My preparation for the Redlands Classic with TR - Final Update

Yes! +1 for the cycling hotbed of Chicago :metal:

Great job, Jaret – keep it up!

Stage 2 Update
Our mission today was to take the yellow jersey, which was well within reach at only 1s back. There were also bonus seconds available with an intermediate time sprint of 3,2,1s at 12 laps to go of the highland circuit, and then 10,6,4s at the finish. The circuit finishes atop about a 1min climb (when you’re hitting it hard), which is right in my wheelhouse. All systems go.

Going into the intermediate, everything was great. I had my three teammates help me get to the front, and I attacked at the bottom of the hill from second wheel. In hindsight, I might have attacked too hard, as I won the intermediate sprint by a looong ways. Sean Quinn (the race leader) came second in the sprint, so we were tied on time going into the finale. (Someone pinch me, I’m dreaming)

Then, hitting 3 laps to go - disaster. Flat rear tire. The entire team stopped with me at the finish line, I took someones wheel, and we started a 4 man TTT to get me back in contact (I really cannot stress enough how strong the team was today). This stop cost us around 48s. We make contact with 1 lap to go, I pull some “sprinter maneuvers” on the bottom section of the course, and was sitting in a good spot just to come out with the same time as the field - a win, considering. Then, in the acceleration halfway up the hill, a rider touches wheels in front of me and goes down. I barely manage to avoid going down, but half to come to a full stop, shift into the little ring, and restart on the hill.

A tough day to take mentally, but I managed to limit losses to stay 4th in GC, 27s down on the leader. There’s still a lot of racing to go, and I’m still happy to be in the white jersey for best amateur. We’ll see what tomorrow’s oak glen stage brings.

Ride on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/2213643701
I also caught most the action on my GoPro - I’ll work on getting vids up after this week, but I’ll be posting some snippets on my Instagram page: @jarretridesbikes

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Awesome write up – congrats and keep at it, Jarret!

#ChicagoFast

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@jdoldham11 dude we are all pulling you man!

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Oh man, I’m frustrated just reading that, you must have been shattered straight after the finish.

Looking forward to seeing the footage. Good luck man!

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Stage 3
A tough day personally - I got caught up in a crash about 30 miles into the stage. I was fine physically, but my bike’s derailleur was in my spokes. I spent about 30s trying to bend it out, but was having trouble so jumped on a teammates bike and chased back onto the field. Of course, the saddle height was about 3" too short, but there was no time or tools to fix it until 12 miles later, at the top of the climb on the Yucaipa circuit. I stopped with a borrowed 4mm from the caravan, literally hit the saddle up to some estimated height, and then started riding. It was close, but the remaining 60 miles caught up to me on the final climb, where my body started to break down at 4k to go, and I got tailed off the remaining group of 15-20 riders. Legs were so blown, I essentially packed it in and conserved energy the rest of the climb, knowing the white jersey was gone.

But, I had a teammate (Stephen Bassett) in the group - and he won the stage! With a 1st and 2nd place on two different stages, our little amateur team is pumped to be giving it to the “big dogs”

Crit is tomorrow, and hoping for better luck and excited to race some bikes!

No Strava file yet, as my power data is spread across a couple of bike computers…:wink:

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Dude! What a run of bad luck - that sucks!

I was looking for your results today and saw your teammate won the stage, so that’s great for you all – congrats there.

Here’s hoping you have some better luck in the crit tomorrow.

Keep rolling #ChicagoFast :metal:

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Definitely. I’m hoping I’m catching all the bad luck for the entire year, and think everything else should be smooth sailing!

Crit is definitely our territory - excited to show all these road racers what’s up!

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Really enjoying the ‘daley’ reports!

(couldn’t help the punny comment :joy:)

edit: seriously enjoying the reports, THANK YOU!!

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+1 for loving the race reports. Sorry about the bad luck and good luck with the crits

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frankbeans

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For anyone who is interested – the Redlands Classic Crit is on cyclestream.tv right now . . .

. . . and @jdoldham11 is in the break!!!

#ChicagoFast

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These announcers are atrocious, but go @jdoldham11!

K7HAsl1

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I think @jdoldham11 finished 3rd. Not sure – amazing effort!

EDIT: He officially got 3rd. That was a BOSS breakaway. Those dudes were laying down the diesel for a while…

In other news, Lily Williams from Supermint took 2nd in the women’s race. She used to work at my LBS 2 blocks away from my house – so today is a big, BIG day for the #ChicagoFast movement :metal:

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Both of them were amazing races to watch! I watched almost all of the women’s race, and the last 8 laps of the men’s. HB-Supermint MADE that break work. It was just amazing to see Lindsay Goldman work like that! And, way to go @jdoldham11!! That was a really exciting finish!!!

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Stephen Bassett from Knoxville?? I believe his dad was one of my Exercise Science professors in college. Small world. In any case, enjoying following along with this!

Stage 4
Being from the midwest, everyone on our team knows how to throw down in some technical criteriums, and were excited for the 9 corner course for stage 4. Axeon set a mega tempo at the very beginning of the race (the first several laps were over 28mph). Once they started to slow down around 20 minutes in, attacks started to go up the road. There was a break of 6 riders that had about 12s to the field, and none of us in it. Knowing a motivated break could go I jumped across (which was a hard 4.5 min bridge) pretty much solo.

Our break was very cohesive, as Aevolo had 2 riders, one of which was doing double turns to drive the break and the Lux juniors riding for Landis Cyclery were driving hard to keep clear for all the green jersey sprints. I basically spent the next 60 minutes trying to be as conservative as possible as our gap grew. There were a couple restarts, but they didn’t seem to have much impact on our cohesiveness. Going in to 1.5 laps to go, there were games that started happening in the break, I felt like I was in a good position, until people attacked earlier than I anticipated, keeping me further back in the group. I still made up 2 spots out of the final corner to pick up 3rd, which means I had an awesome sprint, but just wasn’t in the right place. Congrats to Noah Granigan of Floyd’s Pro Cycling for getting it right.

Another great result on top of a crazy week for the team! I’m mostly ecstatic, but also I can’t help but think about how I could have played the finale differently to pull off win…I think they’ll keep the replay up at https://cyclestream.tv/ if you want to see where I messed up.

Strava: 52.4 mi Ride Activity on March 16, 2019 by Jarret O. on Strava
Of course, my bolts for my GoPro mount rattled out at some point in the last two days, so no POV footage, which is mildly devastating.

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Yep! He’s a beast!

385-390wftp?
Congrats on great racing

306 Average Power, 341 NP.

There was a lot of free speed on that course through the corners, especially if you’re in a group. After I recovered from the bridge, the break felt very manageable with the workload spread over 8 riders.