2009 Midvaal Nashua Mobile Vet's Tour

This was my last race before taking a bit of a breather.  I have been training hard and racing since the beginning of December last year, and have been feeling a bit tired over the last month or so.  Physically I have been okay, but mentally it has been a bit tough.  So, now I'll take it a bit easier, do some nice coffee shop rides and just relax a bit.  The 40+ Cyclelab team decided to race in the 30+ category. 

Stage 1: 8km Prologue

The prologue course was a fast 8km route with a gradual 1% descent.  I was hoping to do really well because it really suited me.  The course was part of the same course that was used in the Provincials TT, and over this section of the course I had managed to match Andrew Mclean's time over this part. From a team perspective it was also important that we had as many riders close to the top of GC as possible.  Only having Andrew at the top of the GC made the tactics for other teams a lot easier, as they would only have one rider in our team to worry about.

Overall I was reasonably happy with my TT, not ecstatic.  I did the 8km route in 9m52, and ended up 26sec off the winner Graeme Cronje.  Andrew Mclean took second at 3 seconds down.  As a team we were happy with the result, because it meant we did not have to defend the yellow jersey for the whole tour.

 

Stage 2: 120km

Stage 2 was the longest stage of the tour.  The route had changed a bit from the previous year, and we would no longer be riding over the rolling hills close to Heidelberg.  The course was very flat, but in this part of the world, the wind can have a major impact on the racing.  My job for the day was to mark Graeme Cronje, and I had to make sure that if he went in a move, I went with.  The rest of the team had to cover any dangerous moves.  If all stayed together, Andrew Mclean would make his move in the last 30km of the race when there would be a lot of opportunity to gutter any followers.  I would have to help Andrew establish a break if the race was still together with 30km to go.

Quite early in the race, about 20km in, a big move went.  This break contained Johan Labuschagne and Martin Atterbury (Cyclelab 30+), Andreas Studer (Daikin Gu), Jorge Faria (Wadeville), Marco Swart and Jeffrey Kriel (MTN/Club 100).  Johan and Martin drove the pace really hard, and the first casualty was Marco Swart, then later Martin Atterbury popped.  Unfortunately, Johan burnt all his matches and also got dropped with the time gap quite big, about 4min if I remember correctly.  Although Johan is riding in a different team, he is also from the Cyclelab club, and this was his category, so we had not tried to close the gap and damage his tour chances.  Now we had a problem because the time gap was large and Daikin Gu were a strong team.  Andrew called us to the front and we started the chase with about 25km left to go.  With the wind conditions the way they were, the bunch was soon shredded and the only survivors were Andrew Mclean and myself (Cyclelab 40+), Graeme Cronje, David Garrett and Moolman Welgemoed (Daikin Gu), and Donovan Jackson (MTN/Club 100).  Daikin Gu and Club 100 had riders down the road, so they did not need to contribute to the chase.  So, it was left to Andrew, myself, and Graeme Cronje.  About 2km's from the finish, I eventually popped off as Andrew put in a huge final effort.  In the meantime, Andreas Studer (Daikin Gu) and got away from Jorge Faria and Jeffrey Kriel and ridden himself into the yellow jersey, with a time gap of around 1 min.

 

Stage 3: Criterium (8 laps x 5km)

Stage 3 was an 8 lap criterium.  Each lap was 5km, with a short climb (1km) up to the start finish line.  My job for the day was to try to get away and see if I could stay away long enough to do some damage and let Andrew counter later.  Andrew would try to win the stage, and at least move from 3rd to 2nd in GC, since he was only 3 seconds behind Graeme.  The race started, and Daikin put their whole team on the front and set a very fast pace.  With the pace so high, it was very difficult to get off the front, particularly with Moolman Welgemoed being so quick, he could close down attacks very quickly.  In all, I tried to get away 4 times, but Daikin Gu kept the race under complete control and I had not success at all.

Andrew did manage to get enough bonus seconds from the sprint prime and the finish to move ahead of Graeme Cronje by 1 second, but did no real damage to Andreas in yellow.

Stage 4: 101km Lap Race (John Boscoe Circuit)

Stage 4 would be 3 laps of the same circuit used for CGC Provincials.  Again, this is a fairly flat circuit, that can be very tough in the right wind conditions, which we fortunately had!

Tactics for the day were simple.  Attack early, and keep attacking until we could get Andrew away in a break.  No problem if yellow went with him because it would isolate Andreas from his teammates.  We were not confident, as we did not think we would be able to ride 1 minute into Daikin Gu.  But, we decided to race for first place, and not settle for second.

