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

Monday, March 03, 2008

This past weekend was the first full on race weekend of the year. Here in Georgia we have a series of races known as the Georgia Cup. The series is an attempt to bring racing to a level that meets the needs of what is often referred to in cycling as "elite-level" teams. These are teams who have lots of really good riders who aren't quite able to race for a pro team for some reason or another but who are really good riders. They get some good sponsorship dollars that pay for things like race clothing, bike frames, wheels, hotel and race entry fees and the like but they don't actually get paid a salary. The Georgia Cup series is an attempt to make high quality racing available to this level of team. Add on to that the various lowest level profession teams (known as Continental) such as the Jittery Joe's team that are based in the area that are looking for race events to help prepare for the Pro level National Racing Calendar events and the solid area teams that have good category 1 and 2 racers and you have the target audience for the series. However, since the Georgia Cup can't break even with just these racers (and still pay out prize purses) they also put on races at the same venues for the lower categories in the sport. That's where guys like me come in.

So this weekend was the first race of this year's series. For the last three years, the series has started down in Albany in south Georgia with the hope that the weather will be better than if we raced up near Hotlanta. In the first two years, that wasn't the case (torrentail rain one year and cold and windy the next) but this year turned out to be great weather-wise. Before I get to my experience in the racing, let me just say that the event was really first rate. I've raced at some pretty crappy races (a couple put on by an earlier iteration of the Georgia Cup) but this was not that kind of event. Registration went well (pre-registering really helped as did showing up the Friday night before the Saturday races to get my registration packet), the courses were really great, things seemed to run pretty smoothly and the results were up pretty quickly. Timing was done by computer transponder which was really cool in a lot of ways and worked better than I had been lead to believe. While there were a few glitches, the Georgia Cup folks did a really nice job of putting this together. The only complaint that I might have is the lack of payouts in the lower classes but if that's what it takes to get good events put on for guys like me who aren't in the upper echelons of the amateur part of the sport-so be it.

My goals for the weekend were pretty modest. The time trial was really a prologue with lots of short straights, lots more turns, no climbs and only 3.2 km long. This is the worst type of TT for me so I just wanted to stay upright and place in the top half of my field. I did that but just barely.

The next event was the criterium. This is the "NASCAR" event of bike racing. You ride a short loop, usually less than a mile and a half in size, several times. There's lots of cornering in big packs of riders and lots of crashes. This crit loop was a little longer (1.6 miles) and was in a peanut shape with about eight turns per lap going both ways (right and left). It was run on the totally closed down downtown streets of Albany so we had wide roads to ride on and lot of room to maneuver. The course was about the second best crit course I've ever raced. I'm not a very good crit rider because I don't have a lot of confidence cornering in large packs of riders and I have a hard time sprinting out of turns. The race is a hard-easy-hard-easy- type of racing with lots and lots of short intervals. Not too good for a guy with very few fast twitch muscles. My goals here were to stay upright (no crashing), finish with the front group and just try to sprint to the finish. I achieved all of those things and even managed a top 25 finish in a pack of 60 riders which was bit of a surprise. I even managed to pass a few guys in the final sprint and I felt like my cornering improved through the race.

On Sunday, we had a fairly short road race of about 35 miles. Again, my goals were modest: stay upright, move through the pack and take a few digs off the front. Again, I accomplished all three. The hardest of the three for me is to move through the pack. I tend to give up position a little too easily and end up getting shuffled to the back. I also tend to play a little cautious sometimes and let small gaps open up which other riders take. I fought through those and found that I could make my way to the front when I needed to and I could get shuffled back into the middle of the pack and recover. I managed to do a couple of hard intervals off the front and even finished 21st in the field sprint at the end, passing guys in the last 100 meters.

I haven't seen the overall results, but I think I may have finished in the top 25 for the weekend and maybe even the top twenty which was a lot better than I expected on a flat course with lots of sprinters. I still have a lot of work to do but it was really encouraging not to get dropped by the fast group after having my butt kicked all winter long. It's frustrating to ride with teh local Cat 1 and 2 guys but I have to admit that it's been good for me. I still need to lose a lot of weight but that'll keep coming. I race again in two weeks on a course I really have liked in the past down in Perry. The TT there will be a longer one on a rolling course and so I expect to do better there than I did this week. In addition, there's some climbing and the road race is longer so that might play to my strengths a little more.

One final shout out. Over the winter I trained with a group of guys in Macon that were putting together a team for this season. I was hoping to be on the team but after a few auditions, it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to be much help to them (to be honest, I wouldn't have invited me to race on my own team if I had had one). This weekend was a really coming out event for them and they really did well. They won the road race they were in and took second in the crit. I'm thinking they'll win the overall and place two or three more riders in the top ten. So to the the Security Bank team with Doug and Jake and Robert and Drew and Bill and all the others: Good Job and Congrats on an outstanding weekend!

Thanks for Reading.

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