Hugh Trenchard

The Caleb Pike course, 20-25km northwest of downtown Victoria in the municipality of Highlands, is a 2.5km loop of country roads. Aside from the occasional deer crossing, there is very little traffic in the area. This makes for a perfect mid-week course that is minimally disruptive to the locals and a good hard course for us. The course is lightly rolling except for a big divot – a steep drop for 300m followed by an immediate ascent of about the same length, carving out rather a big “V” in the course, followed by some painful false flat. This was, I believe, the fourth of the Victoria Cycling League races held on the Caleb Pike course this year, though I had missed the previous three of them.

Yesterday it was 20 loops for the A group, and 14 for the B group. There were about 15 riders in each group. For my part, I had done a 5+ hour ride on Sunday, following three hours with six Observatory Hill intervals on Saturday, following a few days of easy efforts. And when my morning resting heart rate in the morning was 53 (usually about 45 when I’m rested), I figured it was going to be a rough day.

Given this, because I have now registered for the six-stage race Cascade Classic in Bend, Oregon in two weeks I am a bit worried about the state of my body – was it a mistake to do two fairly hard days on the weekend, after a week of easy riding? And if that wasn’t a mistake, maybe I didn’t go easily enough on Tuesday, two days afterward, since I did a few efforts on the Tuesday as well.

Well, I’ll have to see, but at the moment, I’m starting to feel a creeping staleness in my body that worries me so soon before what will be the biggest and hardest race of the year for me. I’ve felt this before, and when you get it, there is no cure except extended rest – but we will see – this weekend will be telling.

As for the race, I was still able to make it hard for myself by getting into several breakaways. The first was with Bob Cameron for two to three laps early on. Because the IRC guys had four or five riders in the pack, it was good strategy to go with any break that contained an IRC rider, since their team-mates in the pack would disrupt the chase. In retrospect, a slight modification to my own strategy would have been to have gone only with any break that contained one of their riders, rather than try to go with everything, which is basically what I was trying to do.

In any event, soon after Bob and I were caught, now down to about 14 laps to go, another break of three rolled away – this break included one of the Webcor gals (I’m not sure who it was – thought it might have been Erinne Willock, but I don’t think so NOTE: I’ve now seen the results – this was Alex Wrubleski). They achieved a significant gap, and finally I decided I would try to bridge across; it took a full lap for me to catch them. But by the time I made the bridge, I was fried and couldn’t contribute much at first, nor was the Webcor gal pulling through, so with only two guys in that break contributing, and with me only able to start taking my pulls when it was too late, two laps later we were reeled in.

Now down to about 9 to go, and soon after the previous break was caught, Vaughan Hildebrand attacked, and I went with him. He said he was fried, and I suggested just keeping the pace hard but steady. Again, with his team-mates in the pack, it was a good opportunity. However, we were also caught within couple of laps. With about 6 to go yet another break went shortly thereafter – potentially the one to stick, I thought. I also made it into this break, but again I was hooped after my break with Vaughan, and had to sit on the back of that breakaway to recover while four others rotated, quite smoothly, I might add. But then there was a crash in the B group which slowed our breakaway, and we were caught shortly thereafter.

Finally, with three to go, a break of three rolled off, with Trevor Connor (also racing the Cascade Classic coming up) hanging in no-man’s land, and I could only watch them disappear up the road! I haven’t seen the results yet, so I’m not sure who was in the break, but Trevor was caught, and I think Bob got the field sprint (NOTE: this was incorrect – I think it was Tyler Trace who in the middle, but didn’t get caught; results were: 1. Dan Skinner 2. Matt Dilay 3. Trevor Connor 4. Tyler Trace 5. Bob Cameron – apologies – it’s hard to know what happened until you see the final result). I was actually beginning to cramp up in the last two laps, and was happy just crossing the line tucked in with the group at the end, albeit out of the top 10.

In any event I was happy that my base fitness is solid enough to allow me to work very hard and make a race of it, even when I can tell I’m not fresh. I have received an upgrade from Cat 2 to Cat 1, so when down in Bend I’ll be racing against pro teams, and more than likely I won’t be taking any pulls at the front – ever. Hopefully my hard work in the local races will allow me to hang in the bigger races.

After a hard race on Sunday, I was questioning whether I would be sufficiently recovered to race again today, especially a race of the level of difficulty that Mt Newton (“hilly crit”) is.

I’d taken Monday off entirely from training, with about 1.5 hours of spinning yesterday. I felt quite good yesterday, but awoke today feeling rather knackered, but thought I would decide at the day’s end whether to race or not. In the end I chose to go, riding out the highway to the race start on roads near Mt. Newton.

