Roger Millikan Memorial Criterium, 2011

Okay, I'm biased since this is my club's race, but it's always a good one. I don't know about other parts of the country, but in here in SoCal attendance is way up for the second consecutive year. The 4s and 5s both filled up in pre-registration. That's one hundred in each (two Cat5 races of 50). The P12 race had 83 pre-entries, and more were signing up all morning. The 35s and 45s were over a hundred each. Since 50+ included Cat5 racers it was limited to 75 and that filled in pre-reg. I think we may have made some money, credit to Greg Mathes and Ed Keck who steered the event.

My lackluster performance continues with a tenth place finish in 55+ and no primes. Just didn't feel as good as at Mothballs and my efforts came up short. This weeks' screw up was going on a 50 mile easy spin the day before. Not my routine before a race, but I've been trying to get my weight down and thought I could burn some calories and "rest" at the same time. Nothing is free. My warm-up was a little sub-par as well. There's this idea that I can warm up during the first few laps and then catch my breath and that way have relatively more energy at the finish. The fact is that this year's 55+ had the same average speed as the 2008 event's 50+ category. There are a few teams that keep the pace crisp in order to make the opposition really earn their success.

I will now digress into old-fogey musing about the fact that we used to have something called "off-season". I have some nostalgia for that. Casual rides, no set schedule, gain some weight. I'm going to blame Lance Armstrong and Chris Carmichael for killing that in the late 90s. Armstrong rolled over Jan Ullrich, who was favored by many experts to dominate the TdF, precisely because of good time management. Ullrich would gain 10 kilos and hit the clubs while Lance was measuring the mass of carbs in every meal, weight training and prepping perfectly for the following year. In the old days we were indoctrinated that if you got fit too early (back then, that meant "March") you'd be burned out by the time the important races were on. Oh well.

My thanks to Greg Mathes, my teammate who not only put in a lot of work running the race, but chased and helped catch a break with two to go. God only knows how far down the finish I'd have been with the first five places spoken for at the sprint. Just a word to those older guys who are new to racing: Just because Cat5s are allowed to race with all masters over 50, doesn't make it a good idea. You may even have the fitness to hang in, but the near-crash on the corner at the bottom on the final lap illustrates why we have Cat5-only races. The guys who led the pack into that corner have hundreds of races under their belts, some over a thousand. Maybe a technical course like RM ain't the place for newbies to mix it up with them. Try some flat-and-four-corner action first.