Ronde Von Grant Training Race

Saturday 2/25/12-Grant, AL

Today I traveled to Grant, AL to race in my first road race ever.  I was cold and windy and a fairly small group of around 15.  On my way in to the race, I traveled over Lake Guntersville and as far as I could see were nothing but white caps on the lake.  The wind was a consistent 15-20mph all day it seemed.  The course was a 2 lap 19 mile loop, with the first 6 miles descending from the hill top start, the back 12 miles consistent rollers with a few kickers, and a 1.5 mile climb to the finish that ascended around 700ft at about 8%. 

The first lap went out strong with no organization and aggressive attacks but due to the strong head wind, nobody was able to get away with any success.  The pace slowed a bit on the back section of rollers and we began to prepare for the climb at the end of the first lap.  I sat in in the front 6 most of the first lap and got stuck at the front at the base of the climb so I eased up as to have some power if the field decided to attack around me but no one ever did.  I lead the group up the climb until about half way up (about 5 mins) and turned to look what the group was doing and there were only 4 of us sitting there with one guy about 50 yards back, and the field a good 150 yards back.  None of us were attacking but once we realized this we decided to take advantage and organize at the top and go if we could all get there without blowing up.  The one guy didn’t make it and we didn’t feel like waiting so at the top of the climb 4 of us organized and hit it.  We kicked the pace up to 24-25mph and rotated out with 1 min pulls until we reached the rollers on the back side.  By this time we had a feeling we had gapped the field by a good amount and decided to work the rollers smoothly and save energy.  Everyone agreed that if we were to get caught, we were strong enough to take the climb so there was no reason to push it into the red this early so we pulled back to around 20 and kept it consistent with 45-60 sec pulls. 

At around 4 miles out, one of the guys decided to pick up the pace and we dropped one of the four in the group.  Three of us were left and we began doing a rotating paceline until about 500m from the base of the climb.  At this point we had a long stretch of at least a mile behind us with no one in sight so we grabbed some water and a quick rest before the 1.5 mile hill climb finish.  No one attacked, it was just a race of attrition at this point, I heard the one guy say he was pushing about 320 watts half way up the climb but whatever it was, I was at around 200 beats/min for the last 10 mins of the climb, a good 12 beats above my LT.  At about 500m from the finish I fell off and got gapped by the front two.  At 200m out the 2^nd place guy got gapped and we all finished with about 100m in between each of us.  I ended up 3^rd and was happy with my result and my fitness on the day.

Here  is my garmin from the race.

1st	Chad Moss	SVMIC Cycling Team
2nd	David Purinton	Unattached
3rd	Stewart Miller	ST3 Cycling Team