"you lose 5 in the first 5" well spoken from Justin. The start was pretty normal minus the extreme smell of brake pads before we even got onto the Bell School decent. A Quebec rider somehow slid his rear tire on the inside of the corner and almost hit the deck but it caught and he stayed up, just hit a sign instead. The super fast decent wasn't too sketchy as everyone was pretty spaced out. Then people started hittin their brakes and it got sketchy. Someone went down infront of me and all I saw was a super sharp chainring sticking up. I slammed on the brakes and just missed the chainring but caught the front wheel and sort of went over/kinda stayed up. The rider behind wasn't so lucky as I heard his tire get cut open. I looked up an saw about 6-8 ridersinfront of me rolling away to catch back on. I figured I'd just grab their wheel and we'd be back to the peleton in no time. As soon as I started pedaling I felt the dreaded no resistance. I hopped off and put the chain back on as I watched the group ride away from me. I hopped back on and after about 10 or 15 mins I managed to catch back on to the group, who were hauling ass trying to catch back onto the peleton. I caught them right at the start of Apppleby and worked a bit until the bottom of the climb. I was gassed from bridging to the group and as we hit the climb I was in my 23 which was my lowest gear and my legs were way to fried to turn the cranks over at that gear. I watched the group spin away as I tried to mash a super slow cadence. I'm an idiot for thinking that an 11-23 would work. It's do able on a traing ride but a race is another deal. As Rollin said in an interview when he pulled out of the race, the bike he was given as a replacement had an 11-23 casette on it. Enough said when it comes from a seasoned pro like him. Next time I'll smarten up and put on an 11-28. I ended up riding another lap solo and then got pulled.
On a side note my HR hit 227 bpm on the climb and was hovering at 210 for most of the lap. Normally I would disregard this as an error. Except I had no one around me to mess up my monitor and I turned it off and on and got the same reading. I could also feel it as well in my chest. As soon as the race ended my HR went back down to a normal level. Little scary to feel that.
I'm signed up for the crit tomorrow but I'll be pulling shoot on that one as I hear its a sketchy course. I was going to just ride it safe and hang in the back, the problem with this is that being in the back in a crit means you're working extremely hard so I'd probably get pulled. I'm not risking ruining my bike or the rest of my season. Instead I'll be heading out to my favorite loop out in Halton Hills for a 2.5 hour ride with an hour of hammering. The loops is full of rollers and always makes for a hard ride. That way I'll finish my last training block with a solid day. The rest of the day I'll be putting the finishing touches on my mtb so it'l be ready for Kelso on Tuesday. I'm stoked to start the Kelso races again as my fitness is starting to really come around and I want to test it out next week.
Just at Manda's work eating a post ride salad then off to sleep. For some reason I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's ride.
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