Ceraland Challenge
When Nick and I got to the race the weather was amazing and there were so many riders there. I felt like my bike was under dressed since I didn’t have any deep section carbon rims. While Nick warms up on his rollers I go out on the road outside the park and warm up get a couple of sprints in and came back. After doing those sprints I realized that my short hard effort the day before was a good idea since it got my legs back into the feeling of going hard for a long period of time. So we cheered Greg on and I got some pictures, sadly I didn’t get a shot on the field sprint since I wasn’t sure how much time I’ll have between races.
The course was really nice, and being on the roads to warm up instead of a trainer it allowed me to figure out where the wind was from and quickly pick the lines through the corners. A lot of people were quite squirrely in that field and in turn those people caused the rest of the field to always have to make slight corrections. The start was a mess, they started us with the women behind us and they were so rude...they would treat us as if we didn’t know anything and always yelled. When the race organizer offered the women to race with us they quickly put it down with a couple of light expletives. If the women thought they would be faster, the should’ve gone before us and not 30 seconds later. So off we go, or so I thought.
The pace was agonizingly slow. I think nick said the average was a hair over 20mph. I wasn’t even breathing hard the first 2/3 of the race. I kept in the middle of the pack closer to the front and the pack would slow down so much through some of the corners that I would end up blowing past them on the outside then I’d wait for them to come around. Since it was only Nick and I we didn’t feel the need to do work at the front so both of us were well in the draft. After the first couple of laps I got a hang of all the corners and the best lines through them which very few people ended up taking. I bumped with a guy and had a couple guys get freaked out when I came up behind them but overall it was very smooth. The prime lap wasn’t anything exciting at first, the way it was phrased “Prime next lap” made it sound like it could’ve been this lap or it could’ve been the lap after. Halfway through the lap nick and I take off with one of the Green and black guys on our tial. When Nick pulls off at the bottom of the last climb I jumped right on it, went hard for a second and looking between my legs saw no wheel. I looked back saw that the other guy was still with Nick then just went through the start/finish line easy and grabbed my 5$ cash 
. On the next lap the pace picked up and it seems like they thought the prime was that lap. It took the rest of the field half a lap to catch up to me and I was basically coasting. Throughout the rest of the race the Green and Black guys would constantly make futile attacks and most of them contained either nick or me so they would slow right down.
When 2 laps to go sounded, the pace started to pick up. The Green and black guys were forming a train at the front and Nick and I were going to hop on to that but it didn’t hold. On the last lap they dispersed and the pace slowed down a bit then picks back up on the back stretch about to get into the final climb. I’m further back than i wanted to be and must’ve been looking down the millisecond that the first guys jumped so when I jumped I was already at least 50 meters behind them probably more. I am sprinting up the side of the road almost in the grass and halfway up the climb get into third. I am still accelerating and blow by second and catch up to first. He did not expect someone in the 3 feet to his left so when he saw me right with him I hear him scream, at this point we are a couple feet in front of the finish line and it looks so close from my angle that I throw my bike in front of me. At least I tried...my saddle got caught on my shorts and at the point I knew I was second.
Nick was somewhere behind me and I wasn’t sure how he did, so on my cool down lap he finally catches up to me at just under the halfway point and asks if I won to which I respond with 2 fingers. Looking back on the race, it was pretty good. With what Nick told me from his St. Louis Crits and observing for 55 minutes in that race (before the 2 laps to go) I learned a lot. I did not position myself very well for the final sprint. With better positioned I am confident that I would’ve had at least a bike length on the 1st place guy. That’s what cat 5 is for, learning how everything works. I’m looking forward to 4s though, both to have more teammates and to ride with more experienced riders.
It’s a real shame that Mooresville got canceled, the weather was not that bad. I came home and right away checked the weather for the last hour (when we would’ve been racing) and there was nothing there but light to dark green. I would’ve raced in those conditions no problem.
Alexie
Yes, it was a pretty good day for Wild Card. The weather was perfect with little to no wind. I think there were around 35 riders in the Master 40+ field. Unlike Nick & Alexei’s race, our pace started out pretty fast and stayed that way. I ended up with a 24 mph avg for the 70 minute crit. There were constant breakaway attempts, but the pack didn’t let anyone get away. I was feeling pretty good, tried to stay in the front third of the pack, and was doing a fair amount of work helping cover the breakaways.
The course itself was a pretty flat 1.5 mile circuit, couple of little rollers, easy turns, and one final easy hill with a couple of pitches leading up to the start finish line. I took a flyer at about the 30-min mark on the uphill start/finish to see who would follow. Just one person was with me (another 50+ rider), but he wouldn’t work and I was gassed, so we fell back. That was pretty much the case in every attempted break.
So it came down to the last lap. I’d worked my way into 2nd place when the bell was rung. The pack was content to allow us to do all the work on the last lap, so the pace really didn’t pick up that much. We were probably riding 25-27 mph. They let us stay up there, and I’m thinking everyone’s going to attack on the final hill. This actually played to my advantage, because at the base of final hill, I was still in the second spot, and the peloton had begun to string out. The sprint started and I went balls-out like everyone else. I kept expecting the field to swallow me up but it never did. Two other riders got around me and I ended up in fourth. I was also the first 50+ across and they were scoring us separately. They had the scoring all screwed up, which happens pretty frequently at these IRS races, but when all was reviewed on tape I was clearly 4th.
Congrats to Alexei for his 2nd place finish, I know he and Nick did a lot of work in their race and represented the team well.
I encourage everyone to think about doing the Eagle Creek crit in Indy, May 9. These are fun races and the course is similar to Ceraland.
Greg