Fast and Flat

My internal alarm clock went off at 5:45 right on schedule Sunday morning, so I rolled out of the luxurious pillow-top bed at the Hampton and shuffled down to the lobby for a bracing cup or two of watery hotel coffee and one of those little donut things they always have. Soon, another hotel guest sat down at the table and I quietly sipped my coffee while he told me his life story. The Cat. 5 race was the second one on the schedule today, so we packed the three bikes back into Ed's Jeep and headed over to the nearby criterium course, arriving about when the Women's race started. I could feel some stiffness in my legs from Saturday's time trial effort, but that was to be expected, I guess. My own race wasn't until 11:00, so I had a few hours to kill watching the other races, taking pictures, and trying to stay in the shade.

In the Women's race, Vivian and Judith looked to be in defensive mode, marking the attacks but not making any big efforts off the front. I was a little surprised to see that race come down to a big field sprint. The course was a fast and flat loop through a business park and featured silky smooth asphalt and some nice shady oak trees for the spectators. Out on the course, though, there was no shade to be had, and a strong headwind was keeping the speed down on the back side. Of course, that meant a roaring tailwind for the long finish straight where even a modest effort would take the group well up into the 30s.

The Cat. 5 race was nice to watch, with the NOBC team doing a fine job of controlling things for Ed who was leading on GC. The Cat. 5 race was being run as an omnium instead of a stage race, so a high placing was important despite the fact that Ed had put something like 50 seconds on the rest of the race in Saturday's time trial. Thanks to their efforts nothing was able to escape, so he scooped up a few points at the hot spot, and then finished it off by winning a blazing drag race to the finish line at well over 40 mph.

By the time the 50-minute Masters got underway it was starting to get pretty warm out there on the asphalt. Although I was standing at 7th on GC, I was kind of expecting to drop down to 8th or 9th since both of the guys behind me were just 3 seconds away and I still had zero confidence in my sprinting ability. My main focus was on staying near the front and not missing any key breaks. The race was pretty fast, thanks largely to repeated attacks by the Jeep team. I started out trying to stay out of the fray, but after the hot spot sprint came and went I started feeling a little more ambitious and found myself at the front a few times responding to attacks and pulling when the pace would slacken too much. Whenever there would be a prime or hot spot or just another attack, we'd come past the finish line and into turn #1 at 30-32 mph, which resulted in a couple of the guys doing some off-roading in the grass on the outside. When we finally saw the "4 laps to go" card I was still feeling OK and decided to get in on the action a little bit. As usual, I wasn't the only one with that idea and so for the last few laps the pace got very erratic as guys would attack, we'd get strung out chasing, and then it would bunch up again.

When the bell rang for the last lap I was a little farther back than I liked, but the group was pretty small and I didn't have much trouble moving up to maybe 5th wheel coming into the final turn. As we rounded that one a couple of guys were playing bumper cars on the outside and lost their momentum and I ended up swinging over to the left and into the wind. By then, though, we were getting a full tailwind and I was fully committed to a very long sprint. I think I was already in the 53x12 when we rounded the last corner, so all I could do was spin it up as fast as I could. Mark from Midsouth and Dan from Pearland were battling it out just ahead of me, and for a moment I tried to get a little bit of Mark's draft but wasn't too successful. It was still a very long way to the finish and I could see Jeep riders on either side of me. I was rather shocked that there wasn't a stream of riders coming past us at that point, considering the tailwind. About 50 meters from the line I figured I'd had enough for the day and backed off a bit. I guess my usual motivation hasn't quite fully returned yet. The Jeep guys came past me just before the line, but I was still pleased as punch to have ended up 5th in the criterium and 6th on GC, which was a lot better than I'd been expecting Saturday morning.

We didn't stick around for the finish of the Cat. 1/2/3 race because of domestic commitments, but I was glad to see that Herring kept Chris in first place and that his teammates Frank and Scot took 1st and 2nd in the criterium. It looked like there must have been a 3-man break that finished about 20 seconds up on the pack. Anyway, it was a fun and long-awaited weekend of bike racing immersion for me and now I'm wishing for more races. There's nothing on the local calendar until mid-August.

The Lafayette club did a great job promoting and organizing this race and I was really glad I'd gone. The location is great for attracting some fresh riders from the Houston area, as evidenced by the 23 rider women's race. I think half of that field was probably from some place in Texas and it looked like they had a pretty good race.