Race 2

I did the 2nd criterium on Tuesday. This time I am more relaxed and focussed on keeping myself in the front 3rd of the pack. The race has more people this time (probably 25 to 30) and it was a bit crowded when we start. As expected the crowd thins out as some 1st timers cannot keep up with the pace and the climbs. The pace was a little quicker than the previous races I've seen as there are more people and more people trying to lead the pack.

There was some confusion in the middle of the race. The women's races were running at the same time and their cat1-3 pack caught us. People were yelling to move away so that the women can pass. There was a bit of confusion and there were people trying to sit in the women's pack as well as trying to break away using the women's pack as a decoy. A couple of us decide to chase the breakaway down creating more
confusion in the race. After a lap or two the race official called a "neutral lap" to let the women's group ride away. That suits me fine because I was pretty close to blowing up trying to chase the breakaway. Somewhere in the middle of the confusion was the prime lap and I don't even know exactly which lap it was.

At the last lap I was in the front group of 10 or so riders. I saw there were 2-3 riders from the same team so I rode next to one of them and said I was going to try to lead him off. Then I dive down the hill going all out thinking he would follow me. But I think I was going too fast and he knows that I wouldn't succeed. I
went all out for about 30 seconds or so and saw the pack or right behind me, probably less than 20 feet away. There was a right hand turn and I wasn't prepared to make the turn at that speed. So I braked, let the people pass, as finished the race last. When I went home my kids asked me how I did. I said I had fun and my wife said "you didn't do well, did you?" I smiled and walked away.

weird side effect

With this piece of news finalizing the deal, I have now worked in the same physical office for 3 companies.

Here is the original deal:

SQLException

Our test server got this Exception a zillion times when we did our performance test:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted.)

Unfortunately Google as of today reveals very little information about this. To make a long story short this is created by one of the guys mistakenly adding the connection string with "Pooling=false;". This caused a humongous amount of connections, probably flooding the network and popping up the exception.

Race 1

Finally this is the day. First race of my career - so to speak.

It was raining this morning. It was cold. I was not feeling the best. On the ride to UBC my heart rate was too high. You get the drift. I was nervous. I was talking to other club members and the advice is always: don't worry, try your best, dropping a lap is ok as long as you get the hang of the peloton.

Once the race starts all the other thoughts went out the door. I was concentrating on the wheel in front of me and a little bit more. The course is tough: it starts on a climb, a little bit of flat, downhill and up again for the loop. I tried not to use too much energy and try to recover enough to survive the climb. Most of the climbs were at a pace of 30+ km per hour. With a bit of tail wind and people in front of me it didn't feel that hard. In fact roughly 10 minutes in I was watching my heart rate and it was in an acceptable range: high 160s and I could recover down to 140s. My goal was to follow the pack and not get dropped and I am happy to say that I did that - almost all the way. During the last lap I lost sight of the pack when the person in front of me slowed down a bit and a gap opened up. As soon as I realized I tried to bridge up. It was not my forte and they were accelerating away. I pushed hard and could not join the pack again for the last lap.

There were two accidents. I actually did not see it happen - luckily no one was seriously hurt and the pack did not go down with it.

All in all I achieved what I set out to do for my first race. Now for more training and hopefully I can really hang in the pack for the finish next week.