The first Oklahoma racing was this past weekend. The race has changed formats a few times in the last several years, but is typically the first race of the season in Oklahoma. This year the Saturday race was at the Salt Creek park in Manford Oklahoma. I really like the Salt Creek venue. Scenic, spectator friendly, and some nice short power climbs. The Sunday road race was at the old Skiatook state road race course in Skiatook Oklahoma. I'd never ridden the road course, but it was really nice as well.
I chose to run the same bike set-up as what I ran in the Mineral Wells race. Zipp 404 tubular demo wheel up front, with my powertap/open pro rear wheel. I also used a Vittoria open corsa evo cx clincher rear tire with a latex tube, and a corsa evo cx tubular up front. The rear feels almost like a tubular with this set-up. My drivetrain is pretty worn out. My chainrings are pretty old, and when I tried to put a new chain on a couple of weeks ago, it ran really rough on the rings, as well as slipped on the cassette. I'm holding out on buying new drivetrain parts till we get our new frames because I'll have to get a new crankset anyway as the frames take a BB-30 system. I used a similarly worn ring-chain-cassette-combo to make it work.
Saturday I got to ride to the race in style in the Vittoria sprinter van. Curt, who works at Bikemine was driving the van up to the race, and taking my co-worker Brandon and his wife Lindsey. They had an extra seat, so I gladly accepted. It was a fun trip.
We had a 3 man team for the weekend - Rob, Shawn, and myself. Going into the race, we knew it was going to be hard as the Tulsa Tough had formed a super group of all the fastest guys in the state. They had 8 riders to go up against, as well as the Bicycles of Tulsa guys who have a strong Cat 2 team, and the BMC/Wal Mart guys from Arkansas who have a nice Cat 1/2 team of riders. There were several other strong regional single riders there, and a few guys that came from several states away and I had no idea of who they were.
The race payed 10 deep, so I knew the Tulsa Tough guys would want to grab as many of the top 10 spots as possible. It didn't take long once we got racing for the attacks to start happening. About 15 minutes in, I got a flat. The good news was that it happened right at the wheel pit, but the bad news was I would have no power data to look back on. This race would have been interesting to look at number wise cause it was hard!
Anyway, things after that pretty much happened like I thought they would. Tulsa Tough attacks over and over till something sticks, then leapfrog some more guys up to stack the results. That's pretty much how it went down. 3 Tulsa Tough guys got a minute or so up the road, and somehow a chase group of around 10-12 guys formed, with the rest of the field about a minute behind us. Our chase group included Rob and myself and plenty of strong riders, but also 3 Tulsa tough riders who were being disruptive-blocking, or just sitting on.
I knew if we got too close to the 3 leaders, the Tulsa Tough guys in our group would try to jump another guy or 2 into the break, so it seemed to me our best option would be to stay where we were and get something in the field sprint. That's pretty much how it ended up except a group of guys from the main field caught us on the last lap because we sat up too much on the last 2 laps.
I ended up getting 2nd in the field sprint behind Jason Waddell, so that gave me a 5th place overall in the race.
Overall I was happy with the results. Tulsa Tough could have easily took the top 6-7 spots. The next day the plan was for Rob and I to leave OKC at 6:00 AM to drive to the Skiatook road race. I thought I had set my alarm to go off at 4:30 AM, but the clock I set it on was 12 hours out of phase, so the morning became a mad scramble when I woke up on my own and saw it was almost 6:00. We made it to the race on time. The weather was overcast and had gotten a lot colder. It was actually colder when we got to the race site then when we left OKC.
As is the case with most races early in the season, Rob and I had pretty tired legs going into the race. We both were training through the weekend and had pretty heavy training weeks, along with the brutal race the day before. I warmed up some before we got started, but in hindsight, not nearly enough for what was about to go down. There was a good hill climb up the backside of the dam right as the race started. I started towards the end of the field, and the first time we hit it, guys were just drilling it right off the bat. At the top of the hill, the course turned onto the dam road which was about a mile or two of stout head-cross wind.
After only around 2 minutes into the race, the field was totally strung out and I was off the back fighting to survive. A group of 9 or 10 guys formed a break, and the rest of the main field got back to 1 group. It took me about 5 miles or so, but I managed to get back on with a couple other stragglers. We would be doing 3 laps of the 20.5 mile course. The first lap was pretty hard as the Tulsa Tough guys only had 2 riders in the break, so they were driving the field pretty hard. Coming back to the hill on the start of the second lap, I made sure to position myself at the front of the group to minimize the damage. Towards the end of the second lap, we started to catch some of the break a way group. They had split into 2 groups, so we ended up catching 5 or 6 guys with 4 riders left in the break.
2 of the riders in the break were Tulsa Tough riders. I guess they (Tulsa Tough) were ok with that, because the pace slowed down some. When we hit the hill the third time, it was a lot easier. Somewhere around halfway through the last lap, my legs started to feel a lot better. There was a climb around the halfway point that a couple of guys took off on. I'm not sure why, but the BMC/Wal Mart guys were killing it to bring it back in. Seems like they were all used up by the end and didn't get any result for all the effort. Anyway, we caught the two riders with about a mile to go. It seemed like the sprint lasted half a mile.
As is the case with most races early in the season, Rob and I had pretty tired legs going into the race. We both were training through the weekend and had pretty heavy training weeks, along with the brutal race the day before. I warmed up some before we got started, but in hindsight, not nearly enough for what was about to go down. There was a good hill climb up the backside of the dam right as the race started. I started towards the end of the field, and the first time we hit it, guys were just drilling it right off the bat. At the top of the hill, the course turned onto the dam road which was about a mile or two of stout head-cross wind.
After only around 2 minutes into the race, the field was totally strung out and I was off the back fighting to survive. A group of 9 or 10 guys formed a break, and the rest of the main field got back to 1 group. It took me about 5 miles or so, but I managed to get back on with a couple other stragglers. We would be doing 3 laps of the 20.5 mile course. The first lap was pretty hard as the Tulsa Tough guys only had 2 riders in the break, so they were driving the field pretty hard. Coming back to the hill on the start of the second lap, I made sure to position myself at the front of the group to minimize the damage. Towards the end of the second lap, we started to catch some of the break a way group. They had split into 2 groups, so we ended up catching 5 or 6 guys with 4 riders left in the break.
2 of the riders in the break were Tulsa Tough riders. I guess they (Tulsa Tough) were ok with that, because the pace slowed down some. When we hit the hill the third time, it was a lot easier. Somewhere around halfway through the last lap, my legs started to feel a lot better. There was a climb around the halfway point that a couple of guys took off on. I'm not sure why, but the BMC/Wal Mart guys were killing it to bring it back in. Seems like they were all used up by the end and didn't get any result for all the effort. Anyway, we caught the two riders with about a mile to go. It seemed like the sprint lasted half a mile.
Once again, Jason Waddell won the field sprint, but Rob was right with me as we got 2nd and 3rd, giving us 6th and 7th overall in the race. We were pretty stoked to be able to get some decent results with all the horsepower we were up against. Our team has gotten a lot smaller in the last couple of weeks. Shawn has been riding a TON, and is getting faster. This was his first race weekend in a long time and I'm sure the intensity was a shock to the system, but I know he'll be mixing it up with us soon.
The 1st of 3 OKC Velo time trials is this Saturday, so hopefully I'll have my secret weapon ready to go
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