After disappointment at last weekend's Boulder Roubaix, I'm happy to report a good result this week. The weekend's racing got off to a sketchy start with a lot of crappy weather rolling in toward the end of the week. A few days of snow/rain and cold temperatures caused some issues for Saturday's Clasica de Rio Grande Road Race, particularly because the route included about a mile of dirt road. On Friday morning, they decided that the dirt section was unrideable, and canceled the race. Although I'm a little disappointed that one of the few road races in Colorado had to be canceled, I'm not really heartbroken because I wasn't going to be able to do it anyway. We potentially had a soccer and football game to take our kids to, so I was going to skip the race. In the end, football was canceled, too, although soccer managed to stay on schedule once they moved the game to an artificial-turf field. But dry weather on Saturday, and a good forecast for Sunday meant that Sunday's Denver Federal Center Classic was still on.
This is a pretty popular race on the calendar, but this was my first time on the course. I wasn't able to do this race last year for some reason. The course is a relatively flat 4-mile lap through the Denver Federal Center complex, with a whole lotta turns. Probably more turns than I've seen on any other course on our calendar. I just took a look at the map, and I counted 16 turns per lap. That's crazy. I mean, a road race could have a lot of turns, but that might be over like 15 miles or something. And a crit usually only has like 4-6 turns per lap. This was just crazy. You can see the course in my Strava link at the bottom of this post. I guess I would say that the course is somewhat technical. There are a lot of turns, and some of them go from a wide road onto a narrow one, which makes things bunch up a bit. There are also two turns that lead directly into small climbs. I almost hesitate to call them climbs, because they aren't very steep or long, but they're there. And the recent weather left a little loose gravel and a few puddles on the course, but nothing directly on the turns.
Another thing the recent weather front left behind was the cold. At race time, it was about 40 degrees and cloudy. Not a lot of fun. But at least it wasn't raining. I got there plenty early, but it was so cold that I really didn't want to get out of my car. I took my time getting ready to race, but wasn't too interested in sitting on my trainer in that miserable weather, so I just hung out listening to some podcasts. I decided I needed to get in at least a little warmup, so I hopped on the trainer for about 15 minutes. Not sure if that was enough, but that's all I could manage today. I headed over towards the start/finish line to see the end of the SM4, SM5 and MM40+ 5 race, then got myself ready to go.
Unlike previous races, I put myself right on the front line of the race. I didn't want to start the race playing catch-up like my last few races. Once the race started, I decided I was going to try to stay right around the front 10 the whole time. That's pretty much where I was for the first lap, but I lost a bit in the corners and spent a lot of the second lap probably around 20th place. That second lap was a "prime" lap, where they offered come kind of prize for finishing the lap in first place. I wasn't very interested in winning primes, but since the pace was going to pick up, I knew I wanted to be closer to the front. About 2/3 of the way through the lap, I moved up a bit and was probably somewhere in the top-10 crossing the line on that lap. I pretty much stayed around that position throughout the third and fourth lap, but dropped a bit again on the fifth lap. Again stuck around 20th place halfway through that fifth lap, I knew I needed to move up. As we approached one of the left-turns that led into a small hill, I knew that the group would get strung out and I would be pulled even further back. At that point the race consisted of about 4 riders in a line at the front, followed by a big bunch, which I was near the back of. So, as we sped down the straightaway toward the turn, I moved to the left side and sprinted toward the front. I could hear someone in the group yelling something like "watch out for the dive-bomber!", assuming he meant me. I think he thought I was going to be going full-blast into the inside of the turn, which can tend to be dangerous. It's not looked upon very kindly. But that wasn't actually my plan, so I ignored him. I pulled around the group, and behind the short line of riders on the front, into 3rd or 4th position leading into the turn.
Happy with my position for the time being, I kept myself right around the front for the rest of the fifth lap, and as we crossed the start/finish line, we heard the bell announcing the final lap. I was in a good spot, and just needed to stay there for this last lap. As we wound our way through turn after turn, the pace picked up, but nothing unreasonable. A few riders made some half-hearted attacks, but nothing that seemed very strong, and they gave up quickly.
At the final right-hand turn, the pace was picking up significantly, and I made it through somewhere in the top-five. The group was growing again as we came into the final quarter-mile. I've been training hard, but I don't have a very strong sprint yet, so I knew I wouldn't be able to out-sprint most of these guys. So, I started really early, pushing myself to the front of the group as hard as possible. Coming into the final straightaway, I was at the front of the group with a lot of people bearing down quickly. Soon enough, I started getting past, but not as quickly as I expected. My legs were spent, but with about 100m to go, I managed to get out of the saddle. I tried to sprint, but my legs just weren't working. I may as well have been trying to pedal with Jell-O. I actually thought I might fall right off the bike. I would love to see a video of that finish, because I'm pretty sure I looked ridiculous.
But as stupid as I probably looked, I managed to stay upright as I crossed the line. I ended up finishing in 7th place, my first top-10 finish as a Cat 4 (not counting time trials). I am very happy with this finish, and think it bodes well for the rest of the season. Looking forward to my next race in a couple weeks.
Race: Denver Federal Center Classic, Circuit Race
Category: MM 40+ 4
Result: 7/
Update: That guy from the Louisville Crit, Garrick Mitchell from Thump, posted a video of the last lap of this race:
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