Hells Kitchen Road Race

It was an early morning start to Arkansas today. Some of the team opted to race in Texas while Judson and my old teammate Brady decided to get some gnarly hill work in at the Hells Kitchen race. At first we contemplated driving to Tulsa Saturday night and driving the rest of the way this morning, but decided to just bite the bullet and do it all at one time today. We left OKC at 4:45 AM (3:45 is what it felt like with daylight savings) so that meant getting up at what felt like 2:30, chugging as much coffee as possible, loading my bike and then off to the meeting point.

As usual the turnout was pretty good. Probably 30 something riders in the pro 1/2 field. We would be doing 4 laps of the 20.3 mile course today instead of the normal 3. Plenty of quality riders. Tilford's team had all their strong guys. Several of the collegiate teams on spring break had plenty of unknown (in these parts) riders, as well as Mercy, Tulsa Tough, and Panther. I knew going in the day was going to be tough. Mainly because I've historically never done better than average at best as a cat 3 here. I figured worst case it would be a good training race cause I would never ride this distance super hard if I was at home, plus I figured it would be good preparation for the Joe Martin stage race in May.

Road racing in the 1/2's is a lot different than the 3's. The average speeds aren't much different, but in general, most cat 3 races are moderately fast paced. Pro 1/2 road races are mostly ridiculously slow until they go ridiculously fast with a little bit of moderately fast riding mixed in. The Pro 1/2 race started very slow for the first 20 minutes. The whole field even took a pee break at one point. It stayed that way until we hit the Hells Kitchen climb (1.2 miles @16% grade in some spots). I got up the climb towards the back of the field, got gaped a little and chased back on. A few guys were behind me. Some got back on, some didn't.

The guys up front were really getting up the climb fast. On the second time up, I knew I had to do something different or I was in big trouble. I tried to get further up in the group to start the climb, but it didn't help enough. The top 10 or so guys really punched it this time up and blew the field apart. The cat 3 field passed us a few miles before the climb, so we caught them just as they were hitting it. The two groups ended up mixed together and strung out at this point. I bridged to a guy, then two riders caught us, till we had a nice mixed little chase group. We caught what I thought what was left of the 1/2 field, but it turned out to be the 3 field. I saw the 1/2 field up the road, so I took off solo and started chasing.

I caught a couple of guys here and there but not the 1/2 field. By the time I got to the climb the 3rd time, I was blown and I just kind of crawled up it. I thought about just riding the 4th lap to get the miles in, but Judson and Brady were already finished and I didn't want to make them wait around an extra hour just so I could ride another 20 miles. I DNFed at the start of the 4th lap and actually almost reconsidered because people were saying the 1/2 field was down to 5 riders with the rest(another 5-10) strung out all over, but I was pretty much done anyway at this point.

So at this stage of the season, I'm feeling pretty good. I haven't really done a lot of 2-4 minute high intensity work, which I feel like my weakness is right now. Time to bring some more intensity to the program. I just finished my 3rd base period, so the build period was scheduled anyway. Tons of racing coming soon!