Race report part 2 - Tall Chief Road Race

 Although this story is about what went down on Sunday, I'm still trying to come to terms with what happened on Saturday. I guess I've pretty much decided after doing a ton of research, talking to people in the know, and doing as many 30 second, 1 minute, and 2 minute intervals as I could stand, that the issue is a dehydration problem. Hopefully it will not be an issue again.

Another top notch packing job. 4 bikes, extra wheels, and 4 dudes.

Anyway, on to Sunday. We chose to drive to and from the races both days. The latest weather forecast I had seen the day before was temps up to the mid 60's and rain all night but tapering off around sunrise. We left OKC about 5:45 AM, which actually felt like 4:45 because this was also the first day of daylight savings.
It rained on us most of the way to Skiatook, but when we got there, it had pretty much stopped and looked like it was going to clear up.

Clothing wise, I decided on shorts-no knee or leg warmers, a light base, wind vest under the jersey, arm warmers, my windstopper cap, and 2 pairs of light to medium temp gloves. I think the first 2/3's of the first lap, I felt fine. Somewhere after that it started raining. Then it started pouring and I'm pretty sure the temperature dropped some as well.

Before I get to all that, there was some race action going on. Around 20-30 minutes into the race, I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I guess some guys crossed wheels in the middle of the field and a bunch of guys went down. I had to slow way down to get through it and I noticed Rob got caught up in it. I thought about stopping to help him back to the group, but I thought it would be smarter to have at least 1 guy in the main group as Jeremy and Brian were behind the wreck as well. It was actually a little harder to bridge up to the main group than I thought it was going to be. There was a group of 4 strong riders and myself rotating for 10-15 minutes before we caught on.

I kept looking back to see if Rob and his group was back there, but I never saw them. There was a pretty good climb around the halfway point of each lap that I was struggling with a little. I got gaped off the main group for a bit, but caught back on without too much effort. I think we lost a few a few guys each time we hit that hill. It was tough because there was a tailwind as soon as you got to the top, so if you were winded, it was tough to recover with minimal draftability.

Somehow a few miles later Rob managed to catch back on with a couple of other guys. He was bleeding pretty good from a nasty cut on his knuckle, and decided to just sit on for a while as he had burned a ton of matches getting back on. I remember last year the big hill climbing up the dam at the start of each lap seemed to break up the field quite a bit, but due to the wind direction, it wasn't much of an issue this year. The hill at the far south end around the 10 mile point seemed to be much more of a field splitting obstacle.

As we got into the 2nd lap of 3, I started to really get cold. I tried to ride harder and get into a couple of moves here and there mainly just to try to get warm. You would start to feel ok at the tops of the climbs, but there were long sections of fast downhills that would freeze you back down. When we were getting close to finishing our 2nd lap, I was seriously starting to think about quitting. I was looking for Rob to see if he was thinking the same thing when I noticed the field had gotten pretty small. Maybe 17 guys or so.

Also ex-team mate and current rival team rider Brady Schmiedeberg rolled off the front and had quietly established quite a time gap. There was pretty much no way I was going to quit at this point, but I must admit, That last lap was one of the most miserable 1 hours I've ever spent on a bike. I can only think of 1 other time that I was that cold. As we were getting close to the hill that was giving me issues, I thought it would be a good idea to try to establish a little time over the field so I wouldn't get dropped, but it didn't really work out like I wanted. Steve Tilford drilled it pretty hard and the group got pretty strung out. I wasn't going too bad, but my fingers were so cold I couldn't shift.

Basically I got dropped and chased the rest of the way. The group caught Brady with 3 miles to go and Rob ended up pulling out a 4th. He thought he could have won it, but his fingers weren't working either. I guess this was a common problem that day. Jacob White rode pretty smart and ended up winning both days.

All in all, a pretty disappointing weekend for me, but I felt pretty good and I think overall the team is going ok, At least a lot better than last year at this time.

Power file from the last 5 minutes of Saturday's race.

This is my power file from Saturday. It makes it more disappointing watching my video of the last 15 minutes of the race because this is a good effort, but less that what I'm capable of.

Water intake tracker.

I'm trying to drink at least 4-20 oz bottles of water daily at work. I take one of these decals off to keep track of where I'm at. It's tough to drink at work because I get so busy I just forget. I've been pretty consistent all week, and I'm not sure if it's a placebo effect or what, but it seems to be making a difference.