When a commuter went blasting by me with a big back pack on during my ride out, I thought it to be a bad sign. Maybe time to turn around and take another day of rest, I thought. However, I began to loosen up as I went, and knew I would probably feel better on short hard climbs than on something flat and high speed for the day.

There were about 15 in the A group this week, with a few more strong guys among it. The race was 18 laps over the beasty climb. As usual, the race was essentially attrition. Andrew McCartney, winner of the last hilly crit, and who last week won the Caleb Pike race on a solo break, pulled out – he was experiencing tightness in his calves and shins after walking around on Sunday watching the world championship triathlon in Vancouver. He has been fighting an injury, evidently made worse by a lot of walking.

As the laps wore on it came down to: Kenyon Campbell,fresh off his Cat 4 win on Sunday; Category 1 riders Marcel Aarden, Trevor Connor, Nick Hamilton (who arrived a little late), and me. Stephen Kilshaw, Pac Sport triathlete, did well to hang on until about 7 to go, as did another of the Aviawest riders, whose name I am unsure of. With two to go, Nick and I accelerated over the top of the climb and went through the bell lap with a small gap over the others. We were away until the bottom of the climb on the last lap, but Marcel, Trevor and Kenyon did well to get back to us and, as they did, Marcel went straight past, taking Kenyon with him. So the final result was Marcel, Kenyon, me, and Trevor. Nick, who was physically ahead of me, was not given a finishing place due to his late arrival, I understand.

A fun little race, and I definitely have some good solid base fitness. I’ll need to take a break soon, leading up to Superweek and/or the Cascade Classic in Bend, Oregon.

Results at www.duanebc.com

http://www.duanebc.com/raceresults2008/VCL2008races/newton6_11_08.htm

BC Cup #2. Sunday, near Abbotsford. For the Category 1,2 men, it was thirteen laps of a 10km rolling loop, with a couple of short but sharp hills, not long or steep enough to really split the pack. But repeated 13 times at a high pace, and it was sufficient to cause substantial attrition among the sixty who started the race.

Unlike Provincials the previous Sunday, there were only two Symmetrics riders in this race, suggesting from the outset quite different race dynamics from the previous weekend when five of them dominated the Westside Classic.

Even so, soon after the race commenced, one Symmetrics rider, accompanied by an Escape Velocity rider, slipped off the front, ultimately managing to remain out front for the entire race, holding a lead of about 1 minute over a chase group of five or six riders who followed. They in turn came in about 30 seconds, or so, ahead of the rest of what remained of the field.

For my part, after the two breakaway riders slipped away, and after a shortlived chase group was returned to confines of the peloton, I began my own set of continuous attacks and attempts to generate a chase group. As a lone rider without team-mates, it is both freeing and challenging in a peloton with strong teams. One tactic for a strong team is to attack a peloton in tandem: send one rider up the road, forcing opposing teams to chase; if that rider is returned to the fold, immediately counter by sending another team-mate up the road, and so on. Eventually a break sticks with your teammate in it. Sometimes you send a rider up the road simply to force a chase, without necessarily intending to keep that rider up the road. With the combination of ruse attacks and real ones, opponents have no way of knowing which breaks are real or not, or which ones potentially may stick – especially difficult for a lone rider to respond.

That leaves a lone rider in a conundrum: sit in and wait for attrition to thin the pack, but potentially miss the breakaways? Respond and go with every little breakaway attempt, risking exhaustion? Attempt to generate breakaways yourself, knowing you are potentially going to be chased by every team, also risking exhaustion? For myself, in a bigger race and with suspect fitness I will default on sitting in.

However, when I realize I have the fitness to attack, I generally will as much as possible, even if it means exhausting stores which could have been used more decisively. When you attack you increase the chances of ending up in a working breakaway, even if there is a high energy cost in doing so. Hence for me, this was one race where I found myself, for the better part of eight laps, attacking constantly trying to generate breakaways. Several times one or two other riders would join me, we’d be caught, and immediately I would go again. The best time to counter-attack is immediately after a chase has returned riders to the pack, as there tends to be a relaxation in the pace. It’s very difficult for a lone rider to attack, and counter-attack in this fashion, but for me this race was a process of discovering what I had – what were the limits of my ability to attack and counter-attack? Of course it was risky – the energy costs being high – but I wanted to try, nearly continuously.

As it was, with two laps to go, I missed the decisive chase group of five, who were chasing the two ahead. I had tried my best to escape with various combinations of riders for eight laps unsuccessfully.

