Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Barry Roubaix Race Report



 

Race #2 of the season in the books.  Once again I dropped down from the 62-mile race to the 36-mile race.  I am glad I did because I stunk at this race.

At 2:06:36 I finished 51st out of 144.  Yeah, I sucked.  The good news is that I was 18 minutes faster than 2011 and 2012 (more like 11 minutes faster than 2012 due to flat tire).  The bad news is my climbing.  I carried excellent momentum into the hills but once I lost that momentum I was not able to generate any significant power to get up the hill.  The elevation profile is below:


image

I was very happy with my times on the ‘flat’ areas.  This makes sense given most of my training is for endurance.  When I compare my climbing times vs. the last couple of years, I was slower on some of the hills.  There is an issue
in comparing times: The start line was changed to the city of Hastings.  Example of how that impacted climbs:  The ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘Hubble Hills’ were at the beginning of the race instead of near the end.






































Hill Name20132012
Three Sisters4:115:25
Hubble Hills5:185:48
Gun Lake5:004:44
Little Pine2:282:13
The Wall2:241:54
Grave Yard2:041:55

Regardless, it still shows that my climbing times are not improving.  Also, I couldn’t stop my calf from cramping on some climbs.  This is very unusual for me.  When I approached the finish line, I noticed there were a ton of riders behind me.  I stood to sprint the last 100 yards and almost went over the bars.  My legs were just mush.  So I had to do a sitting sprint.

I am tired of not being very competitive at mountain bike racing.  In 2008 it wasn't 'IF' i will get the podium, but instead what place "ON" the podium.  Not it's everything I can do to finish the race.  The training requirements are very different from triathlons to mountain bike racing, but I'm still very frustrated on my decline in performance.

I still enjoyed the race and impressed at it’s growth.  I believe it was 3,000 racers and right on par with Iceman in terms of size and atmosphere.

I was bib #2563

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Barry Roubaix 2013-Barry Roubaix 2013 3-0031



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