Yesterday afternoon Heather, Ted and I drove out here for the Tour of Walla Walla. We are staying with a host family Intermountain Orthopaedics has stayed with for the past few years. They have this huge house with lots of antiques and many rooms to choose from. Despite the niceness of our host home, I didn’t sleep too well last night. I also have been feeling the signs of over-training midweek so Thursday and Friday I took it real easy but I still think I could have used more recovery.
Today started with a 5.3 mile time trial. It was all the way out in Waitsburg, about a half-hour drive. The weather turned out to be gorgeous. It was supposed to rain, but it was blue sky and a little nippy for the time trial. Ted and I went off first and we both got decent warm-ups on the trainer. I felt OK, but not great. I got to the start with time to spare. This was one of the first TT’s I’d be riding blind — none of us had ridden or even driven the course beforehand. But we got accounts from other people about what it was like. With the stiff wind this morning it is a headwind out, tailwind back and the way out is slightly uphill with some rollers. I started out easy, which was a first for me! Since the finish was further up the road than the start, the way out was longer than the way back. When I hit the steeper rollers further into the ride, I started wondering, “Where the heck is the turnaround!” With the wind, it felt like forever! Finally, I got to it and turned around. The way back was so fast! I was spinning my 56×12 and 13 most of the way back. The road was a little bumpy so I was getting jostled around a bit, but going that fast was still really fun! I pushed the last 1KM as hard as I could.
With Heather as the first rider to go off in the women’s field, we weren’t sure we’d have time to switch bikes, so she set up her Trek with clip-on aerobars. When I finished, I quickly went to the staging area and found Heather. We had time and decided to switch bikes. Actually, the only thing we had to do was put her frame number on the TT bike (for some reason they wanted two jerseys and one frame number for the TT?!) As I was about to rip off her frame number, Heather asked the official if she really needed it and he said no. Most people have two bikes so they didn’t care that the TT bike didn’t have one. Then I gave Heather the slick Rudy Project TT helmet and she was off!
By the time Heather finished and we were packing up the car, they had the men’s results up. I got 14th at about 1:03 off the winning time and Ted got 20, but only 9 seconds behind me. That shows you how tight our field was.
The road race was interesting. While Ted and I were making one last stop at the Port-a-Potties, Heather came over and said the Pro 1/2 men just left! I’m like “What!?” She reiterated, “They just left!” Ted and I jumped on our bikes and started chasing! We didn’t totally panic because the field was supposed be neutral the first time up the hill, so I was pretty sure we’d catch them…but you never know?! The reason we missed the start is I thought they would stage by the official’s tent and timing clock by the parking area. But they staged about a block down the road. The thing that got me is that they didn’t even announce that they were staging. That’s the least they could do when the staging area is away from where everyone is parked and warming up. But after double-checking, it was mentioned in the race bible, so pooh on me!
Anyway, once we made the right turn up the hill we could see them up the road. They weren’t too far, but with a 3KM climb at a 6% grade, we wanted to catch them before the top. Ted was a little over-anxious and was really hammering. I told him to ease up because I could tell they weren’t going too fast. I set the pace and we were slowly getting closer. Ted said towards the end of our chase, I was going just as hard as he was, but for some reason, it felt easier. We finally made it to the pack with about 1KM to go to the top. Even when we’re integrated with the pack, the climb still felt hard? Though it was technically “neutral”, I still had to put out 280 watts to keep up!
When we reached the top, the racing started! Ted and I were a little too aggressive at the beginning. I attacked and was in a mini-break for couple minutes. So much for that! It’s just that I had all this adrenaline running from missing the start that I figured I might as well try to harness it. We did one “short” loop and then hit the hill again, this time full speed. At first, I thought it wasn’t too bad, but about halfway up I was hurting. I got dropped sometime after that. I managed to pass Ted, but he couldn’t hang with me. On the descent, we formed a good size chase group. A little while later another group joined us from behind and it contained Ted. Everyone in the group rotated through and we were able to catch the pack. Ye-haw! Thank you…at that point I decided I was going to conserve my energy. No more putting my nose in the wind!
I pretty much stayed with that plan and it wasn’t too hard to stay out of the wind. The third time up the hill, both Ted and I got popped again. It was tough. On the descent, we got in a small group and tried to get a chase going. I purposely led it into a sharp right-hand turn because I knew from the prior two times that you didn’t need to brake on that corner. Well, no one followed me and created this huge gap, so I had to slow down for them to catch!
Some guys would then pull through, but there were a couple that obviously were toast. The sad thing was that early on, we could still see the front group. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough horsepower. Ted and I kept pulling through but halfway through the big loop we realized there was no hope. So we went into survival mode. Later in that loop, both Ted and I started bonking. I could barely muster up 250 watts by the end! I was wondering if I would even make it up the hill the last time!? I think with the TT in the morning, and the chase from missing the start, a 96.3 mile road race was a bit too much. I think I bonked at mile 80 or so.
Ted and I finally got to the hill and then tempo’d up it. Ted wanted to take it real easy, so he slowed down. I stayed with a rider from Seattle and we chatted all the way up. I managed to finish in front of him but it’s not like we sprinted. The funny part was that Ted took it so easy up the hill that I made up 2 minutes on him in the last 3K! The other surprising thing was that I managed to get 15th and Ted got 17th! It’s amazing how you lose track of how many riders are up ahead, plus there’s always the DNF factor. I think about 10 riders DNF’d! So overall, we weren’t in too bad a shape…at least in the results. We both ate a ton of food that night to recover from our bonks.