My first real race of the season was at The Perinton Spring Classic on Sunday. The race was put on by the Genesee Valley Cycling Club who are located in Rochester, NY. They are the same folks that ran the Rochester Giros and will host a bunch of other races later this year. I have to admire the sheer number of races that GVCC manages to pull off every year. They have a very active racing club that makes us in Syracuse jealous.

(Dave Faso placed 4th – photo from photoradius)

Anyway, despite some very threatening weather and gloomy conditions, there was a great turnout for the Perinton Spring Classic. Our Colavita-Spokepost.com had a good number of riders in each race. Jeremy Wickham won the Cat 4 race and Dave Faso and William Nicholson finished fourth and fifth in their Cat 3 race. It was a good turnout for Colavita overall.

(photo from photoradius)

My race went better than I thought as the hill on Furman Rd was a tough climb to get over. As you can tell by the pics, I have a few pounds to shed this season. Gee, once you get on a bike, the belly just seems to sag more than usual. These shots are almost embarassing, but I’ll put them up for motivation to lose the gut.

(photo from photoradius)

I felt good as the race started. I made sure I was close to the front in the neutral start especially since I wanted to scope out Furman Rd. After the neutral climb, the Cat 5 race started heating up quickly and gaps started forming in the group. On each of the little hills I was able to get up to the lead group of about 10 to 15 riders. As gaps formed I was able to bridge up to the lead group. It is important to not get caught out because someone else creates a gap. It is better to bridge those gaps as soon as they form. Otherwise you will find yourself burning up lots more energy than necessary simply to stay with the lead group.

Once in the top group I felt fairly comfortable, but I was not into my rythm yet. Some of the accerlarations just would leave me gasping. On Wickman rd, the little riser just ate up my speed and I was quickly off the back of my group. I managed to crank back up to speed and caught up with some shrapnel from the group. Two other riders and I decided to work together to get back to the lead group. This was just before we were to head up Furman rd. Unfortunately the Cat 4 race was riding up in a neutral start and it was difficult to get around everybody. The steepness of the hill and the frantic pace to catch back on caught up to me and I was crawling up Furman.

(photo from photoradius)

Eventually I found myself alone cranking along in no man’s land. I thought my race was for a lowly placing. I saw Seth Torrice on the side of the road with a flat and stopped to offer him my wheel, but he declined as he was already too far back to catch on.

After that I caught a few riders and was passed by a few categories. The Pro Women caught me on Furman and they weren’t able to shake me off. Usually if a higher category passed me, they already had a head of steam going along so it would be difficult to latch on. But here, the Women were not going too fast, so I attacked to get ahead and try to catch onto a group up the road. On the hills the women would come right back. The group was composed of three Terry riders, one Handlebars and one JW Dundee rider. Finally on the next go round up Furman they totally dropped me on the hill that just got harder each time.

Finally in the last lap and one half the rained started coming down, and it was a bit heavy at times. So I was playing with just dropping out of the race. The idea became more tempting as I caught up to Scott Grimshaw who was riding in the Cat 3 race. He is working his way back to fitness and played with the Cat 3s for a while. He got 30 miles in and decided to bag it especially as the rain was getting heavy. But I only had one lap left and two Cat 5s caught up to me. One more time up Furman can’t hurt.

As I’m crawling up Furman for the last time I see Matt Howey and Jason Haight in William Nicholson’s car. They weren’t feeling well, so bagged it, which seemed like a tempting move until I heard Matt yell out what sounded like I was 40 seconds down on the Cat 5 group. I thought WTF? I am not totally dropped? So I started to crank along to try and get a good placing. The hills after Furman were more than manageable for me as I got closer to the finish about 5 Cat 5s caught up to me and so did a lead group of the Cat 3s that included William Nicholson. The Cat 3s still had one more lap to go before they finished. In the downhill run to the finish I got caught inside the Cat 3 group and it was tough to get around everybody, but William helped lead me out a bit to get a respectable placing.

(William Nicholson going for fifth and 1 point away from an upgrade to Cat 2 – photo from photoradius)

Overall, the race went about as expected. I have to lose a few pounds to get into better hill climbing form but my goal for the race was to get some racing fitness.

Here are a few more shots of Colavita Teammates: Special thanks to Photradius for the great photos.

(Andy – photo from photoradius)

(Andy – photo from photoradius)

(Jason was having “un Jour Sans” – photo from photoradius)

(Andy says “I laugh at this climb!” – photo from photoradius)

Matt Howey of spokepost.com has been posting previews of many local races lately and today he posted the Perinton Preview.

full preview
Furman hill looks to be the big challenge at 100ft of climbing in only a 1/4 mile, ouch.

Hopefully these shorter hills won’t slow me down to much and I will be able to stay with the pack. My climbing speed is not where I would like it to be at the moment. I need to lose about 10lbs to get up the hills a little quicker. This isn’t an impossible task, but it is definately not easy. Every year when I get back on the bike and start riding I immediatetly lose 5 to 10 pounds. I attribute this loss to longer efforts on the bike and less weight training in the gym. This year, the weight loss is happening, but I need to lose 10lbs more than usual since I did not ride much last year and gained a little extra weight.

This evening I rode my usual training route that traverses 91 which is a seven mile climb with about a 6% average steepness. I am working on getting my general climbing speed up and will do more climbing intervals next week. Later on in the ride, I was able to hammer up smaller hills with some significant speed, and I did pretty well in a spur-of-the-moment sprint, so training is working out well.

Gmap Pedometer Map of Course