Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Perry-Roubaix

Last weekend was the second round of the Georgia Cup series down in Perry, Ga. The Macon race was the first round and while I didn't get to contest the crit in Macon, I was in 10th place overall in the series after the Lake Tobesofskee race. The thing that makes this interesting to me is that I'm racing, for a variety of reasons, in Masters 35+. Since M35+ is an unrestricted catagory (except no Cat 5) I'm racing against guys who could be Cat 4 like me all the way up to Cat 2 or 1. It's been a schooling but a very, very good one.

The races went pretty well though I knew I was in for a thrashing when I went out on the first stage of the weekend's omnium and got beat. The stage was a good, solid time trial; normally my best event. I expected a high finish and a good start in the omnium standings to balance out what I expected to be a poor criterium performance later that evening. I put in a great time trial, finishing the 9.5 mile circuit in 20:40 with an average of just over 27 mph but I finished a somewhat disappointing fifth. Had I raced Cat 4 I would have won pretty handily but I wasn't racing against Cat 4 guys, I was racing against the competition for the state time trial championships. Looking at it that way, I felt a lot better about my performance. I was really only blown out by one guy and I finished within 30 seconds of the other four. I missed the podium by 14 seconds. Given that they were all riding disk wheels I was doing the spoked thing, I can't feel too badly as I feel that a disk had improved my time by just 5% I would have shaved off a minute and been solidly in second place.

That afternoon I raced in the crit. I hate crits. I'm a slow-twitch muscle fiber kind of guy so I don't do too well at events that require repeated sprint efforts. The race was on from the get go and I found myself struggling to hang onto the back. I lost time in every corner and had to chase on on the straights. Still, about halfway into the race I was still with the group when a break went off the front. Several of the teams had riders in the break and so their guys who were left behind didn't have to work and we rapidly lost time. At this point I decided that I wasn't going to get lapped and pulled from the race so I charged to the front of the second group and started working hard. I was feeling surprisingly good and started to pull the break back by working with Kevin from the Carolina Volkswagon team. Neither of us had teammates in the race and so we formed a sort of unspoken alliance to see what we could do. As we pulled the break back we realized that three of them had broken off the front. I also realized that I had just torched my legs and off the back I went. Still though, I stayed in the race and finished 14th for a few omnium points. Better was the experience of getting to practice my cornering skills.

The next day was the crazy, long road race. Eighty miles in the central Georgia sun. I sort of had a plan. If I could get off the front in an early break, maybe I would be able to get caught by the fast Cat1/2 guys and intergrate in and hang on until the end. What I didn't know was that Kevin from the day before had the same idea and he took off from the start whistle. I decided to go for it and joined him and pretty quickly we had a minute on the field. Kevin said he thought a couple more guys were going to come across so we should stay off the front and see what happened. Five minutes later no had joined us and the field was strung out in a long thin line 90 seconds behind. That meant they were charging but it also meant they weren't making much progress. Kevin said to wait five more minutes and if no one joined us we'd sit up. I responded by telling him that the King of the Mountians climb was just up the way and let's try to stay away for that long. He agreed and when we rolled over the top and looked back, the pack had sat up and were just spinning their way up the hill. We had three or four minutes so we took off. We spend the next 25 miles on a suicide, solo break that ended 5 miles from the start/finish line for the first of two laps. As the pack came up though, a group jumped off the front and got a gap. Kevin and I got in the break as it rode away and we were still off the front. My tactic had worked I was with the group I knew would win the race. Now all I had to do was hang on and hope my solo efforts hadn't taken too much out of me. I made it to the 60 mile mark before crosswinds and my tired legs conspired to pop me off the now reduced group of riders. I managed to hold onto an 8th place finish and 7th overall in the omnium. More importantly, I learned some good tactical lessons to store up for later.

The coolest thing though was getting the respect from a lot of other riders for being a tough guy in the racing. For hanging in there and not giving up in the crit even though I had inferior skills and for having the courage to go on a long break and the strength to keep fighting in the road race with the best Master's riders in the state. I've got a lot to learn and school's definitely in session but I feel like I passed the first two exams. I like racing Masters a lot more than Cat 4 because the riders are better and people aren't afraid of taking risks. In Cat 4, almost everyone seems to be afraid to really go on a break or to seriously attack the group because they're afraid they won't have anything left for the end sprint if they fail. The thing is that for most of them, the sprint is moot point because they're not going to beat the two or three really good sprinters in the race. That having been said, Scott Beam, the team captain for the L5Flyers, who I race with, is a Cat 4 rider like me. At the Raccoon Mt. Road Race in Tennessee, he and another teammate went on a solo break after 8 miles and stayed away to win the race. Props to him for having the gumption to go away ont he first really big climb of the race and the strength, with the help of teammate Eric Koep, to make it stick.

So maybe I'll have a chance at my next Cat 4 race, assuming it's not too flat.

Thanks for reading.

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