However, even with one lap to go, I made one last ditch effort over the crest of the steepest of the climbs on the course, with six km to go. I attacked and took an H&R Block (Calgary team) with me. The pack was not chasing; immediately we put a significant gap on the pack and were gaining time. But I could feel the energy sapping rapidly. With four km to go, up a shallow climb, I cracked, and the H&R Block guy gapped me and pulled away – my fate was sealed. I proceeded, however weakly at that point, as best I could and held off the rest of the chasing pack until the last 600 meters, with 400m uphill, toward the finish. When they caught me at the base of the hill, they went by me like I was standing still, and I might have just barely finished in the top 30.

Nonetheless, I was happy with my effort, although many would argue I did not wisely allocate my energy and wasted my strength. True to a great extent, but for me so much of racing is not about winning, but about testing my limits – I discovered what I had in this race, and I very nearly allocated my energy in a way that would have achieved a top-10 at least, being so close to holding off the pack before the finish. So, I learned a lot about my ability to attack and to counter-attack. Even so, ideally one wants to apply what he’s learned in future races, so it remains to be seen if I can take this and use it wisely in the future.

My travelling cohorts were a little more successful: Kenyon Campbell won the 60km Cat 4 race, giving him nearly enough points to upgrade to Cat 3. Gillian Carleton was 9th in the 80km Cat 1,2 women’s race.

The old man glanced pensively to his friend as they stood facing each other in the heat of the day while playing children ran past and school teachers came lumbering by. The gypsy cyclist sat nearby beneath a tree to shade himself from shards of sun that were as darts to his sunburned skin. His jersey was set to the soil, the bibs of his shorts hung by his sides; his shoes were off to soothe his swollen feet, and the air was heavy with moisture and heat.

“No, I was not young once,” said the man to his friend. “Not like you, not like anyone. I was never young. I was always old, you see. From the day I was born into my mother’s arms, opened my eyes, looked upward into hers, felt her hot breath and her soft sobs and the chatter of those around — I felt the same then as I do now: seventy five years old. I saw the universe then as I do now, knew that it was filled with stars and empty space between them, felt the same regrets, the same joys, the same sorrows. Of course then I could not express them, aside from gurgles and cries, but I have not changed for all the friends, family and women who loved me – they loved me the same for my time as a baby as they do now. That is they all have loved me from afar. Have you loved me that way, my friend, Senguthu – from afar?”

The gypsy cyclist ignored the children as they ran by him giggling, some imploring him with laughter to stand and to show them his strange bicycle. But he was entranced by the conversation nearby.

Senguthu grabbed the man by his shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes. “Your mother loved you from afar because she was sick, Mbeki. Your father was dead. You were not old, you silly man! You were young just like me, just like everyone. You have felt the same for seventy five years because you have not allowed anyone near since those days when you cried so much for your mother and she could not come to you.”

“No,” said Mbeki. “I have heard that before. Do you think I have not been told that a thousand times? Senguthu, listen to me! What of the stars and the empty space between them; all that I knew even before I opened my eyes? What of all the same regrets, the sorrows, the joys. No ordinary baby feels those things – they have not learned them yet. I have felt them come and go as the cycles of the tides for seventy five years. If I had changed but for one year in seventy five, I would not be here both grieving and exulting the unchangeable; that same grief and exultation that alternated in nearly perfect oscillations for seventy five years.” He turned to look at the gypsy cyclist beneath the nearby tree. Mbeki’s eyes paused momentarily to observe the wheels of the bicycle as it lay at the gypsy cyclist’s feet.

“Oh Mbeki,” said Senguthu. “Could you be more convinced of these cycles and their unchangeable nature? Indeed, if seventy-five years has hardened you to believe this, then I cannot begin to question it, let alone convince you that it is, or could be, otherwise.”

“Senguthu, you are just like the others!” Mbeki laughed. “To know the nature of these oscillations is to be free of them! Look at that man,” he pointed to the gypsy cyclist, relaxed but sitting attentively beneath the nearby tree. “Is he a slave to the wheels which carry him, or has mastered them, and therefore free of them? Those wheels for him will always be there, but he can either ride them or watch them turn.”

“Or,” replied Senguthu, “he can abandon them or pretend they are not there. Does it not pain you that I have loved you deeply, but that you have ignored me for the last 70 years, Mbeki? How often have I tried to reach you? How often? Seventy years, Mbeki, and my love for you is as strong as the moment I knew that I did, so long ago.” The two men stared into each other’s eyes. In a moment Senguthu smiled. “But, Mbeki, at last you have invited me back! Seeing me here before you – what more proof do you need, Mbeki, that some things are changeable?”

The gypsy cyclist, replenished from his rest beneath the tree, stood, reassembled his clothing, and gathered up his bicycle. The sun had dropped a little in the sky and its shards were not so piercing to his sunburned skin. He mounted his bicycle, and rode away.

