Tired, Sore and Smiling

Although overall the turnout was rather thin, the NOBC had a decent contingent on hand for the Tour LeFleur up around Jackson, MS. I'll try and do a nice race report a bit later. Work has me pretty tied up today.

The weather last weekend was great - warm, sunny and dry. Sunday's road race course was, I thought, damned challenging. My legs are still sore. In the masters race, Ed Chapman from Mobile Velo attacked early, taking me with him. A sizeable gap developed rather quickly and by the time we were most of the way through the 23-mile loop we had, I guess, a 1-minute gap. About then Ed started to ease up, and I looked back and saw two riders, one of which was his teammate Larry, bridging up to us, so we had a 4-rider break now with Ed, Larry, Jorge and me. The group worked together pretty smoothly for a while, although Jorge was skipping pulls, and by the time we got around to the hilly section of the second lap, Jorge had come off the back. Obviously that was the signal for Ed and Larry to start working me over, which they did with admirable efficiency. After chasing down about the fourth attack in a row, Larry attacked again on a climb and I had to let him go. For the next five miles or so (maybe it was more?) I basically time-trialed at the front while Ed sucked wheel like a vulture waiting for an injured deer to die. I was basically in training ride mode by now since both Ed and Larry were racing in the separately scored 35+ age group while I was racing in the 45+ group. When we got to within three miles or so of the finish, Ed finally attacked. I can't say I was highly motivated to go after him, and I just kept up a fast enough pace so that I could still see both him and Larry by the time we reached the finish. I have a lot more details on the weekend that I'll try and put into a race report for the NOBC website a bit later this week.