Meager Consolation

There was a surprisingly big Giro Ride group this morning, considering that there are three races this weekend within driving distance. With Reo and Bain up in Arkansas for the Joe Martin stage race, along with some of the local masters riders, I was a little surprised to see Tim out on the lakefront. When asked, he said something about mother's day, which was, in fact, a popular complication today. Every year I tell myself I'm going to do Joe Martin and every year something comes up that weekend, so I guess I shouldn't be critical of the other guys. After all, there I was in the Saturday Giro Ride group myself on a weekend with a major stage race in AK and a nice Omnium in MS.

The Giro Ride got going pretty early today and was relatively interesting with little groups off the front for much of the time. Tim, in fact, had no interest whatsoever in going slow and had a lot to do with the fast pace of the ride. With the warm temperatures and light tailwind I was feeling pretty good myself as the group rushed out to the turnaround. Coming up to the turnaround sprint I saw Tim roll up on my left and look down to check which gear he was in. He gave me a quick "get on my wheel" glance and launched. I sat on his wheel as he pounded, out of the saddle, up over 30 mph. By the time he started to slack off, though, my legs were pretty much toast too and I hesitated to come out of his shadow for a moment. Just then I heard Rob come rocketing past us on the right to take the official Giro sprint prize. The ride back got back up to speed pretty fast today, which is how I like it, but when I tried to drop back a bit for a rest I ended up stuck all the way at the back of a very long line of riders for a while. Finally, the pace eased up just a touch as we started to near the Goodyear Sign sprint and I took the opportunity to move way up toward the front, arriving just in time for the pre-sprint surge. We still had a long way to go, maybe half a kilometer or better, when I saw Tim get stuck out in the wind on the front. I was right behind him and still carrying a little momentum, so I went past to give him some draft and started to accelerate. We had a little gap and I thought I could get him pretty close to the finish before blowing up. Well, maybe not quite. I started to bog down earlier than I'd hoped and had to leave him out on his own again with a good 300m still to go. I think maybe it was Matt or somebody who came past before the sign. Next thing I know there's a little group off the front again, so another chase started pretty soon. Everything came back together, though, by the time we made the turn onto Bullard, but it didn't last long. A small group started to roll off the front as Charlie said "why do you guys keep letting these gaps open?" A few of us started to chase, but for the most part the pack was done for the day and by the time we hit Hayne there were just two of us chasing a group of four or five that was a good 20 seconds. The best I could do was 24-25 mph, but I still ended up chasing alone well before the two bridges and although I got pretty close by sprinting up the Casino bridge, it opened up again and I never could bring it back until they sat up on Lakeshore Drive.

It was a good workout today, albiet meager consolation for missing some good racing this weekend. The photo is from the parking area on West End Blvd., where the Giro Ride starts and finishes, looking north toward the lake.