As the comment from Alistair shows (see comments under my last post), my description of the unfolding of events was a little inaccurate. I was mistaken in thinking that Alistair had escaped from the pack a couple of lap after an initial break with Symmetrics. Alistair was part of the breakaway of 8 riders from when it was launched. This makes more sense in terms of the timing for pulling the remainder of the field from the course on the first lap of the short loop, since the whole group of 8 had about four minutes on my group heading into the short 2km circuit. Attacks by the Symmetrics boys split the breakaway into smaller groups after they started the short loops.

Great work by Alistair, originally from Victoria and who was second last year at Provincials, to be cranking out the paceline with the Symmetrics boys.

I also saw that Steve Bachop, from Victoria, won the Masters B (40-49) race. Some good results by the few Victorians who made it over.

The B.C. Provincial Road Race championships were held yesterday in Vancouver. Categories were divided into Masters; Mens 4,5 together; Junior mens; Senior mens pro1,2,3 together; and Senior women’s pro 1,2,3. The course was a rolling 12km loop in roads in and around Point Grey near UBC, including a 1.5km climb up Camosun road — a hill that gradually increased in grade as it neared the top — not especially long or steep, but hard enough to split the field. The start/finish line on 10th ave lay between shops and businesses and made for a spectator friendly course. We were to do the 12km loop 10 times, and then shift onto a short 2km loop for a further 10 laps.

There were over 100 starters in my race, Sr Mens. Highlighting the event was the participation of the Symmetrics pro team, the top team in the Americas Contintental Pro Tour last year, including Svein Tuft, the overall winner of the 2007 Americas Continental Pro Tour last year; Cam Evans, current national road champion and others from their team racing full time as paid professionals. Other strong teams included the Red Truck team, Total Restoration, Masi-Adobe also riding at that level. With $3500 on the line for the winner, and $15000 distributed among the various categories, the stakes were significant. The event has also been combined with a community fund raising event for cancer, with retired Belgian pro cyclist Axel Merckx and hockey player Trevor Linden were on hand to lead that event.

While the course was wide open and safe, 100+ riders is potentially dangerous. My thought was to get to the front and to stay near it as much as possible throughout the race. That way I could mark breakaways as well and, hopefully, if I could choose the break wisely, hop into the winning one.

After three laps the pack had already split in half. While I was successful in remaining near the front, when the break that included five Symmetrics riders escaped up the road on lap 4, I was not among them. Not only was I boxed in and unable to respond, they were attacking from the pack at a rate rather faster than I could have realistically maintained, so that idea was ruled out. On lap six, Alistair Howard (who won the Windsor Park criterium just ahead of me recently, and was second in the Provincial RR last year) and a couple of others escaped up the climb. I thought they would likely be brought back as they seemed to dangle out just ahead of the rest of the front group that had been whittled down yet further to about 30 riders.

With about three strong teams with riders up the road, the group was winding down in consistent intensity as team-mates from those teams were no longer seriously chasing. With no one up the road, Total Restoration continued to hold tempo at the front, but they were not assisted much by others. I took a few turns at the front, but I was of a similar mind as everyone else: don’t kill yourself into the headwind before the climb, or you’ll be spat off the back. The pace in my group, while yo-yo-ing somewhat, was still high, however, and continued whittling down on every lap. Meanwhile, up the road the Symmetrics breakaway gained four minutes on the pack and Alistair’s group was a couple of minutes ahead.

By the time we’d finished the long loops there were 20 riders in my front group with 8 riders up the road. The rest of the field had either dropped out or were much farther back from my group. With the short loops and the front eight riders splitting a bit, the commissaires and organizers made the decision to allow my group to do only one lap of the short course ending it for us, and allowing the front eight to dual it out. The decision was made on very short notice, and was poorly communicated to the group – there was much confusion among my group of 20 as proceeding into the finishing straight for the finish. A sprint occurred but it was highly anti-climactic. We were all given finishing times and places, and I finished at back of my group, but I personally, while fatiguing, was quite excited for the last short loops.

While I was happy that I had made the front group (not including the breakaway of eight) ahead of the majority of the field, it was disappointing not to be able to contest the last 9 laps. In my opinion it was a poor decision because the race was simply not over – our group was not very far behind Alistair’s group and we could well have caught them over the last 20km of the course, especially since the last 20k was flat and, as a group, we would have been attacking constantly, making the last 20km very fast.

So, all in all, a lot of fun, and I was happy with my strength, but again the finish was anti-climactic and disappointing.

My travelling co-horts faired well – Kenyon Campbell was third in the Cat 4,5 race. Andrew McCartney, who won the last Mt Newton mid-week race here, was sixth in the Cat 4,5 race. Kenyon’s girlfriend, Gillian Carleton, 18yr old up and coming triathlete-turned-cyclist was 6th in the Sr Women’s race – a great result among a strong field of women.