EV Stage race results

[RyanC]

Well folks,

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key ... V0E&gid=11

As of Saturday, Adam's holding strong in 2nd overall, 6 points down on the leader. Still waiting on today's road race results to see. The course profile - technical and hilly - certainly was in his favour.

Looking forward to his report.

R

[EricS]

Congratulations Adam!

I'm not surprised. With your work ethic, you will do well at anything you choose. Considering you started riding a year ago, that's not bad.

Eric

[RyanC]

Final Omnium results are up (see link above). Adam came in 3rd in the RR and second overall, just 2 points behind the leader! Way to rock it, Adam.
R

[Rolf]

Wow. Congrats, Adam!

Congrats also to Emile De R. who won the A road race and also placed 2nd overall.

[AdamD]

I was waiting for those to get posted before a wrote something.

Crit:
The crit was a bit nutty, I pretty much just stayed at the front the whole race but even so people were trying to dive inside all over the place. Most of the juniors were up at the front and we were all sort of trying to get breaks going but everything pretty much just got eaten up right away. Although I put all that effort into staying at the front for 95% of the race I pretty much got swarmed at the end and was 5th going into the last turn. After that there was no chance to make up places in the finishing straight and i just held it to the line although i was going quite a bit faster than the three guys in front of me.

TT:
I had an early start and it was clear skies for my entire race, the rain started about 5 min. after i finished.
Pretty much just rode it as hard as i could on the way out and what ever i had on the way back. Id say i paced it perfectly, I didn't die at the end, but i couldn't have gone any harder. I caught my 30 about 65% of the way through which was good but i need to work on my turn arounds. Defiantly pretty happy with that time, Nigel my buddy who won about a min. Ahead of me was rollin' with a TT bike and a Zipp 1080 + 900 combo. I was also only about 30 seconds off some of the strong A's with TT bikes and disc's.

RR:
This was the same course i won on at the second spring series race so i was pretty sure i could do well although it was 110KM this time as opposed to 80 something and the finish line had been moved back about 70 meters so i wasn't sure if i could sprint right from the corner again. Jeff Ain pretty much made all the juniors marked when he told the group they were all getting beat by a bunch of 16-17 year olds, plus we were wearing armbands so it made it easy for everyone.

I had to ride this for two reasons, for GC and watching for all the juniors since this was a qualifying race for Western Canada Games. There was a break that rolled pretty early with three in it, I wasn't too worried considering there was still about 80 km to go and it only had three people but what i didn't realize was that there was an escape velocity rider in there and a good 1/5th of the field was escape velocity riders.

When I realized it wasn't coming back if something didn't happen i tried to get a group of a few juniors to bridge up, I wanted to at least have them with me because i know i could beat them in a sprint but i didn't want to be at a disadvantage if i was out trying to bridge and got swallowed back up while they were just sitting in. However like i said as soon as they saw 4 juniors trying to bride EV just jumped right on it. With about 20km to go one guy from the break couldn't hang on and dropped back to the main field, that was really lucky because he had won the crit and was pretty high in the GC.

Once the chase began in earnest it was pretty much too late, plus every time we went past a different marshal or spectator they were all giving us what seemed like random numbers, some were saying 45 seconds others 1 minute others 1 minute 30 seconds. The last lap was quite different than the first race on this course, the previous time it was fully strung out trying to bring back a solo break on a one lap bid to win, this time it was evident we were racing for third and everyone was just cat and mousing, EV still refused to hit the front.

I got myself in about 5th wheel going into the last turn, i remember thinking "oh this is working out perfect position 15m from the corner" just as some guy came shooting up the inside and dove way inside with way too much speed and took me off my line mid turn (note: same guy was doing the same thing all day in the crit). I managed to correct my line and just went straight from there. I could see the first four guys that i was passing trying to hold my wheel as i was looking under my arm, it was still a long way to the finish but no one could catch onto me and i won the pack sprint by a pretty good gap.

Unfortunately the EV guy in the break won and turned out wasn't too far down in the GC and just ended up with a couple more points that me.

[Lister Farrar]

Great analysis and report Adam. You starting to know this game pretty well.

Anyone have a word with mr-dive-the-corners? If he persists, that's grounds for a written complaint to Cycling BC, and at least a warning.

[Josh.E]

EV jumped in and disrupted the chase paceline? or just sat in on you guys?

[RyanC]

Emile has a blog entry about the A race. It's a good read.

http://emilederosnay.com/2011/04/04/emile-is-back/

R

[AdamD]

Not disrupting, just sitting on and making sure no bridge attempts got away.

[Josh.E]

Good blog Emile.
Awesome work, Congratulations.

[AdamD]

pics by Fred Rothengatter

[steven grandy]

The conditions were windy for the road race. A break went at some point early in the race and riders from EV and the interior did not chase. I don't think it was a matter of EV shutting the paceline down as much as people were unwilling to do more than two rotations. At it's peak the break was 2 minutes ahead and I think it was brought down to a minute at one point. I think I good measure of how willing a group is to work together is how many rotations a paceline could maintain. It makes sense that road racing appears at the surface an individual sport but is often won by teams.

I don't have a much experience with road racing but what I noticed was the people were interested in being near the front but only a few were willing to pull. I spent a large portion of the race at the rear and moved up mostly in headwinds or when the group was hit by a strong sidewind.
Early in the race the juniors were keen to show each other how well they could accelerate but this didn't do much to disrupt the main group because it was a flat unselective course.

[4827north]

The socks rock!