Race #4 - Santiago Canyon 11mi. TT - 10/09/10Written by Platinum rider Tom Anhalt
This was my first time doing this particular course. I wasn't sure what to make
of it since I'd read that there's a fairly significant climb (~650 ft., almost
double the elevation gain at Piru) for the first ~4.5 miles, and as we all know,
I'm not exactly a "climber". Based on my evaluation of how the riders in the
Cat 4/5 group had faired against each other over the previous races, it was my
suspicion that Mr. Sorenson would have an advantage over me for this course
since he seems to do better than I do relative to the other riders on courses
that have some elevation gain. Unfortunately for me, this course has the most
elevation gain of the 4 courses in the series. The course starts on a wide bike
trail that parallels the left side of Toro road in Mission Viejo, just 2 blocks
from Rock 'N Road Cyclery, the sponsors of this TT. It goes uphill on the bike
trail for ~2.5 miles at which point you take a sharp turn to the right and go
through an underpass of Toro road and then take a sharp left where the path then
joins up with the right shoulder of Toro. A bit beyond coming out onto the
road, as you continue to climb, you meet up with a "Y" at Cook's Corner. The TT
riders take the left fork and then continue up along Santiago Canyon Road for
the remainder of the total of just over 11 miles for the course.
Knowing that the first 4.5 miles were all uphill and it was the condition that I
seemed to be at a disadvantage to my main competition, I basically decided to
think of the race as a 4.5 mile hillclimb TT. I was going to give it all I had
for the ~14-15 minutes I figured it would take me to do the climb and then
basically "hang on" for the remaining generally downhill ~7 miles to the
finish. I felt I did pretty well in executing that plan and finished with a
total time of 27:45, but after finishing I forgot to hang out around the finish
section to try to figure out how I did against the main guys I was worried about
(they had all started behind me). So...that meant I had to wait until I rode
the 11 miles back to the start (it's a point to point course) and saw the posted
results to know how I had fared.
In the end, I scored a 3rd place finish with the 2nd place rider (a guy who's
hasn't done any of the series races yet) nipping me by a mere 1 second. Ouch.
1st place was taken by Mr. Sorenson, which meant that he had opened up a
whopping 3 point lead in the series on me. Although I expected for it to be
close and for him to have a slight advantage on me with the climbing, I was
pretty disappointed that another guy had "snuck in" between us and made it
harder for me.
Race #5 - Fiesta Island 20K TT - 10/10/10
OK...after Saturday's tough outing, I had a feeling that the nearly pan flat
course around San Diego's Fiesta Island would be more to my advantage. At race
#1 last month I had won the 4/5 category with a pretty significant gap over most
of the other riders, so I was hoping that I could repeat that feat and gain
back at least 1 point in the overall lead. Morning dawned at Fiesta Island with
picture perfect conditions with cloudless skies and basically zero wind. I
noticed from the start list that Mr. Sorenson was starting 2 minutes behind me,
so I made a mental note to circle back after my finish to see what the final
time gap between us ended up to be. For Fiesta Island you make 3 laps on the
road circling the island, for a total of 20K. Although the course is basically
flat, there are elevation differences of up to 20ft around the island according
to my Garmin, so it's not totally flat. This race is really about how well you
can put the power down on the flats and keep the laps consistent with good
pacing. I had a power number I felt I could maintain for the duration and so
after the initial start acceleration, I settled into just keeping a constant
pressure on the pedals and keeping my average power close to my target. The
first lap went well and I knew from my average speed that I was flying
(relatively speaking). The second lap was a little more difficult (I was
starting to feel the hard effort from the day before), but the power was still
going well. As it should be, the final lap is were it started getting really
difficult, however, having lost the last 2 races in the series by a small
handful of seconds, I was motivated to bury myself as much as I could. As I hit
the final half lap section I was laying it all out...and I'm sure the people at
the finish area were amused by my grunting noises as I crossed the finish line
completely spent. I hit the lap button on my computer and started my wait.
In my hypoxic state, I managed to remember to circle back to the finish and keep
a look out for my competition. As my timer continued to count down through
1:45, I still hadn't seen Sorenson...so far so good....1:55, then 2:00
flat...OK, it looks like I beat him....now, 2:15....then
2:30...whoah...2:40...wait, here he comes...and he crosses at 2:46 on my timer.
That means I beat him by 46s. "Hey!" I thought, "Maybe one of the other Cat 4/5
riders got in between our times!"
I took a short ride back to my car to warm down, cleaned up, and then headed
back to the registration area to see the results and wait for the award
presentations. When I finally got a look at the results page, I was shocked.
Not only did I win the Cat 4/5 division, but 3 other riders had slotted between
myself and Mr. Sorenson. That means I scored 4 more points than he did, which
put me into the series lead by a mere 1 point! Wow...after the disappointment
of the previous day, needless to say that this result put me on cloud nine! I
guess I was right in my evaluation that he had climbed better than I did, but my
flat ground speed was better. Another pleasant surprise on Sunday morning was
the fact that not only did my 1st place finish score me another pair of the
sweet "flaming stopwatch" socks like I had won last month, but since this was
the last FI race of 2010, they were giving out 6-packs of Karl Strauss
Oktoberfest to the category winners. Nice.
Anyway...just one more race to go next Sunday in the compressed "4 races in a 2
weeks" span I talked about earlier and then the series gets into a more
reasonable 1-2 races per month mode for the remainder of the series through next
April. This next race is at Tom's Farms, which has less climbing than Piru so
I'm hoping to have a good chance again to do well.
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 8:29AM 
