The marathon in Jeonju started early Sunday morning and there was no humming or haring about wheel choice. The ground was saturated and there was plenty of rain prior to the 8am start. The majority of top skaters choose MPC wheels, I wore a full set of MPC storm surges. The course was pretty simple but the rain definitely made it more of a challenge having to dodge all the white lines and slippery patches. It was just over 10km out to the turn point and then back along the same route to another turn point just before the finish line, we completed this twice. There were a few slight rises and a couple of large corners but the course was predominately long straight stretches.
The biggest rise was about 1.5km into the race. Even though it wasn’t that steep the wet road made it more of a challenge. I done a small attack up the hill and by the top Cecilia was the only one left with me. I led for a few kilometres but Cecilia wasn’t keen to lead so I slowed down and a few Korean skaters caught back up. After a couple of kilometres I started attacking again and once again Cecilia was the only one that could stick.
I continued to lead at a solid pace until a reasonable gap was formed. Every time I pulled out from the lead Cecilia would follow and was unwilling to hit the front. I wanted to attack, but it’s hard to attack someone when they are sitting on you and in your draft. At one stage I nearly crashed on a slippery patch trying to swerve out from the lead, after that I thought it was too risky so close to World’s to play those sort of games.
I settled for the fact that Cecilia wasn’t going to lead and that it was too late to let the pack catch back up after I had led for over 10km. So I stayed in the lead but I didn’t want to settle for 2nd. I tried to disrupt the rhythm as much as I could to wear out Cecilia. I done a few accelerations, changed stride pattern and even put in quite a few cross over steps in on the long straight stretches. Every time we got to a slight rise I would up the pace again. It was hard for me to tell how tired she was due to the fact I couldn’t see her behind me.
After the first lap the wind picked up all of a sudden and the rain started bucketing down. We skated up the steepest rise once again, this was where I attacked the first time and dropped the pack. I started to pick up the pace again and about ¾ of the way up I looked back to see Cecilia dropping off. I looked back after about 800m to see a big gap had formed and then I never looked back.
After the final u-turn and with 9km to go I saw Cecilia heading in the other direction and the gap had grown. Further down the road I saw the main pack and they really didn’t have a chance of catching either of us. After seeing these gaps I decided to throttle off a bit, I got into a steady rhythm and stayed well clear of the white lines. I went on to win and Cecilia came in 2nd. I can’t find official results anywhere so I’m not too sure of the official results.
Photo - Tiger Kim (incheon3040inline)
The men’s race was won by Yann Guyader who went on a solo break away with about 15 km to go. The bunch sprint was won by Peter Michael from X-Tech followed by Kalon Dobbin.
Photo - Tiger Kim (incheon3040inline)
Nice!
ReplyDeleteI was taught as a cyclist to attack in the hardest circumstances (uphill or rain or headwind) because noone is keen to ride at all then. Seems like it was like that here, too.
Gabor