W/AV Sweeps Sierra Road KOM podium

While most of the team slept in for the San Jose Crit in the afternoon, three of the team's secret climbing weapons went out for the Sierra Road KOM, which is a mass start hillclimb up Sierra Road in San Jose, which has featured in the past few Tours of California. It's a steep leg breaker that takes about 20 minutes at race pace.

Billy Crane upgraded to Cat 2 late last season so is still relatively new to the team. He's obviously a strong climber and has had a good winter of training. He won his first race of the season. Billy was followed closely by another strong up-and-comer, Jeff Williams, and by a team veteran, Ted Huang. Below is Billy's report from the race.

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2/14/09
Sierra Road KOM, P1/2
1st of several (but less than last year)
Teammates: Jeff Williams (2nd), Ted Huang (3rd)

With a full roster of the Elite team guys entered in the Webcor Criterium, Bruce asked that a few of us represent the team in the KOM. Jeff Williams and I met up at the San Jose City Hall to register and rather than roll with the excessive police escort over to Sierra, we just rolled at our own pace. This allowed for us to make a stop at my parent house near Sierra road and to swap wheels for the Williams System 38's that Rob MacNeill lent to me. These are awesome wheels! Unfortunately, I did not swap the cassette on the wheel and rolled with the 11-23 that was on there. This was a decision I would regret later.

This year, unlike last year, rather than stopping everyone at the bottom of the hill for a standing/falling start they allowed everyone to just roll across the line at their own pace and choosing. Jeff and I took advantage of this and got a decent rolling start. Given that he had the power meter out of the two of us he would set the pace on the brutal steep lower section and essentially set me up for a launching pad further up the climb. Jeff did a great job of doing this and signaled me to come around about a quarter way up the climb. We were consistently catching the guys that had started minutes ahead of us and continued to do so until there was no one left to catch. After passing Jeff I settled into an AT rythm for the final 15 minutes. Being alone in the wind was something that was near impossible for me last year, but after a winter of focusing on improving that I just found the wind to be more of an annoyance than anything. What added to the difficulty was not having any larger than a 23 for the sections that went upwards of 10% combined with the wind. I'll pay more attention to gear ratios in the future. In the end I rolled across as the first finisher and in first place with a time of 22.21.

I was gunning to beat Ted's time of 21.13 of last year. Had a few things gone better, like the wind not being a factor and choosing a better gear ratio it may have happened. That aside, I'm pumped about my form as we head into my first season with the P1/2's. With San Dimas my first target of the year I'm really pleased with how I was climbing and setting up for the hill climb TT there.

In the end we represented about as well as you could and Webcor/AV Elite guys took the top 3 spots in the KOM.

Looking forward to the rest of the season and getting it kicked off with Snelling this weekend!

Thanks
Billy