1 One

Charlie and I headed up to the Natchez State Park around 9 a.m. this morning for the La./Ms. district road race. The course was a mostly excellent but short 5 mile loop with a couple of nice climbs on it. The last kilometer, however, was about the strangest I've ever encountered for a road race. About a mile or so from the finish one exits the smooth asphalt onto an older section of road that features a short section of rocks where the asphalt should be. Less than a kilo before the finish you make a short, steep climb with a hairpin turn onto a road that runs on top of a dam. Making the turn brings your speed down to a crawl. At that point you're maybe 500 meters from the finish. On both sides of the finish straight are continuous steel barriers that you would definitely not want to crash into. I took one look at that setup and, considering my usual luck with drag races, figured it would not be good.

The combined 30+, 35+, 45+ road race had a good sized field of around 40 that had turned out for the 48 mile race in the 2:00 p.m. heat. There were a lot of strong guys there, including David who had won the Giro de Rankin road race, Realdo J. who was just back from racing in Guyana, Frank M., Russ W., Rich R., Mike L. -- the list goes on. The stage was set for a fast race, but things definitely didn't go down as I thought they would.

Shortly after the start there was a longish stairstep climb followed by a couple more climbs and rollers. The second half of the course was largely downhill. So the minute we hit the very first climb, David attacks. I muttler to myself "David, give us a break!" The pack is undecided so early in the race, but finally someone goes after him and they pull away quickly. I take some pulls to try and limit the damage, but they are holding a pretty good gap and the pack is still sluggish. They are often out of sight on the winding course but as we get to the end of the first lap we can see that they have a gap of maybe 45 seconds. The second time through the hills, Realdo goes hard and opens a gap. I bridge up to him and we start working together. I think there was another rider with us for a while. Near the end of that lap we can see that we're closing and as we go through the feed zone the rider with David comes off.

So we catch David and a little while later Reo says to me "Frank's coming." Now, this is both good and bad. We can definitely use some help if we expect to stay ahead of the pack, in which there is no shortage of horsepower, but Frank could very well make the pace hard enough to put me off the back, and if that doesn't work, he can certainly outsprint me. So anyway, Frank joins us and the four of us start working together pretty well. The next time we hit the dam road we can look down and see two riders chasing (turned out to be Mike L. and someone), so we keep the pressure on. I am already thinking that I may not be able to do this for six more laps, but we are fully committed at this point. I lead up the climbs to keep the pace at an even tempo (i.e. mine) and by the time we finish the lap we can no longer see the chasers or the pack. Reo is riding strongly and smoothly and making sure the pace stays steady.

With three laps to go the guys at the finish line tell us that Russ is chasing solo but he's 2.5 minutes back. Our pace has slacked off a bit. This whole time Realdo had really been driving the pace and I can see that when I'm on the front he is coming through early in order to give me some rest. Of the four of us, Reo is the only 35+ rider, so it won't really matter how he places as long as Russ doesn't catch. With a lap to go he asks me what I want him to do. I tell him I'm not feeling too hot and might not be able to sprint (remembering my last road race experience), and what I want is not to get dropped! At this point, 4th place is not looking too bad. Reo pulled a lot of the last lap. David attacked twice and Frank once, but somehow I hung on and we came into the final kilometer together. At the hairpin turn Reo led with David, Frank and me following (I think - I never have a very good recall of the last kilo!). Things may have gotten a little bit reshuffled when we came through the hairpin because we kind of ran out of road on the outside and things got pretty tight. With maybe 400 meters to go Reo pulled off and David jumped. Frank went with him and I was on Frank's wheel like white on rice. But David ran out of gas early, and at that point I knew Frank was thinking "Oh s*&t!" He was stuck in the wind with about 300 meters left and me on his wheel. If he backed off, Reo could attack him, and if he kept going I was going to get a nice leadout. He chose curtain #2, and when Reo, who was spinning alongside in this 51, yelled "go," I went, just pulling past Frank at the line. Russ finished solo somewhere behind us, followed by the pack (or what was left of it) sprint. I think Jaro was 3rd in the pack sprint, and I heard that the two guys ahead of him were in the 30+ group, so he may have ended up 3rd in the 35+. I never did see the complete results, but anyway the team got 1st in the 35+ and 1st in the 45+ and probably a few more high places with at least Jaro, Keith, Charlie, Jason and Ed in the pack.

Tomorrow I'll start the Cat. 1,2 race, which will probably be combined with the Cat. 3 race. I have no idea how long I'll last, but if it goes hard from the start it will not be good. Perhaps I will be able to find a way to help Reo out in the early part of the race so he has good legs when it counts. We'll see....