Watson Report from Colorado

[Zach Watson is an ABD Club member and Elite Team rider living in Boulder, Colorado. Zach has been an ABD member since the team’s original inception as a Junior program in the mid 90’s and we are proud to still have him on board]

Hello, ABD Club. Here’s a quick report on some races this past weekend. Next up: the Quad Cities races.

Saturday:  Sunshine Canyon Hillclimb.  Basically a mass start 9 mile climb up one of the nastiest climbs in Boulder, last 3 miles on dirt.  Chilly start, headed off and the smack went down as soon as the gun went off.  Oooh that hurt, watching the watts at 425 or so and we're on the lighter grades in the first mile!  I yo-yo'ed a bit and caught back on about 3 times after getting detached, but I got dropped for good a little over halfway up.  Just couldn't hold the pace and my legs were fairly blown from hanging on during the steep stuff.  So I rode to the finish by myself, with a few others, the race exploded and everyone just came in one-by-one.  I was fairly upset since I had climbed well at Gila, but I am learning that a "sprint" up a climb like that really isn't my niche in the climbing world.  Probably would do a lot better if we did about 80 miles beforehand.  I climbed the course 2 mins faster than I did last year so there is improvement, but 25th out of 41 isn't great!  The wattage numbers were pretty high, 10 min average was 405, overall 329.  Ouch, that hurt. 
 
Sunday:  Bounced back nicely.  North Boulder Park Crit, apparently a coors classic heyday classic course.  They did like a dozen call ups, everyone showed up today.  Frischkorn and Donald from Slipstream, Baldwin from Rock, Garcia from BMC, Chris Wherry, Scott Moninger, Colby Pearce, Dan Schmatz, Ian MacGregor and another Type 1 guy, a Bissell guy, and the regular Boulder fast guys.  So a pretty stacked field for a local race, a lot of horsepower present.  The race splits due to the narrow roads and dodgy turns so I kept to the front.  Frischkorn took off with about 30 mins to go and I stuck right on his wheel and was joined with Colby Pearce and a couple others.  A good move but alarm bells went off in the field and we got reeled back in.  So it came down to a few laps to go and a couple guys got away, and we almost got them on the line, but Ian MacGregor won.  I kept a good position and launched out of the last corner about 6th wheel.  Sprinted hard and passed a couple, got 4th place.  
 
So my crit riding is spot-on and tactically I am playing well.  I got pretty down after the drubbing I took in the hillclimb so I was pretty low on morale at the start but I got out of that funk pretty quick and rode a smart race.  Looking forward to memorial weekend!  

Thanks, hope you're well!
Zach