Race #1: KW Classic, June 2

Finally sucked it up and entered a race. Paid and everything.

This Sunday, an O-Cup race in Kitchener. 13 laps on a 4.6 km circuit; one fairly big hill, but judging by the positively frightening times from last year's race, pretty fast. Last year's winner in the Master's 3 Category did it with a average speed of 39.2 km/h and a lap time average of about 7 minutes. The slowest finisher came in about 25 minutes after that. So I'm looking at the lap times and I realize that unless you come in 7 minutes slower overall or less, you will be lapped. Of the 65 finishers, 19 got lapped.

I don't want to get lapped.

Well, actually, that's more like a best-case scenario.
My goals for the race are, in order of priority:

1. Don't die. (Crucial.)
2. Don't crash out. (Worrisome; could screw up, having never done this before.)
3. Don't get pulled off the course for being too slow. (I bring shame and dishonour upon my team.)
4. Don't get lapped. (OK that's just kinda annoying.)
5. Anything after that is gravy.

But good Lord, the not-get-lapped pace is 36.4 km/h! The best I can manage time trialing alone on similar terrain is 30 km/hr. So I'm hoping that "the peloton effect" will make up for a few km/hr. I've heard that riding in a group counts for a 30% reduction in effort, and certainly the club rides with the Flyers go a pretty good clip. I just have no idea what that will add up to.

Quite probably being lapped twice.




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