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PLATINUM TIME! Woohoo! El Tour de Phoenix starts and
ends about a mile and a half from my house. I rode over to the start and
got there just before 6am. I should have gotten up earlier, because that
time put me pretty far back from the start. Joe Zazzera and some friends
happened to be right in front of me. :-) Sean Tressler planned to start
the race with me, but had some trouble with traffic and parking. Luckily
he found me a bit before the start. He wasn't planning on going for a
platinum time, so we weren't going to be riding much together.
I started my Garmin when the clock started, but had to wait a minute or
so before I started rolling. By the time I turned onto Brown road, the
lead cyclists were already turning onto Power. Dang! So I really hit it
hard, hoping to catch the lead group. There was another guy doing the
same thing, so I jumped on his wheel for a while and he pulled me past
several smaller groups until just after the turn onto University. I
pulled around, but he had pretty much used himself up and he wasn't able
to get on my wheel. I set a fast pace and picked up two people. Twice I
indicated for one of them to take a pull, but they didn't come around so
I finally just sat up and soft pedaled. A girl who had been drafting
pulled up next to me and said "We're almost there! You can do it!" I
replied "Not without some help!" and continued the soft pedaling until a
small pack caught us that had a couple guys who were willing to work.
We continued our fast pace and our pack grew as we passed people. There
was some sudden slowing at some road construction on University, but we
all made it through ok. We now had 4 or 5 guys willing to work and we
were able to catch a big group just before turning onto Hayden road.
When we caught them the pace really slowed down. Three of the guys from
my original group and I slowly made our way to the front. Roger Peskett
was riding with the front of that group. I went to the front and picked
the pace up for a bit, but we had a number of guys willing to pull
(including one tandem), so I didn't take really long pulls, just enough
to help. When we turned onto Mountain View the pace slowed again, so I
went to the front for a longer pull that took us almost to Shea.
The climb up Shea wasn't as hard as I remembered and we made great time.
We did split up a bit on the steep part before the top, but I was able
to catch and pass the guys in front on the descent. As we were
approaching Saguaro road I noticed the police officer who was directing
traffic was walking to a corner to get a drink. The light changed and he
wasn't in position. I saw cars starting to move and started yelling STOP
as loud as I could. The cop started running back to the intersection,
but cars were already turning. It was a close call, but we were able to
stop in time. Just after the turn onto Beeline Highway there we saw the
remains of what looked like a pretty bad accident. Someone was still
lying on the ground as we went by. Not good.
I pulled our group down the first part of Beeline, but pulled off shortly
after passing Fort McDowell. We set a good pace up Beeline, not too
hard. One of the guys from that original group from the morning came up
once and invited me to join him up front to pick the pace up, but I
declined. I wasn't going to overdo it going up Beeline because I wanted
to set a really fast pace down Bush Highway. We split up a bit again on
the climb up the offramp, but quickly regrouped. I took another longer
pull then we started rotating again. We made really fast time to the
turn onto Usery. I tried to stick with the skinny guys, but they slowly
pulled away from me. One guy came up and I jumped on his wheel. He set a
perfect pace and gave me encouragement to keep on his wheel. I told him
if he got me to the top we would be flying down the other side! He was
obviously familiar with the Usery climb because he said "hold on" right
where I normally increase my speed just before the lot where people park
for horseback riding.
As promised, when we got the the top I gave him a pat on the back with a
heart felt "Thanks!" moved to the front and set a 30+mph pace down. I
caught the skinny guys just after Brown road. We were pretty much down
to the guys who had been working most of the day. When I saw we had 15
minutes left for platnim, I told James Riehle (a guy from the Boston
area who had been one of the work horses most of the day) that we needed
to pick it up then he and I pretty much worked the rest of the way to
the finish. I saw Annette, Danielle and Jacob cheering us on as we
turned the corner. I sat up and James crossed the line just before me.
I had my Powertap going for this ride, so here are some interesting
statistics:
71 miles in 3 hours 7 minutes 55 seconds (winning time was 2:48:43 -
wow)
23 MPH average speed
3,203 kJ total energy used
158 BPM average heart rate
93 RPM average cadence
283 watt average power
134th place out of 917 finishers
POWER:
5 seconds @ 805 watts
10 seconds @ 700 watts
20 seconds @ 629 watts
30 seconds @ 578 watts
1 minute @ 465 watts
2 minutes @ 425 watts
5 minutes @ 343 watts
10 minutes @ 322 watts
20 minutes @ 298 watts
30 minutes @ 288 watts
60 minutes @ 279 watts
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