany the night before, and he'd be racing with me, so I was at least guaranteed some fun along the way.

We warmed up in fairly light rain, feeling okay on the uphills, but feeling pretty cold on the downhills. My PowerTap SL, which is supposed to be much more water-resistant than the old models, quit transmitting after about 45 minutes in the light rain. As long as it wasn't transmitting, I swapped the wheel out for the slightly lighter spare I had brought along. I was not impressed with the durability in the rain, but I've heard other people having much better luck with the PT SL.

At the start line, the rain broke and the sun started trying to peak through, so we tossed the rain jackets in the car and were off. The first lap was taken at a relatively firm pace, but quite manageable in the pack. My legs were cold and wooden to start, but loosened up with some efforts over the little rollers. The wide pack pinched through the narrow turn between curb and traffic island onto the main climb at the end of the first lap. I had to slow more than I wanted on the inside as the pack pushed right, but stood up and got back up to speed over the first pitch up. I tucked into the pack as best I could as the road flattened a bit, then pitched up again. The pack strung out with me near the tail end of the top 20 of 75 riders and it was starting to get pretty hard. I glanced over my shoulder to see that I had a couple riders behind me, but then a big gap had formed. I pushed hard to stay in contact over the top, but didn't have to dig too deeply into the fast twitch muscles. Right before popping near the top of a climb, sometimes you can just make it over the top by standing and sprinting 100% for about five seconds. It blows you, but if you can make it to the downgrade still in contact you'll be okay. I had just made it over without having to light those extra boosters.

Down the hill and around the flats again, the pack was completely unmotivated and we tooled along chatting at Sunday morning club pace. With about five miles left in the race, a chase group caught back on. Nobody cared too much. We'd dropped them once and they'd been chasing hard all this time. We'd surely drop them again.

We turned right onto the hill, up the first pitch, leveled out, then up again to the finish. I fairly quickly lost touch with the leading group of ten or so who had some good sprinting power, and I just sat and spun up with gaps behind and in front of me. One guy caught and passed me about 200 meters before the finish. He was completely redlined and I said, "Good finish!" But then he started to really crack with about 50 to go, and I felt a little bad as I spun by to take 16th place from him.

In the end, the day was perfect. It was dry and warm for most of the race, and I'd basically done a club ride with a couple brief, hard efforts. My legs felt good and I hadn't emptied them, so I could go into the more important and much harder Hollenbeck road race on Sunday.

Three members of Team Terry and one of their boyfriends crashed at our place Saturday night. They had all also raced at Jiminy, and were staying at our place, roughly on the way to Hollenbeck's. It was fun hosting a bunch of racers busy eating and resting and chatting about bike stuff.

Sunday morning, we all were up and heading south to Virgil, NY for the great Hollenbeck's road race, hosted by Hollenbeck's Fruit and Cookie Shop. That's probably not their official name, but there are free cookies and fruit at the finish of the race, so that's what makes an impression. The road course for the cat 3/4 field I did is two laps of a 22 mile circuit, with two steep climbs, one longer, one shorter, and then a single burst off the main loop up a tough finishing climb.

My Colavita team was out in force, with something like twelve of us in the field. On this climbers' course, our main goal was to protect our climbers so they could hit the second lap hard and reel in any breaks that tried to get away. At the gun, two guys took off like a shot and were up the road pretty quickly as we spun along. We kept them in sight for a few miles, and then they were gone around a couple of bends. It was far too early for a break to stick, and we knew the pack had some pretty big guns in it. Well, usually, it was far too early for a break to stick.

We pushed up and over the first climb. I was 99.5% redlined at the top, and a teammate of mine was on my wheel at 99.9%. Our climbers and some of the stronger cat 3 guys were doing fine, and we'd also popped two of our bigger flatlanders off the back. I told my partner in suffering that we should try to recover as much as possible, make it over the shorter, steeper "wall" to come after a few miles, then get to the front to bury ourselves to help catch the break before the start of the second lap.

As we approached the wall, I moved to near the front so I could fade back through the pack on the climb. I hit it hard, and glanced at the power meter to see numbers in the mid 500s for a while. I faded a bit, but maintained 400+ watts up and over the climb to stick pretty well in the pack. Unfortunately, we'd broken my closest teammate, and he was left behind.

On the downhills and flats and rollers that followed, I moved to the front to do what I could do. I'd bury myself for a minute or so, recover, then rejoin the chase. Three and sometimes four of us were working up there, and we maintained a pretty good pace, holding speeds nearing 30mph for much of it, the pack strung out behind us.

As we neared the beginning of the second lap, a bystander called out "two minutes!" Ack! Two minutes?! That's a big gap considering the way we were chasing and the course to come. Our only hope was that the break would crack on the second lap climbs. I stuck myself on the front and pushed to the first second lap climb, and then peeled off and wished everyone good luck. Considering my job done, I set a moderate tempo for myself up the climb, stopped to pee, then just rode out the course solo trying to maintain a pace just under LT.

At the finish, I discovered they'd never caught the break. We joked that the two guys up front were named "Lance" and "Floyd". They were college kids fresh off a tough collegiate season, and had beaten us with sheer fitness and power. One of our young guys, not necessarily picked as a climbing specialist, had out sprinted the remainder of the pack on the final climb for third, and we also grabbed fifth and some more places on down through.

I'd gotten an incredible workout with some maximal efforts on the climbs, some time trial intervals on the front of the pack chasing the break, and then a nice long, high tempo ride to finish it off. After a monster size chocolate chip cookie, a ginger ale, an apple, and a small thick tasty coffee from the Gimme guys, I was ready for a nice stretch, a spin down ride with the team, and the trip home.

This week is going to be a tough one, with a good hill workout, some work on the TT bike, and the intense and fun weekly training race. I've decided to skip the Bristol RR next weekend in favor of staying home for some nice longer rides, some chores around the house, some rest and relaxation, and a trip to Mom's and Grandma's for Mother's Day. I'm not on the climbing form I'd need to hang on to the lead pack on the long hills at Bristol, and it's too far to drive to do a simple high-tempo ride by myself or with other stragglers.

Sigh. A cup of that thick Gimme brew would taste awfully good right now.