Once again Daikin Gu went to the front and set a fast pace.  After a few kilometres, we turned into a good gutter wind, and started attacking.  In my opinion, Daikin Gu made a mistake in closing down all the attacks, because they put in a lot of big efforts.  Heading up a long drag with a strong crosswind, the bunch was splitting up fast.  Eventually I could not sustain the pace, but the damage had been done and Andrew went away with Andreas Studer, Craig Harvey and Gary Rabie (Bulk Pack Meat/Trek), and Graeme Cronje.  This was exactly what we wanted - to isolate yellow.  Andreas must have been feeling confident, because he took the sprint prime.  Andrew and Graeme immediately attacked him after the prime and opened a gap on him and Craig Harvey.  Craig's teammate was with Andrew and Graeme, so there was no need for Craig to close the gap, leaving Andreas trying to close it down in a strong tailwind.  So, after 20km into the stage Andrew was away with Graeme and Gary Rabie.  The gap quickly opened to about 1m30s, but then the chase started with Club 100 and Werner Moolman (Mr. Price) also helping.  For us it was very much a free ride and finally the boot was on the other foot.

For the next lap the gap stayed at just over 1min, but Daikin Gu were putting in a huge effort.  Then on the second lap, Daikin forced the bunch into the gutter and soon the race was down to about 10 riders in the chase group.  In doing so, they lost a number of allies so it may not have been the best option with still half the race to go.

The pace slowed a bit and the group grew again, with Club 100 and Mr. Price once again helping with the chase.  On the last lap, we started to attack Daikin again, mainly to disrupt their chase efforts.  Then with about 10km left to go the gap had been reduced to 35seconds and things were getting very tight.  Fortunately for us, the Daikin guys had put everything into the chase, and suddenly the wheels came off and the chase ran out of steam.  Coming over the finish line, we were given provisional times, and Andrew had won the stage by 1m02s, which, along with time bonuses, would give him overall victory in the tour. An unbelievable ride!!

 

Overall results can be found at http://www.circus.co.za/results.htm

My power stats for the race can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/lsqz3a

 

Overall, the best Vet's tour I've taken part in.  Thanks to the organisers and officials, as well as to sponsors like Nashua Mobile for making it happen!

A Deeper Look into my Nationals TT

I'm not a person that goes on about 'could have, should have, would have', what's done is done and I always try to look forward. This does not mean, however, that there are no lessons to be learnt from the past, one should try not to repeat the same mistake twice. As they say, experience is the ability to recognise a mistake when you make it again.

Alex Simmons is an Australian cycling coach who is a regular and respected contributor on various forums and mailing lists that discuss training with power (check out his blog at http://alex-cycle.blogspot.com/). He has developed a tool and methodology for designing an optimal pacing strategy for a given TT course. I asked him to have a look at the data from my Nationals TT for 2 reasons. Firstly to see how well I paced the course, and secondly to try to assess the impact that my rubbing brake block had on my overall time. His analysis makes use of a technique for estimating CdA and Crr called Virtual Elevation (see http://tinyurl.com/kpeyx6).

Based on the profile of the course, an isopower (constant power) pacing strategy may not be optimal. He uses the Normalised Power algorithm as well to figure out how hard the rider should go on the climbs, and how much to back off on the descents. The following graph shows the optimal pacing strategy for the Nationals TT course, and my power output overlaid.

Interesting to see the correlation, even though I didn't pre-prepare my pacing strategy. I'm really pleased with my physical performance, there is not much more I could have done from a pacing perspective, as shown in the following table which ranks my performance against various benchmarks.

The really interesting part of the analysis comes from the figure Alex had to use for my Crr (coefficient of rolling resistance). In order to get the virtual elevation model to balance (i.e start elevation and end elevation to match up), he had to use a Crr value of 0.018. A more typical value of 0.005 would have resulted in a time improvement of 4m20s.

Hopefully I don't need to point out the moral of this particular story!

Thanks to Alex for doing the analysis for me, I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad!

Nationals 2009 Road Race (40-44). More Furstration!

Before getting into a race report, I'd just like to comment on some of the events leading up to the race which were disappointing to say the least.

The team I race for is Cyclelab SuperCycling - Powered by Toyota. Which represents the largest cycling club in the country. The club was founded by Andrew Mclean, who is a world class cyclist that at the age of 45 can more than hold his own in Elite categories. A few years ago, he attended Worlds, and did not win his age category. So, the next day he rode in a younger category and won it! He is a high profile person, and does a lot of media work.  Being a high profile person, he is subject to the tall poppy syndrome and can be the target of abuse at times.

