Steve Bauer Classic O-Cup
Since I had missed the last couple road O-Cup races, I was determined to try to get some upgrade points at the Steve Bauer classic. I had ridden the course a couple times before and had discussed strategy with a few local Group1 guys. The M2 race would complete six 12.5km laps. Since the race ended with a 2k climb on Effingham Road that maxed out at 20% grade, I felt like my best shot at a good result would be to be off the front of the race for a couple laps before the finish. That would allow me to climb at my own (relatively reasonable, a.k.a. “slow”) pace and build my gap on the flats. I had done a few hard TT efforts during training rides in the past couple weeks, so I was hoping that I could survive off the front of the M2 field for part of the race.
So my plan for the race was to sit in and use as little energy as possible until it was time to get up the road. My goal was to attack the field on the flat section of the course in the crosswind with either 1.5 (18k) or 2.5 (30k) laps left in the race. The race started fine with a nice easy downhill. Midweek had the biggest team in the race, with 4 or 5 racers, and one of their riders (Richard Westwood) rolled off the front after only a couple kms. I remember saying to another racer that anyone that attacks this early won’t make it, but the rest of the Midweek team did a good job shutting down any chases over the next couple kms. The gap ended up stretching out and was likely around 20 or 30 seconds after 4 or 5 km. I wasn’t planning on trying anything this early in the race, but since I didn’t have any teammates in the race, I felt that if I got up the road with the Midweek rider, I would by default gain four Midweek teammates that would help make sure that the break stuck. So approx. 5k into the race, I rolled up near the front in the crosswind and attacked (looking back, it’s funny how I changed my perspective from “the break is doomed” to “I want to be in this break” in only 2 or 3 km of riding). No one from the M2 field made a serious effort to follow me, so I quickly bridged across the gap to the leading rider. I rolled up next to Richard and asked him how he was feeling – he replied “good”, so I asked him if he was ‘ready for this’ and he replied “yes”. I liked both of those answers. He asked me how I felt and I told him that “I wanted to rip this race apart”. So with 70k left to race, we were off in a two-person break.
We worked well together, taking relatively even pulls. We worked hard for the first couple laps to extend the gap out to about 90 seconds, then settled into our rhythm. I tried to keep our pace in the low 40s on the flats and take it easy up the climb on Effingham (headwind). I knew that past M2 races only averaged around 37 km/h, so we were riding a reasonable pace. My goal was to keep my average power around 300W, since I felt I could hold that for 2 hours. The laps seemed to tick off without much excitement. We were out of sight of the rest of the M2 field, so it felt more like a steady training ride than a race most of the time. I got a few rough time splits from Phil Sheffield and Rob Daniels at the start/finish and we were holding our gap fairly steady between 1:00 and 1:40, although I found it VERY frustrating that over the course of the race we didn’t get any splits from the race officials. As each lap was finished, I felt more and more confident that we would survive.
With one lap remaining, a rider from Tecky Kids (Chris Herten) bridged across to us at the top of the Effingham climb. He definitely looked to have more energy than Richard and I, since we had almost 60k of break riding in our legs at that point, but I felt like the new energy could help us to the finish. I spent less time on the front on the last lap, but I was still trying to hold my pulls between 300 and 320W. I didn’t want us to get caught so close to the finish (this has happened to me several times). Once we swung onto Effingham for the last time, I lead up the first couple rollers, then Chris came through to take over pulling. This was good for me, since Effingham Road was all headwind leading into the last steep pitch to the finish. With the pack completely out of sight, the podium would be decided among the three of us.
I felt that if I followed wheels up the climb, the best finish I could expect would be 2nd. I seemed stronger up the climbs than Richard (Midweek) while in the break, but with Chris (Tecky Kids) being relatively fresh, it seemed that the win would likely be his unless I changed the dynamics of the finish. It was worth losing 2nd to try to get 1st (what would Igor say if I didn’t try). I knew I couldn’t wait until the steep part of the climb since power-to-weight (never my friend) would be working against any attack I tried. So I attacked as hard as I could (sadly less than 1000W at this point in the race) at the base of the climb before it really ramped up. I had a small gap for maybe 20 seconds until it got really steep, when Chris rode past, with Richard drafting behind. I didn’t have the energy to jump on as they passed, so I checked behind me to confirm the pack was still out of sight, and I was resigned to 3rd.
It was quite the adventure being in a 70k break (in a 74k race), but the race generally worked out as I had planned. I was disappointed to be 3rd after the effort I put into the race, but if someone told me a week ago that I would get 3rd at THIS race, I would have been ecstatic, so I need to keep things in perspective. A podium in a race with this much climbing is (almost) as good as a win for me.
Final stats: avg. power for the 70k break - 302W, weighted average for the entire race 310W.
(Photo Credit: Lauren Daniels)
