Unleashing a 30sec Sprint at Alviso

hey what's up guys welcome back to another weekly al viso criterium got an exciting one for you today um let's talk about the course conditions real fast the teams so uh so well you guys know this course by now right we won't talk to talk about the course too much we'll talk about the wind direction though i'd say it's a moderate tailwind through the start finish and uh the teams so so you guys know sjbc that's san jose bike club they're out here in these light blue jerseys the thirsty bear the powerful thirsty bear duo jerome and blaine and then a special guest today that is my former teammate matt on tyrone elite who's just been on fire lately he was uh on the channel in the last video i made about watsonville so he's definitely got to look out for and then i wanted to quickly thank the sponsor of this video and that is token wheels well actually not just wheels so token makes other things too they make bottom brackets headsets things like that but i think they're best known for their wheels they're one of these brands that i think people new to the sport or outside of cycling just coming into it they haven't heard of token wheels they've heard of trek they've heard of specialized they've heard of these big brands token doesn't have the same marketing budget they have high quality products uh one of the the big local p102 race teams that dominated the local scene when i was first coming up they all used uh token products and um yeah they're worth checking out so go to their website i'll leave a link in the description and with that said let's get into today's race all right so we have thirsty bear on the front lighting it up like they like they do that's uh that's pretty much a theme in probably the last five or ten all these videos i've done and the chase has just started to give up so so oh this is one of my favorite guys this is the slingshot right i'm coming from like 15th wheel and yeah i did like 800 watts there for a second but i'm not doing crazy i'm dodging some plants dodging some plants on my right but i don't have to do crazy amount of power to get separation and that's that's why it's so important to start you know like maybe 15th wheel like i did right there and just carry that momentum the front riders are slowing down you're speeding up that speed differential is what you're looking for when you're trying to to um establish a breakaway to get separation and that's what exactly what i'm doing because i don't want to just tow everybody up to this group you can see it's got mad in there it's got both thirsty bear guys and somebody else i can't quite see it anyway a very threatening looking group and uh i want to be a part of that i mean this could just roll away if you're not careful so thirsty bear smartly just gets right back on the gas with blaine jerome is looking around like hey you going to chase that you going to chase that i give him a fist bump though so yeah i'm gonna have to chase that this is this is a good setup jerome's not gonna chase his teammate right but it's something that i'm not gonna rush into right away because well it's 18 kilometers to go it's a long way to go solo and i just don't want to have to go super deep super early on because sometimes it's hard to get yourself out of a hole that you dig uh this early on in a race so i'm gonna i'm gonna chill i'm gonna relax i'm gonna let blaine sit out there by himself in the wind you know manage his gap not let it get out of control but i'm not gonna overreact i'm gonna be patient with this one and he was out there for like a solid two and a half laps uh now we're we're just uh just under 12 kilometers to go and he's about to get caught so this is an important time and you know the result of me sitting in while you know mostly others did the chasing is look at my heart rate 155 beats per minute like we're pretty chill i guarantee that blaine's heart rate is not 155 beats per minute in this moment out there by himself so i'm going to start moving up in preparation for him to get caught because that's always a very critical moment in the race when a breakaway gets brought back that's always when the counter attack goes and you have to be in position you have to be prepared for that moment and and i want you to notice too that i moved up on the inside on the right side that's the sheltered side of the wind so i'm using as little energy as possible so here's blaine he's been caught no counter attack so blaine's like why not let's go again because blaine blaine's super strong so why would blaine do this though right he just attacked he just got brought back and now he's gonna go again like it doesn't make any sense well actually it does for for a couple of reasons one blane isn't a field sprinter so why would blaine just sit in and wait for things to come down to a field sprint blane's trying to to attack and break away and in doing so not only does he give himself a better chance at winning but also for his team because if he's off the front he's taking the pressure off his teammate jerome who is a field sprinter a national champion for that matter we get this little separation here you see it drew out matt here too in the pink jersey and matt's no dummy matt can spot those moments as well just as good as anybody else so so this one looked looked promising but you know still 10 kilometers to go it'll reshuffle at least a couple more times and it did reshuffle