Race of the West - Clermont, FL

What a tough race. This was my first full on road race and what a course to make a debut on. Most people know that Florida is pretty flat for the most part until you get to Clermont. We have what I thought were some hills on one of our training routes but it was no where near the multitude of what we raced on. The local bike shop owner and the one I do most of my training rides during the week with, Tommy, thought it would be a good event to do since I'm a not so great climber. We also put more effort into lower cadence work and higher resistance trainer rides this winter to try and help me come triathlon season. The weather was really nice and in the high 60's at the start which was around 9:15am, we were the second wave and had about 110 in our wave. Since it was my first road race I had to run the Cat 5 class in which they combined the Cat 5 with the 35+ year old's. The race consisted of four 12 mile laps, it sounded like a pretty cool idea until you finish the first lap and realize you have to do all the exact same climbs 3 more times. The race started pretty uneventful, Tommy told me to stay towards the back and just get pulled around and learn as much as I could from the really strong climbers and sprinters since in triathlons your more at a steady state and trying to stay smooth. Riding in the back was fine until on one of the steeper climbs someone in the middle of the pack (or the peloton for you Tour de France watchers) broke a chain and quickly broke us apart into two groups. As the lead group of 50 or some slowly rode off into the sunset our group had a hard time figuring out how to stay in a steady paceline to be more efficient, we broke apart into an even thinner group. Myself and a group of 5 pretty much rode the rest of the race by ourselves alternating our time in the front to try and keep our pace as high as possible. By the time we got to the final two laps the wind really started to pick up giving us a really bad head wind on the back half. I still seem to be having the problem of keeping up with my nutrition while riding so it's something I still need to work on. I may start setting an alarm on my watch or something to remind me, I also plan on trying some different food/drink combos during training rides and runs to see if I can fine tune it as well since I couldn't ever get a grasp on it this past year. I ended up 71st (2:34 was the overall time) out of the 110 which was so so since I am by no means as pure cyclist like some of the people I was racing and the hills really killed me. I've spent pretty much all winter on the road bike so I'm anxious to get back on my TT Bike and start the triathlon training regularly again.
What I took from Clermont:
- Clermont is very VERY hilly
- Road racing is much different than triathlon
- I went the fastest on my road bike to date (48.7 mph)
- Would much rather be on a TT bike than a roadie
If you would like to see the data from the race or any of my other training rides and runs look me up on Strava! Till next time!