At Nationals, that abuse spilled over into obsession, which was totally uncalled for and leaves a bad taste.  Nationals this year was held in Oudtshoorn, a small town in the Klein Karoo about 70km from George. For most of the participants, this meant a significant journey, and a number of days away from home if you wanted to compete in both the timetrial and the road race. For amateur riders, this is a significant commitment. Andrew requested, and was granted, permission from Cycling South Africa to compete in his own age group (45-49) and the younger age group (40-44) in which most of his team compete. He also rode in the timetrial in the 45-49 age group. He had to pay entry fees for both events.
The 45-49 age group race was on Saturday afternoon, and the 40-44 age group race was on Sunday morning, less than 18 hours later. On the Friday, we were informed that a formal complaint had been lodged against him racing two races. Officials from CSA met on Friday night, and ruled that Andrew must chose which category he wanted to race in, but he could not race in both. After trying unsuccessfully to get an earlier flight back home, Andrew decided to race in the younger age category, with the rest of the team.  On Saturday night, we were told that some of the riders were organising a signed petition to try to prevent Andrew from racing on Sunday morning, and when we got to the start one of the officials told us that he had overheard threats being made. One of the 45-49 riders, Jorge Faria, made a public speech at the start line, saying that Andrew was violating the rules as he had ridden the 45-49 timetrial, so he could not take part in the 40-44 road race, even though the officials had made a ruling on the issue. Why he was wearing his riding kit, as well as his numbers I don't know!

Andrew asked for a show of hands from those riders that felt he should not be riding. Quite a few people raised their hands, so he withdrew from the race. I was shocked and amazed at the behaviour of the riders. This is amateur sport, which is more about participation than winning.  Anyway, the race started with a long neutral zone. Apparently the officials tried to contact Andrew to persuade him to race, but he had already left the start area. About 10km into the race, Andre Morse (Club 100) attacked off the front. First bit of bad luck, my teammate Issy Zimmerman punctured and was not able to use the wheels in the neutral support vehicle because they were Shimano.  A short while later, Morse was joined by Daniel Schmeisser (Cycles Direct) and they opened a nice gap. The course is a 54km loop, with a long climb split into 3 sections. Riding the course the day before, it was clear that if the wind was blowing, the course would be very tough. The first part of the climb saw the bunch staying together, but things started to happen on the second part. Danie Marais (Mr. Price) went hard, with about 6 or 7 riders on his wheel. About 2/3 of the way up the climb, he started to slow, and Graeme Cronje (Ocean Basket) kicked on. The bunch was in pieces down the short descent, then Graeme kicked again on the third part of the climb. He opened up a gap which I was not able to close, and when I turned around, I only had Gary Marescia (Cyclelab/SuperCycling/Toyota) with me. He was already deep in the red, so also wasn't able to close the gap to Graeme. The gap of a few seconds stayed that way for a while, then Graeme started to open it up and bridge across to the two riders already up the road. At this point I was on my own, and knowing that Graeme was in good form, decided to sit up and let the small bunch behind me catch up to me.

The chase group formed (about 10 riders) with John o' Connor & Guy Pike (Daikin Gu) and Robbie Setton (Velo Atlantico) doing a lot of work to try to bring the break back. Looking at my power stats, I did a peak 1min of 660w when trying to catch Graeme initially. I needed to recover a bit, so I tried to hide in the group until we finished the first lap.  The gap opened to nearly 2 minutes, and was becoming concerning. We needed to chase, but with the wind now having picked up, the climb was going to be hard. Fortunately, as we hit the climb we found that the break had lost one of it's riders. After the first part of the climb, Andre Morse came back. A bit further, Daniel Schmiesser was also dropped by Graeme, so he was now alone. But with 30km left to go, I thought he would be capable of staying away unless a proper chase happened. A few minor attacks on the second part of the climb came, but nothing serious.  I decided that I had to commit and had nothing to lose. Robbie Setton (Velo Atlantico) and I drove the pace really hard. I had a duel purpose, firstly to try to get rid of some of the riders who were sitting in and not getting involved in the chase, and secondly to catch Graeme. I was feeling really good, and we were able to drive it really hard.

We caught Graeme with about 15km to go, and kept the pace as high as possible. Looking at the riders still in the bunch, I felt that Deon Coetzee (Tony Impey Cycles) was probably the biggest threat in a sprint. I planned to get his wheel in the final corner with 200m to go for the line. Unfortunately, more bad luck! With about 3km to go I punctured and that was the end of my race! I was feeling really good as well!

 

Deon went on to take the win from Mark Linnington (Club 100) and John o' Connor (Daikin/Gu).  Congrats Deon!!

Power stats for the race can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/mu7t5v