quite a bit actually the middle of this race was pretty chaotic i even put in a couple of pretty hard digs when i thought we had a good shot at staying away from the the chasing field but it was just one of those days when uh you know the right group didn't come together and fast forward to three kilometers to go we're all back together coming through one lap to go getting ready for a field sprint and i don't want to be on the front so i'm going to casually try to take a sip of my bottle here and see if i can get other other people to chase this isn't the spot to be coming through one lap to go it looks like i get a i coax a pole out of jerome here but i don't even want to be like second wheel i want to be further back in the draft maybe 10th or 12th at this point i want the teams like sjbc thirsty bear i want those guys to be on the front setting tempo and keeping it together in this last lap so so this is what i'm doing i'm going to fall back i'm going to try to find that that sweet spot of like i said 10 or 10 or 12. you see i'm surrounded now by sjbc riders on my left here at the black and white kitty that's um timmy he's actually an sjbc rider for whatever reason he wasn't wearing the kit today but this is what you want to do i guess i'll just talk through the last two kilometers of this race kind of give you guys my thought process as we close out the last little bit here and you can see i'm doing a little surgeon pace here but that's one of the other benefits of being further back in the group is the front there might be attacks flying like big efforts flying and you almost don't even feel it if you're further back in the group so you don't want to be like at the back of the pack inside of two kilometers to go if you want to contest the field sprint but you also don't want to be you know third wheel or second wheel that's not the place to be either so i think i'm happy now with my my position here i have matt in front of me my sights i have jerome in front of me in my size i can keep a close eye on them because i don't really want them to get to get too far in front of me they're going to definitely be contesting the field sprint so i want to make sure i'm around them maybe i can benefit from their sprint and it looks like it looks like there's some control on the front now it's a little bit faster than it was before that's probably sjbc doing that work or it's somebody attacking it's something like that but the point is i'm not doing that work so that's good it looks like there is a single rider off the front and it looks like the thirsty bear rider uh was was setting tempo on the front to bring that back actually that might have been san jose but you get the point that's why i want to be back here now 1200 meters to go it's time to start thinking about your position like you're always thinking about your position because i want to let you guys in on a little secret here position is more important than your training than your equipment than your fitness like it's it's the most important thing in this moment of a crit if you're trying to contest the field sprint one kilometer to go so so matt's decided he's going to commit to jump across to this little group that's forming it looks like there's two or three routers off the front looks like matt's going to commit some energy to get across to it i'm not sure i'm crazy about that idea so i'm gonna still start to lean on these riders i'm gonna yell at my buddy paul here to see if he can do it uh he looks over and then and then tim takes over on the front total bro move this is a hero pull right here i think tim is just trying to empty the tank here stitch it all back up super stoked on this because yeah like they have three four seconds up the road and that looks really threatening with 600 meters to go so what if tim doesn't do this i probably just wait until we make this right-hander into the tailwind and then i launch as early as i can i wait for the tailwind to try to deter other people from sitting in my draft but you know what that's what i end up doing anyway right here tim just got me like most of the way there so look i did like 1200 watts and i get an immediate gap because of that tailwind because of that sudden acceleration i'm preventing other people from just sitting in my draft because i don't want to drag them to the line and now i'm like stealth mode i want to sneak up on matt but matt looks back he sees me he starts his sprint but i think it was after like two seconds too long of hesitation so by the time he starts sprinting i'm already on terms with his back wheel carrying more speed than him so once i come out of his draft i already have like a one or two mile an hour head start and that's all she wrote that's how the 30 second sprint got me another win at alviso you know a lot of help by tim thanks again tim a lot of help by the tailwind but more than anything it was good timing good position so uh thanks for hanging in there guys if you like this video be sure to subscribe and as always catch you guys in the next one

Channel: NorCal Cycling

Views: 89,354

Rating: 4.9623313 out of 5

Keywords: cycling, criterium, tips, p/1/2, racing, strategy, gopro, win, sprint, leadout, crash, Pro cycling, bike, bikes, bicycles, bicycle, road bike, road bikes, American cycling, zwift, indoor cycling, road race, Tour de France, peloton

Id: 02feto4yy3w

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021