The Power of Punch

Sunday, was the Rouge Roubaix; quite arguably one of the only true Road Races we have locally. It's a 100 mile journey with no loops, laps, or circuits. Not to mention the ~20 miles of dirt roads that we cover that make it legendary.



I was looking forward to this race and put a little mark on my training calendar to try and have a good result at this race. The race is so early and so hard that to win it your really need to have some top form; I knew this would not be the case for me but I was looking at it as an early season stepping stone to build into the season. The only problem with these type of goals is that even sometimes when you achieve the purpose of the goal you feel lousy about the result. This may have been the case this past weekend. I ended up finishing ~40th in a 100+ field. Usually not a result worth reporting but, in this race where every spot is cherished and raced for, not too bad I suppose. I'm not going to give any specific race details but just this one quick note about the race - the field was stronger than I've ever seen it, and because of this it was a very strange Rouge Roubaix. The more important thing about the race is that I learned that I am lacking the punch power needed to get over those difficult climbs (i.e. how I got dropped and ended up 41st). I guess this can be expected. It is still early in the season and I really haven't started to fully develop my top end systems. Just as important is that I noticed that my sustained power is doing ok as on the flatter stuff and the rolling hills I was able to push the pace a little. Also in the end I still had gas left in the tank - not a whole bunch but some.



The one thing about the race I will elaborate on is the finish. First of all, this is the best finish for the Roubaix that I have seen in recent years. Secondly, I try not to race for 41st place. The difference between 41st and 50th really doesn't matter. I guess the guy's I was riding with really have not realized this because there were several of them that attacked our group when approaching the finale. First at 3k to go, then 2k, then 1k, and I was like enough so I chased down the guy who attacked with 1k to go and launched an attack myself. I then thought 1k is a lot longer than I remember. With about 500m to go the group caught me and I snuck into the 2nd position. Soon we saw the 200m to go sign and with 150m to go I launched my sprint and held it to the line. While I guess it was good practice I only sprinted because the other riders began attacking while I was more than content to just ride in laughing and talking about the race. The other thing that bothered me about this was that when trying to get to the finish the group was all not that motivated to go fast. I would push the pace to 45k and when I pulled off it would drop back down to 32k. I just feel that if you have enough left to attack you have enough left to help with the pace setting.



The next RR I will be doing is on April 6th. I am hoping to get some good work in in the break and hopefully put up a good result at that race.