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Went to the Washington State Circuit Race Championships today and rode in the Masters D race. I had planned to be over at Winthrop for the Indie Series mountain bike race but a number of things conspired this year so that didn’t happen. Now, I should know better than to sign on for anything labled ‘Championship’ unless it’s the Wednesday Night World Championship Mountain Bike Race at South SeaTac but as it turned out this was ‘the only show in town’.
The nice thing about racing Masters is the race rolled off at 1:15PM vs 9:30AM for the Cat4/5 race. The other nice thing is that as I got there around noon the talk of the day was the big crash in the 4/5 race. I don’t need none of that. Word was it happened just past the finish line. Seems that’s the majority of the Cat4/5 crashes, or crashes in general. You get to an easy spot and people stop paying attention.
This is the first Circuit Race that I’ve done (why not start with the State Championships 
) . Guess what? No neutral rollout! This thing started out fast. I was afraid of that since it’s only 30 miles. Thankfully after the first lap it ramped back a bit as everyone knew nobody was going to get up the road unmarked. The circuit was only six miles and the laps clicked off pretty fast. There were a series of surges but it always came back together. At one point in the middle of the race there was a semi serious attack which split the group and somehow I managed to make it into the lead group of about 15. Things ’slowed’ again and we were all back together. Damn, first time I’ve every wish the pace would have been faster.
The course was sort of fun. Good thing since you do it so many times. The first memorable feature was a pair of right then left hand corners in the road that could be taken at speed without violating the centerline rule. After that there was a bit of climbing and then a big down hill which let you carry speed up and over most of the steepest ‘up’ on the course. All of the corners were somewhat interesting and allowed good lines two or three wide. On the back side of the course where the course rejoins the ‘major highway’ there was a ski slope decent and then a climb leading up to the hill prior to the 1k to go sign. That hill, even though it doesn’t look like it from the course profile really had some bite. In fact, comparing the course profile to my elevation data from my Polar 720 doesn’t seem to show a lot of correlation either!
Let me tell you I was pretty happy to just hear the bell on the last lap and still be safely tucked in with the group. At that point people that were serious about the race were thinking about the last 200 meters where the top positions were going to be decided. This had all the excitement of a chess match. I’ve heard road racing described as a chess match at speed. This race was lacking the speed. After one half hearted acceleration I was sitting sixth wheel with the pack strung out almost single file. It was obvious things were about to pack back together so with about three miles to go I said ‘let’s have some fun’ and rolled off the front of the bike race. Granted, if I can roll off the front then it’s questionable that it’s really a bike race at that point and not a no drop ride but still it was fun.
As expected my ‘glory’ was short lived. I was immediately marked and despite my best, albeit not too good efforts, I couldn’t get anyone to take a pull and keep things going. Last hill as expected I snapped off the front group. The foolish effort off the front really didn’t make much difference as I would have been dropped anyway. Still I was racing to the finish with the leaders in sight and, most importantly, with the follow car following. There were a couple of other stragglers to try and chase as we approached the finish. Then I noticed I had a shadow. Damn! Somebody was sucking MY wheel. Sure enough just past the 200m sign they tried to come around me. @#$% I’ve got to ’sprint’ to defend my position.
I held them off. My ribs were hurting worse than any mountain bike or cyclocross race I can remember. I’m sure the last few Thursdays at the track helped. I finished 22nd out of 34 starters but 22nd, even though it may have been ’same time’ as 23rd was oh so sweet.
It’s been a long road to recovery. Alistair deserves the lions share of the credit. My humble contribution was to repaint the area which had to be stripped in order to do the repairs. Alistair pointed out that the original paint job included a base layer of gold under the maroon; the standard way to produce a “candy” finish. Since I was starting with bare metal I decided to follow the same pattern. Using an old can of gold Spruce 98-5 “Quick Dry Enamel” from the basement (likely the same vintage as the bike) I put down a basecoat and attempted to feather in the transition between painted and ground surfaces. My plan was to take the frame into a auto parts store and fine as close a match in automotive touch-up paint as possible. But, the auto parts store was closed and since I was passing by a Fred Meyer on the way home I decided, “what the heck, might as well have a look”. I’d actually had good luck there before finding modeling paint to match the sky blue of a WWII Russian fighter. Well, as fortune would have it Krylon makes a metalic red “X Metals” paint which is a dead ringer for the Raleigh. You may scoff but Krylon makes darned good paint! I think the results say it all…
