MUCKERS 7pm Thursday Race Night. 13/04/23
Rouvy Route Used: Through Flanders Fields | Belgium | 23.7 miles | 1519 ft climbing
Route 2 from the Taste of Spring Classics | Medium challenge
38 registered | 24 finishers | 1 dnf | 13 dns
23 miles is a nice distance for a week night race and with “only” 1519 ft of climbing, it shouldn’t be a killer either. But as soon as you put it into a race format, it ends up being so! especially on those very steep climbing parts, but all in all, a very interesting route.
Reading some Strava reports from some of the riders, this did seem a lot closer up front than what we are use to…. I read 1st and 2nd were together for a while until “luke_vin” getting the better of “hinsbergen” over the crest of a hill and powering away which seems to break our 2nd place finisher!! He had to let off to recover but then managed to stay in front of the closing pack which was lead by “wurstrolle_81” to claim the bronze.
“MikeHagen” came over the line in a pretty much identical time as 3rd, then “robbiedoo” was just under a second behind in 5th! Must have been a sprint finish between these three!!
Top Muckers Worldwide team rider “Andy_UP” came next, with the Belgium rider showing some nice speed now he’s nearly at full fitness and claiming a very respectable 6th. 7th, and in a little bit of no mans land came “vayarecki” followed in by the 2nd Muckers worldwide rider “tomlerieger” in 8th, closely followed by “claudio999” who made it 9 different countries in the top 9!
And finally, the last mention goes to the strong finisher “loki1972” who finished just in front of … someone in 11th😉
Well done to everyone who finished this race and a big thank you to you all for joining us, the top 20 riders finished within 10 minutes of 1st place! I know the weather is starting to change now but please rest assured I will always have races organized for Tuesdays and Thursdays just incase you want to train indoors.
cheers.
| # | User | Age | Team | Racetime | TimeGAP | AV.mph |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  luke_vin | 30-39 | CK Vinohradské Šlapky | 1:00:32.8 | 23.51 | |
| 2 |  hinsbergen | 40-49 | Team Adam-Chris | 1:01:48.6 | 0:01:15.8 | 23.03 |
| 3 |  wurstrolle_81 | 40-49 | 1:01:50.1 | 0:01:17.2 | 23.02 | |
| 4 |  MikeHagen | 60+ | 1:01:50.2 | 0:01:17.2 | 23.02 | |
| 5 |  robbiedoo | 50-59 | Eastbourne Rovers CC | 1:01:50.6 | 0:01:17.8 | 23.02 |
| 6 |  Andy_UP | 40-49 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:02:26.5 | 0:01:53.6 | 22.8 |
| 7 |  yayarecki | 50-59 | 1:03:44.2 | 0:03:11.4 | 22.33 | |
| 8 |  tomlerieger | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:04:02.8 | 0:03:30.0 | 22.22 |
| 9 |  claudio999 | 50-59 | ASV | 1:04:07.4 | 0:03:34.6 | 22.2 |
| 10 | Loki1972 | 50-59 | 1:04:26.3 | 0:03:53.2 | 22.09 | |
| 11 | Chak | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:04:27.9 | 0:03:55.2 | 22.08 |
| 12 | Dyabohr | 40-49 | 1:04:58.5 | 0:04:25.7 | 21.91 | |
| 13 |  Igor_B | 30-39 | 1:05:02.9 | 0:04:30.4 | 21.88 | |
| 14 | jeff65 | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:06:36.1 | 0:06:03.3 | 21.37 |
| 15 | mgk1971 | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:06:49.6 | 0:06:16.8 | 21.3 |
| 16 | S.Ludford | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:07:25.4 | 0:06:52.6 | 21.11 |
| 17 | SwissChris69 | 50-59 | just me | 1:07:28.5 | 0:06:55.2 | 21.1 |
| 18 | nocccon | 50-59 | 1:07:39.1 | 0:07:07.1 | 21.04 | |
| 19 | uffzynda | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:08:51.4 | 0:08:18.5 | 20.67 |
| 20 | klaus201 | 40-49 | Asphalt Tigers Lenzing powerd by hermapro.com | 1:09:19.1 | 0:08:46.2 | 20.54 |
| 21 | Mucker1974 | 40-49 | Muckers Worldwide | 1:10:49.3 | 0:10:16.4 | 20.1 |
| 22 |  cdtchris | 60+ | Muckers Worldwide | 1:18:47.8 | 0:18:14.9 | 18.06 |
| 23 | Michal-Scorpio | 40-49 | 1:20:07.7 | 0:19:34.2 | 17.77 | |
| 24 |  Cayolu | 50-59 | 1:40:51.8 | 0:40:18.1 | 14.11 | |
| dnf | DonJulio | 50-59 | Muckers Worldwide | dnf | – |
Not my best race tonight. 21st out of the 25 starters and i thought I’d do better but once i hit the first hill, my legs were achy straight away so knew it was going to be a struggle. So i just went with my default “over 3.0w/kg up the hills and try to get over 20mph on the other bits” and even that was a struggle but i knew i had to do it to get to the end in time to do tonight’s 2nd race! Even “uffzynda” seemed to back off a bit to see if i could get onto his back wheel, which we did for a little while until we hit a steeper climb and I just couldn’t stay with him. Weirdly, I did start to feel quite strong and ok after about 18 miles so to come home with a nice 20.1mph average, and over 230w as well, I was quite happy, even if it only meant 21st.
