Little Falls, Little Cup

Part II - The Ride.

It was a little murky this morning as I made my way to Little Falls for the second time this weekend. Today I'd be racing the Canal Classic bicycle road race as part II of my effort towards winning the Canal Cup award. Today's race consisted of a relatively short (30+ mile) course with a series of three decent climbs, followed by a long, gentle descent all the way back to the flat lands before the finish. The three climbs come in series of increasing order of magnitude, with the third being the hardest and longest and occurring at about the halfway point of the race.

My good buddy Tim, who's heart was in a far better place than my legs, was there today to help me get through the race and secure the Canal Cup award. But after we rolled along together during our warm up, I insisted he race his own race today, as I knew he'd have the legs to do pretty well overall (even after taking 4th in yesterday's Capital Region RR!), whereas I was simply interested in keeping a tempo and going for a good overall time.

Sure enough, things exploded right out of the gate as they do in all road races, but I managed to keep a good position at the back of the lead group through the first major climb. However, just as the leaders at the very front crested the climb, I started to slip away as my "running muscles" were totally starting to lock-up under the load. In a matter of seconds, I'd lost contact with the lead group, and was starting to fall back as we approached the second hill. A handful of riders came up on me and we worked together for a bit while riding along the flatter section, but as soon as the road turned up again, they were off my pace. Like this, I pretty much rode alone through the top of the third and last climb, at which point I began the long descent by myself.

After about 2 miles, a group of 6 completely unorganized riders caught me and we started riding together. Every time the slightest resemblance of a paceline would form, someone in this group would fly off the front for 10 seconds and then blow apart before being swallowed up again by the remaining six of us. I suddenly remembered all the frustrations of road racing. I rolled to the front of this group and gave everyone an earfull about doing some work and getting organized to minimize the gap between us and the race leaders. Eventually, they got it, and we were rolling single paceline for the duration of the race. I doubt I made any friends today in this group, but hey, that's racing.

With my legs being as sore as they were today, I pretty much kept a consistent pace through to the very end. But it was not a typical race pace for me. The winner of yesterday's 10k was in the lead group, and so I knew I'd be runner-up at best for the Cup - at the time, I was okay with going 90% and being first runner-up.

After crossing the line, we all rolled around for a bit to cool-down and to dissect the race events. Tim had another fantastic performance, as predicted, taking 5th overall. I'd ended up finishing mid-pack, and as I explained to Tim, I simply let first place go after I lost contact with the lead group and rode a decent tempo for the rest of the day. This, unfortunately, was a mistake of mine. One thing I'd not considered (and I'm not sure why) was the possibility of a slower runner from yesterday being a faster rider today. In fact, I'd spent so much time focusing on who was in first, it never occurred to me to worry about who was in second. The price for this mistake, was a place on the podium for me by a matter of seconds, as in the end, I wound up taking third place in the Canal Cup.

As with every race, I always try to extract positive learning points from my performance. Overall, this was a very good race weekend, and I had a lot of fun doing these events. I ran a stellar 10k yesterday, and I'm very proud of that. I was off my target pace in the end, but given the heat and the difficulty of the course, I was okay with this. Today's race was challenging for me, as I'd not fully recovered from the efforts of yesterday. But my only true mistake was letting up on the pace today, and not focusing on the big picture. Something I won't let happen again.

I did end up taking home the "Little Cup", which was the third place trophy for the competition. The little cup was about 1/3 the size of the winner's cup, and just barely fits on my bookshelf. So, on a final positive note, had I won the overall or second-place cup, I'd likely have no place to display it ;-)

Thanks for reading.