Race Report: NC State RR Championships 30-34

Another early weekend morning, up at 5AM to meet my teammate Jason to head to Salisbury, NC for the NC State Road Race Championships, held here for the second year in a row. An easy drive proceeded a day with a high close to 90 degrees in humidity that I'm not accustomed to anymore. Jason and I discussed the race and agreed that, like last year, it would most likely be a tactical event where there would be a lot of watching and marking, with potentially an early break going. My breakfast was coffee, a Honey Stinger Protein bar (tasty, easy to digest, and sweetened with honey!), and 'poop pudding'. Bike setup for the flat course was the standard road setup - Trek - but Jacob lent me his I9 deep-dish ID wheels fitted with our Hutchinson tires, which proved to be the perfect option for the fast, gently rolling course.

I made it my goal to get up the road early with a break represented by the 'major' teams in the race; Hincapie, Clif, Carolina Masters, etc. After the early suicide attacks by Clif and Hincapie, then duo dangled about a minute up the road when a counter went with Carolina Masters and a couple of others 20 miles in. I watched the numbers and noticed that there weren't any 30-34 riders going away and joined them. We steadily closed the gap to the duo and then formed a paceline to slowly build our gap. Unfortunately most of the others just didn't have the strength or skill to smoothly rotate and it took a lot of work to finally get a group of 4 that worked, with the others sporadically rotating in. As the day wore on and the laps clicked down, the 6 of us turned into 4 until Rich Harper bridged across solo with 2 laps to go. I was thankful to have some more help to power the move, but knew that I would have my hands full with Rich in the sprint . . .

Rich and I took turns pulling with a little help from the other 2 as Shane from Hincapie dropped back to try to help Chris Harkey in the chase behind (now at 1:30, with the main group at 3 minutes). With one lap to go I started to feel the heat and 3 hours in the saddle and thought about how I could get the drop on Rich. Coming into the final turn I pulled up even to make it a 'fair' sprint. I eased up with about 200m to go and actually got a bit of a jump on Rich, however cramp quickly enveloped my left hamstring as Rich pulled me back and overtook me with 100m to go.

While I was disappointed that I didn't win, I was happy with my effort and result overall. For 3 hours in the saddle I had an average heartrate of 170bpm (my threshold is at 175bpm), NP of 276W and TSS of almost 250 (for your CyclingPeaks geeks out there!).

Thanks goes out to all of our sponsors:

Industry 9, Trek, Hutchinson, Liberty Bicycles, Rudy Project, Honey Stinger, Dr. Miller, PML, Eco Concepts Realty, ABRC, Champion, Velosports, and Affordable Home Inspections

** If you're wondering the picture is from one of my company's weekly publications. They put a picture like this in every week - I'm the 'one' this week! I know it's from last year thought, so sorry for the old kit.