I’ve never been one for profanities but you did not want to hear the language in my head tonight. This race started off with a big bunch of about 18 riders almost instantly, it was an absolute ‘blast’ and the best fun you can have on an indoor bike. Then about 7 mins in I lost all draft ‘again’ and riding in the pack was like riding on the front, I had to drop out the back or risk ‘blowing up’ with effort, it looked like large numbers from this group stayed together for ages and I was so jealous not to be in it. Mucker ‘uffzynda’ must have had issues too as he was in the big group too then somehow came up behind me, I prayed for draft … no … nothing. ‘SwissChris69’ came past … no nothing. ‘klaus201’ came past … Yeeeeesssss … draft. I work with ‘klaus201’ back up to ‘SwissChris69’ then we see somebody unplug ‘uffzynda’s’ internet connection and he stops in the road. Next ‘klaus201’ has a glitch and drops back which bizarrely instantly re-starts my drafting with ‘SwissChris69’. I seem to recall I worked with this rider briefly in the big Rouvy Tour of Flanders race so we are similar, we ride together for about 14 miles and our positions look very safe until the strong rider ‘nocccon’ seems to take big chunks of time out of our gap closing to less than 200ft in the last 5 miles. The 2-Up effort to keep this gap was amazing and we both tried to reward and thank the other rider on the line at the end, I won the final super slow 0.1w/kg effort at the finish line … if you read this ‘SwissChris69’, thank you and it would be great to hear your views and comments.
That was so fun! Big group early watching “hinsbergen” pull away. “luke_vin” decided he’d had enough of that and gave chase. I jumped on his wheel. Silly thing to do, I’d just get dropped on the first hill. We caught Chris, and I got dropped on the hill. I knew the group would catch me, but hopefully not until the top of the second hill or I’d just get dropped again. After the second hill, a gap formed; “wurstrolle”, “robbiedoo”, “Andy_UP”, and I got away. We worked together well, and eventually chased down “hinsbergen” with 5 km to go. Now some maneuvering and tactics, then around the last corner for the final sprint (Andy_UP off the back by then because ??). “hinsbergen” just popped off the front the last 100 m, but I had “wurstrolle”, I did, but he managed to just get ahead at the line.
Because => Empty
For me today was a race day to tick off. Like yesterday at the Alpen Challenge, I felt unusually powerless, nothing worked like normal. I was part of a big bunch of racers from the start on, “S. Ludford” and me nicely changing positions a few times, although I felt miserable tonight. Then the chain jumped off at or around P15. Had to leave the room and turn on the lights, it was too dark in my sports room to fix it quickly. When I resolved that and got it back on, it was all over. I actually wanted to stop here, I felt like 🤮 anyway, I’d rather had stopped the race here, as this happenend quite in the beginning. But I rode on, after all I had already been on the road for 10 minutes and “10 minutes of drudgery for nothing, that doesn’t have to be, at least get to the finish line”, I said to myself…. As I lost most of my motivation by now, I further dropped back, but of course, only for the purpose meeting „Mucker1974“ on the road and having a nice cooperation at least for a while. I decided to speed up again a little bit but then the gears of my bike failed completely, I could only use one gear. Downshift worked, upshift no longer. Finally, I rolled to the finish line with a cadence of ~80 and very comfortably. 👩 I think the CR2032 battery was probably empty. 🤬 Put a new one in, now my SRAM gears work again. Very aggravating. A race day to tick off, I already wrote that above. But beeing part of it is everything isn’t it ? And I was surprised not be be the last after all these small technical glitches.
CU
Chris alias “uffzynda”
I was hoping for some group riding this time, but it turns out to be very different. Chris did not wait even for the first climb and fly off after few kilometers. I wanted to stay in the group as long as possible, but the tempo did not raise much, so knowing how strong Chris is, I did not want to see the gap growing so much. I raised the pace, only Mike Hagen stayed with me. After the first hill we stayed with Chris in front, me still hoping for “group ride” till lets say last climb, or few last kilometers where the attack could start. But Chris seemed very strong, attacking each horizon we met. That hurt, but I somehow managed to stay with him.
In second hill, there were very steep ramps, where I thought I could be a bit stronger. I give it all I have thinking it will prevent attacks on the next flat sections, but I overdo it a bit, Chris still behind my back and I was near to cramping. On the top I need to unclip for a while and stretch the legs, surprisingly founding Chris is not closing the little gap I had. So I gave it all that left (actually not really much) and the gap was like 100m or so. Then it raises over 500m after the next climb and it was done, as Chris was not chasing anymore, so I could “enjoy” the TT to the finish and even see something from the route in the last few kilometers.
It was fun again, very surprising development, because I thought the hill attack was a tactical mistake but it turned out to be a winning move.
Enjoyed a lot to be in a large group without 5 to 15 riders being upfront. Felt like a real peloton and a real race. Managed to get away with 3 others on the steep climb, racing for 3rd at this point. It’s been too long I could race for a top position. At the end, the tank was empty and I felt I had no sprint left, so I had to let them go as the speed went up in the final 1,5 km (just under a mile) Always very hapy to finish top 25%, and a great top 10 finish.
Hi Andy, I had you on my radar in the beginning, before my bike issues began. You showed us a very strong performance of yours, I am really impressed of your output. Even under better conditions I would have never been able to follow you tonight, really amazing and congratulations!
Because I had to fix my SRAM gearing (battery cause) afterwards, I couldn’t start in Paris but my motivation was in the basement anyway. Terrible eve for me, but I am happy that you had a good day!
Congrats to everyone!
Still I have to thank god that I didn’t take the red lantern at the end of the race…hahah 🙂