MS Gran Prix Stage 1 - Road Race Orphan

I'm sitting here at the hotel (actually, not THE hotel, it's ANOTHER hotel) waiting until it's time to head out to the evening Time Trial course for four miles of torture. Mark, Dave and I drove up early this morning and arrived to find a record-breaking crowd for this year's Mississippi Gran Prix. Although the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium on Friday night had been cancelled because of slick streets, everyone seemed pretty psyched. The masters field numbered 65 or so, with representation from lots of the stronger area teams from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee. As we rolled up to the starting line following the Cat. 1/2/3 start I made sure to get up close the the line because, frankly, I was a little scared by the combination of field size and road width, or lack thereof. We were to do two laps of a nice rolling loop that would give us something like 52 miles. As I'd expected, things started off fast and we flew down the first downhill after the first of many attacks. What I didn't know was that within the first quarter mile there'd been a crash and both of my teammates had gone down. Mark may or may not have broken his collarbone. Dave was a little scraped up but he had gotten back on the road and chased. Jim Phyfer (Herring) got an ambulance ride to the hospital. From what I heard he had a concussion? The problem was that the race was just ballistic for the whole first lap with one attack after the other, so the rider who had gotten gapped off because of the crash never had a chance to catch up. I was totally focused on maintaining a position somewhere near the front where I could respond if something went. This was going pretty well for the first lap and as we came up to the half-mile climb at the end of lap 1 I was expecting another attack. Indeed, three guys ended up opening a little gap, leaving me and Jason in-between them and the rest of the huge pack. This break didn't look too dangerous and after I took a pull and closed the distance a bit, I pulled off only to discover that Jason was drifting back to the pack. This was where I made a crucial mistake. The break had representatives from three teams in it and I was close enough that I probably could have closed it myself because they hadn't really fully committed to their break yet. Instead, I eased up to wait for the pack as one of the always aggressive Jeep riders took off to try and bridge. Well, soon the break really started rolling and the pack was not really responding. Midsouth put a few guys on the front eventually, but it was too little too late and they weren't getting much help, so five miles into the second lap the break was basically out of sight and out of mind. So I knew we were racing for 4th.

The rest of the second lap was definitely slower and it looked for sure like we were in for a big pack sprint up the hill at the finish. I did my best to conserve, but it was important to stay near the front, so it wasn't all easy. As we got within 5km of the finish things started bunching up and it seemed like there were about 40 guys who wanted a shot at the sprint. I was hanging out around Dan Bennett, who has really good pack sense, and we were staying in good position within the front ten or so. Naturally, when we hit the 1 km sign someone attacked and things started to string out. At 500 km the sprint really started, just before the long climb to the finish. I really really had to gut it out for the last 100 meters and found myself in a 3-up sprint with one guy already up the road. I think I ended up 3rd in the pack sprint, but it's hard to say for sure because I was waaaay over my limit.

So after the race I find Mark and Dave already dressed and neither able to race the next stage, so luckily I found Ali from Bicycle World who had an extra bed in the hotel and a car so that Mark and Dave could head back to NOLA where Mark may or may not get his shoulder X-rayed. Hopefully he'll be OK. It was swollen but it was hard to tell for sure if it was broken because it's been broken before.

The Time Trial starts in a couple of hours and this one's never good news for me. My legs already hurt!