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.
Entries (RSS)
June 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Hugh,
Great note on this race. I too have found myself in the same situation. It is indeed a conundrum. And often, it leads to the same result, watching a peloton of people that were “wisely” sitting in pass you by. It is all about testing your limits. I’m happier being dead last after having done lots of attacking, than finishing in the pack, but not contributing to the race.
A young former teammate of mine from Ontario, Devon Novakowski, and I were both spat out the back after many attacks in last year’s KW Classic in the senior 3 race, and he came fourth this year in the 1/2 race.
Emile