Gainesville Grand Prix Circuit Report

This is my first attempt using the email to blog feature as I type on my iPhone from the airport in Memphis. Early flight from ATL-MEM is close to the worst post race weekend morning activity.

This weekend, I headed up to Gainesville for the 2nd Annual Gainesville Grand Prix promoted by Dingo Race Productions and owned by former Australian racer, Nathan O’Neil. I assume Nathan lives in Gainesville and has started promoting this race and a new Tuesday Night Race Series. It’s a little far for a Tuesday night, but it was a 1hr 15 min drive for the Gainesville Grand Prix which fits well into my race travel distance limits. With a wife and kids, I try to avoid races over 2hrs drive and usually race most races less than an hour away regardless of form or how it fits into my training plan.

Originally, I was going to rest Saturday since I rode 73 miles on Tuesday with a hard Northlake ride in the middle. I followed that up with an 80 mile solo ride to Rockmart on Thursday night. The combination built a ton of CTL, but it created fatigue which was going to removed by resting both Saturday and Sunday. With rain forecasted for Sunday, I decided to pile on additional training by skipping Sat rest in favor of racing. It worked fine for a circuit race, but it was over ambitious for Sunday given how much climbing was scheduled.

Saturday’s circuit race was held in a small town outside of Gainesville called Clermont. If it wasn’t for bike racing, I’d never know where half the Georgia towns are located, but it’s often those small communities who embrace the races the best. This was no different with a community church in Clermont hosting the race start. It is so nice to get to use real bathrooms at a race, thank you to the church who opened their doors to us.

The Pro/1/2 race had most of the local Pro/1 talent represented with Thomas Brown, Frank Travieso, Alexey Schmidt, Daniel Holt, Emile Abraham, etc…there’s about ten more top names, but it would take to long to list them all. The course was a 2.8 mile loop that consisted of a slight downhill, slight uphill, flat / slight roller straight, and a 1 mile climb. I like any climb that is 1.3 mi or less and less than 6%. This climb fit the bill well for the bigger guys as it wasn’t that hard. However, as I’ll describe in Sunday’s report, the riders make the course, not the other way around.

We started the race easy enough with a few attacks off the front both nobody was overly concerned and several teams just road fast tempo to keep the break in check. It was the opposite of the way I’ve seen most circuit races play out. Usually, the shorter the race, the higher the intensity. The race went like this for the first 3 of 6 laps, then my teammate Anders Swanson attacked hard and got about 30 seconds. He had a great TT and finished 10 seconds behind Frank Travieso to get 2nd in P/1/2 TT. Anders stayed away the next 3 laps until we ramped up a hard last lap. For those in GA who don’t know Anders, he is one of the strongest riders in TN. He races a lot of TN races with another Litespeed-BMW teammate, Chris Brown, whi is a beast on the bike and a top Masters rider nationally.

I was shuffled back pretty far on the turn prior to the final climb. It was strung out on the climb, but the field wasn’t going all out because the climb was followed by a 1.5 mile slightly uphill false flat. I had a feeling that anyone drilling the climb would be caught and passed on the long false flat heading to the line. I didn’t like being so far back, so I decided to move up on the climb as soon as I saw that we were all lined out only 1/3 the way up the climb. Everyone was single file hugging the far right side of the lane, so I rode a harder tempo inside the yellow line. I was trying to get positioned 15th wheel, but it was such clear sailing that I cruised from around 25th wheel up to the very front two riders. I’m not sure if others were just waiting for the flat or I just had good legs. I was sitting 2nd or 3rd wheel with a good 100m from the KOM, so I tried to back off and let others go ahead. Being the an impatient rider sometimes, I did exactly what I didn’t want to do right after this move. I saw Frank Travieso attack with two others. I jumped and got on the back, and the thee of us were off with an immediate gap opening as we created the KOM. Unfortunately, the downhill was long enough to allow the pack to cut our gap in half. We made the final turn as a group of four with Frank on the front. He started to drill it up a short kicker leading to the final false flat, but he noticed the pack was now nearly upon us and allowed the deck to reshuffle know 1.5 miles with a false flat can be a long drag with such a short gap. While Frank stayed up front, I was immediately swallowed up and shuffled back to 20th wheel. I kind of set into panic mode as I’m watching a decent race with good legs slip away from me. It started to look like my usual excuse ridden race where I finish mid-pack even though I’m convinced that I was decently strong that day. Instead, I tried to stay positive and calm. I always race as though I’m trying to win the race, and I know that isn’t realistic given my work / life commitments and low level of relative training compared to my competitors. So, I told myself to calm down, regroup, and see if you can get into the top 10 with a sprint because my legs were not too tired as we approached the 1k to go sign. I was on the far left and the pack surged a bit. It was lined out on the far left, but it had fanned across the road clogging up about 25 riders back. I politely yelled at the two guys in front of me on the yellow line to move up or pull through. When riders get gassed, most have no late race ability to move up in the wind, but I can always move up in the wind if the road is a false flat or flat when higher total watts is better than high w/kg. As soon as the two riders responded to my pleas, the yellow line was clear, and I sailed up the left side and then got out of the saddle to do an easy sprint to the front of the pack. In hindsight, I should have gone Cavendish / Sagan style and gone again when I reached the front of the pack. I barely used any effort to sprint along the pack to get to 5th wheel around 500m, but by tucking behind the front row, I was boxed in. I was in shock as I had to stop pedaling several times to avoid overlapping wheels in front of me. The lead four guys in front were either creating a massive draft for me or not going hard at all. There was a head wind, so I think it was a nice draft. Either way, I had to stop pedaling several times and had a lot left in the tank. I was boxed in and couldn’t move up further, but I was able to keep position in the drops with a soft pedal on someone’s wheel. I rolled across for 5th place behind Frank Travieso who got 4th with Emile Abraham won the race. It was probably the easiest top 5 that I’ve ever gotten since I didn’t work hard or burn any matches the entire race. Some of that was due to a higher CTL which means my fitness today is back to my February pre-illness / injury levels when I was strong in Greenville. It is 13% above April levels for Sunny King / Foothills RR. So, there are a combination of factors, but it still leaves me with two big holes. First, I can’t podium races until I drop my weight closer to 2012 levels. Second, I will struggle to place high without more sprint training like I did when I was a Cat 5 fat guy racer who sprinted all the time because I was heavy and out of shape to race any other way. On the positive side, my few sprints in crits recently show that my max sprint is still very high, but the lack of sprinting means it drops off faster than past years when that’s all I did. All in all, I’ve learned or relearned from Saturday that I may need to be more realistic sometimes. If a race is stacked, I may not want to try the break or go with the late move. Sometimes I do need to gamble and be opportunistic or at least not give up so quickly when a late move fails and I get shuffled. Higher CTL affords more matches which translates into more opportunities to fix mistakes prior to the finish line.