Div 1 Collegiate Nats Road Race
Fort Collins, Co

Who Raced: Me, Alex, Heiss
Results: 38th, crash, 67th

Alright, so this was collegiate nats--just about the biggest race a cyclist at our level can participate in. People have traveled from all over the country and paid hundreds of dollars to be here (us included). In every field there's at least 10 or so domestic pros to deal with/suffer behind.

Let me set the stage by describing the course. It started out with a gorgeous loop on a ridge road next to a lake. It's rolling with a couple key 2min steep climbs of 8%+ grade, and not a drop of flat for ~20 miles. After that, the course got weird--after some brutal hills you suddenly roll into a valley and proceed to do 4 laps on a 10 mile flat circuit. I'm not sure what they were going for exactly, but to me it felt like they were trying to cram every style of racing save cobbles into a single event--hills, rollers, flat, wind, etc. With 155 starters from 40-something different teams and gusting 30+mph winds on the start line, sh1t was going to hit the fan faster then Alex can say 'yum, krill'.

We headed over to the start about 30 min early, just in time to see Courtney beast another girl in the sprint for 7th. It took a good 45 min for all the girls to finish and we started staging. We all crowd forward and wait for call ups. There's so many people that they do 4 rounds of call-ups, by school, in random order. People were shoving, holding their bikes above their head, and all the fanfare and hype and tension was through the roof. Alex took the first UCLA call and I took the second. I think I was in the 4th row when they started us and it was a full-on sprint off the line.

We had the full road (no yellow line rule), but a headwind right off the bat put us 15-wide across the road. Very few wanted to be 1st wheel, yet EVERYONE wanted to be 3rd wheel, all at 30mph. The inevitable crash happened about 5 min in and took out Alex (had his brake cable pulled out by another handlebar--took 5min to fix) along with about 20 others. I was almost caught up and ended up clipped out in the ditch on the side of the road. But, the equipment was fine (if a little out of true) and I caught back on in a minute or so.

Positioning was difficult but it was all for one purpose--the first hill, 8miles into the race. I knew where it was from pre-riding the day before, and I managed to get to about 30th wheel right before the base. The next two minutes after that were, and I'm not exaggerating, the most painful 2min I've ever had on a bike. The pack, literally blew to smithereens with our good friend Mr Mach driving the front. I get to the top in I think the 3rd group on the road and I'm suffocating. I simply can't breath fast enough and my legs/lungs are exploding. I recover a little on the downhill, but there's work to do--I can see the front of the race still, but I bet they're 30 seconds up the road. The wind is picking up and they're not working together well--a chance! I put my head down and suffer like a dog for a solid 15 min. I'd catch a small group of 2-3 and we'd work together on downhills and then I'd drop them and catch another group on each uphill. By the time I caught mooney and lucas binder, that was good enough to make it all the way back to the front group. I was worried about the second big climb on the course but it turns out everyone else was beaten and bruised too because it was a much more manageable pace. Phew--made the selection!! Unbelievable all-out brutal 45min effort. 85% of the field, gone.

From here, the 25 or so of us left dropped down into the flat circuits and the whole dynamic changed. The course basically selected the 25 best climbers, only a few with teammates, and dropped them into a flat windy circuit. No one wanted to pull so there was just constant attacking. We were doing 12mph or 30mph, alternating every 1-2min. But, like I said, we were all a bunch of skinny (and tired) climbers so no one could really put the oomph into the attack to drive a real separation. For me personally, I was really cracking--it was only 1.5 hours into the race and I was suffering during the accelerations. But I kept hearing Ron's voice in my head "don't be conservative--put yourself in a position to win, not get 10th, who cares about 10th??". So while I couldn't go with everything, I tried my damnedest to get something moving when I was in a position to respond easily. Over and over we attacked each other for almost 90min.

To say the circuit was completely flat is misleading--there's a small, 1min or so 5% hill after the feed zone. By the 3rd lap, that was enough. It's about 2:15h into the race and a small separation leads to a big one, and it just happened to be a good mix of teams that the group behind (that I was in) was mostly satisfied. I realized the danger right away, and made two different attempts to bridge on the last lap when it was still within ~30 seconds. Both times I tried to follow a couple people and we'd work together only to explode about halfway there. At that point my sprint was so wrecked that I couldn't create a separation at all. The group had given up, some with teammates up the road, others just totally spent, like myself. After maybe 20min of tea partying, it was clear the break was gone and it was race-on again for everyone. I made it in one more move with Mooney and we were working together pretty well, but still got caught just as the circuits were done.

Leaving the circuits was about 10 miles of rolling, ending with a hill. Perhaps if I had not been so active on the circuits attempting to make the break or bridge I would have had more energy, but f that--I was in it to win it, and hiding on the circuits just to get 20th at the end would have made me disappointed. As it stood I was dropped pretty quickly by the hills going back, and I rolled in for 38th, but I was completely satisfied. I gave it my all trying to make the race. I had NOTHING left in my legs at the end. And as it turns out, it simply wasn't in my cards to win the race, but I left everything I had out on the course.

Thanks for reading,
-Brian