R13.39: FCV CanAmQue Challenge

This race report is basically just a copy/paste job of what I sent to Jamie Swan about racing his bike up at FCV for the CanAmQue challenge.  My gearing was 86" again.

Well, I've returned from Canada.  I rode the swan this time, and it rode like a dream.  I'm not sure if it was the geometry or just from being on the track more, but I noticed right away that I was able to hold a tighter line going around the track.

I was able to breeze through the first round of qualifiers.  There were 60 riders registered, so everyone was randomly arranged into five different 40 lap heats of 12 riders, where the top six from each heat would advance.  Early in my heat, a group of four went off the front to take a lap, but I just conserved energy in the rear group, which slowly disintegrated until there was just one rider and myself, so we had our top six figured out.  When the first group of four came around again, I hopped on their wheel to make sure I maintained my position.

These groups were then split up into two 60 lap semi-final rounds of fifteen each.  Joe Brennan was up racing with us, and he was giving me tips on how the races would play out.  He had said that these semis would be fast, but stay together since the riders were all of similar strength.  Naturally, this didn't happen, and I found myself on the wrong end of a gap with 8 riders up and 7 back.  I tried to surf wheels, but our group shattered pretty quick, and I found myself doing an individual pursuit trying to catch back on.  I wasn't able to, maintaining a quarter lap gap until the end when I sat up to try to conserve energy for the repechage.  In hindsight, I should have sat up sooner, but I was hoping the group would slow up to play some cat and mouse before the end so I could catch up.

The rep round was maybe five minutes after finishing the finals, so I was pretty toasted.  These consisted of two 30 lap heats of roughly 12 riders with only one rider from each advancing.  A rider attacked early, and I hopped on his wheel to take a lap on the field.  I sat two riders behind him to save energy until the backstretch of three to go, where I kicked hard, got a gap, but got passed on the backstretch of the bell lap and was out of contention for the final.

The final was 138 laps with a 14 person field consisting of the 12 riders from the semis and the 2 riders from the reps.  By the end of the race, there were only 6 riders left.  Amazingly, nobody was able to take a lap on anybody during that race, which just goes to show how strong the whole group was.

The bike got a lot of attention, with just about everybody on the infield stopping to take a good long look at it.