Rob Eakin Triathlete

Race Report – Race the Ridge

This past weekend was my first stage race on the bike. Race the Ridge was a three stage, two day race in Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows. Saturday was a 50 km road race followed Sunday by a 16 km time trial in the morning and a 30 minute crit in the afternoon.

I went in expecting a good challenge as I would be racing with category 4 racers (being only a category 5 myself) but thought that my riding was coming along nicely with lots of time on the bike and some experience in the EV Spring Series.

However, the Saturday road race didn't go very well. As soon as I warmed up something didn't feel right but I did my best to brush it off as just the warm up. But the past week of training was still with me...

As soon as we hit the first climb about 2 km in I was to the back of the group and a couple minutes later I had lost the group. What should have been an alright pace was just taking too much effort for me sustain.

Riding Solo

So there I was with 48 km to go knowing the race was over. So I did what every triathlete does best, put my head down and slog out a 50 km time trial.

Every once in a while I'd come up on someone else who had been dropped as well but none of them wanted to work hard so after about a minute of riding with them, I'd look back and find they were gone.

At about the 30 km mark two guys I'd passed caught me as they were actually working together. So the three of us worked together for a bit. But again they didn't seem to want to push the pace to catch another group of three ahead so I rode off on them, never to see them again.

When I did catch the next group of three, I finally had a group who was willing to work a little bit. But by this point I had nothing left (not that I had much to start with) and so with 5 km to go they dropped me. I then rode to the finish solo. Finished 37th out of 52 who started with a time of 1:37 (about 13 minutes back of the leaders).

Sunday morning brought the 16 km time trial and hopefully a chance for a little redemption. Still didn't feel 100% but during warm up things were definitely better than the day before.

With 30 second gaps between riders, I was hoping to catch at least the two riders in front of me (we were starting in reverse order from the road race finish). Feeling strong, I caught the first rider well before the half way point but the rider in front of him didn't start so there was then a minute gap up to the next rider.

I didn't think I had a chance to make up 1:30 on anyone but I caught sight of  the next rider with about 3 km to go and passed him on the final straight with 1 km to go.

Finished in a time of 23:54 (average speed of 40.2 km/h) which was good enough for 20th this time around. I feel like it was a much better representation of where I stand with category 4/5 riders but I know .

I ended up opting out of the crit in the afternoon since 1) I wasn't even close to the overall lead 2) I figured an afternoon off before another hard week of training would do me good and 3) the critcourse was half gravel which I didn't feel like dealing with:

So now it's another tough week of training before this weekend when it's off to Kamloops for the first triathlon of the year...