Quabbin Road Race - Open and Master's Women - 4-26-09
Julie Lockhart
Master’s 55+, 40th/48 starters
Goals:
Somewhat simple, Learn more tactics, Finish, work with some people. This was 55+ Masters MEN.
The start was good and became fast (it seems that the pace Motos were not accustomed to their duties) ... faster than a descent might be expected to be. I felt I had good pack position third back right side of the pack, but not the edge. There were 5 women, 4 Mystic Velo and myself. This was going to be tough, because the 55+ are fast, so we prepared to be on our own after a hill or two. We pacelined for about the first hour, working fairly well together, but when one of the packs neutralized us, I got separated substantially and tried to TT back up to the group without success until a pair of Open Women offered me a ride, they towed me back to the Mstic Velo paceline. They were a tweener pair just behind the lead pack.(with another group behind).
One of the Mystic ladies got sick at the beginning of the rough in Hardwick and a sag wagon gave her a ride. Soon onto Rt 9, the paceline broke down as the stronger riders pressed on. The Rt 9 stretch of the course seemed interminable, and I felt strong on the climb to the finish and passed several men, including a BU rider, one of the 55+ men, and a ‘400’ series rider as well. I was able to stand the finish (not a sprint per se, but I tried).
An epic race which was much more hilly than I thought it would be.
Lessons Learned:
1.Further up in the pack turning onto Rt 9, and stay there.
2.Metering the fluids out to a bottle per 20 miles plus consistent ‘goo’ works well in 85 degree weather.
3.Practice putting bottles into jersey – I lost one due to inability to get it into the pocket.
Katherine Snell
Open Women, 36th/44 starters.
I signed up for Quabbin knowing that I was doing Turtle Pond the day before, mainly as a good training ride. My coach would say that I already lost at that point but what the heck, it’s a hilly Open Women’s road race so I was already not competitive. On the other hand I need to get experience in doing longer races for when I eventually upgrade. My goals were therefore pretty simple – stay with the peleton for as long as I could and finish. I acquired a Power Tap this past off-season and opted to do the race with it on the bike in order to get an idea of my power during the race.
After probably doing too much work at Turtle Pond, I planned to flagrantly suck wheels and conserve energy. We had a very fast downhill neutral start and the peleton was all over the road. I was about mid-field as we turned onto Rt. 9 and was sitting behind the two Colavita riders (Kristen Gohr and Lydia Mathger). I’ve been in enough races with Kristen to know that at some point or another she’d make a move and I was in a good place to follow it. Sure enough after about five miles she and Lydia moved up and I followed them as best I could without violating the yellow line rule. A couple other gals frustrated at the pace and less experience flagrantly flaunted the line and moved up as well so I was not as close to the front as I would have liked to have been. Kristen was now near the front with Anne Marie Miller and a bunch of other strong riders with Lydia a little further back blocking for her. We turned onto Rt. 202 and on the first big climb the field surged strongly led by the strong women on the front. As I half expected, I didn’t have the legs to go with them for long and dropped back along with teammate Linda Lampila who had also raced Turtle Pond. A few other women dropped back behind us and Linda and I debated joining them but decided they would have slowed us down. So we pretty much spent the rest of the race working together with Linda getting ahead of me on the climbs as I struggled to maintain the 250-300W necessary to get me up the hills and me pulling downhill and on the flats. We passed a bunch of men dropped from the 55+ race, some of whom asked to hop on but couldn’t keep up. We passed Julie Lockhart and the other women racing Master’s at about the 48 mile mark. I was riding pretty strong up until about mile 55 or so but felt myself starting to fade. The fading was acute by the time we reached Ware and turned back onto Rt. 9. I was barely able to maintain tempo power at that point which was probably a combination of the effort the previous day and the heat which was above 85 degrees at that point. Linda pulled ahead of me at that point as we climbed up to the entrance to Quabbin and passed more stragglers. Knowing that it was unlikely that there were any competitors behind, I went into survival mode as I struggled up Quabbin Hill Rd to finish about 35 minutes behind the winner. Not an auspicious finish but a finish nonetheless for my first weekend racing almost 100 miles and definitely a good training ride!