Sunday morning in Tuscaloosa was pretty cold, and I was glad that all of our races were in the "second wave" at noon. Even so, it was still plenty cold by my standards when we arrived at the road race start. I debated with myself about what to wear, and ultimately decided against knee warmers. The Masters race was kind of a series of bad decisions on my part. The course had two significant hills, of which the hardest was just after the feed zone. I had spoken before the race with Brooks who had already been shelled out of the Pro/1/2 race and his advice was, "when you see the feed zone sign, shift to the small ring." So we hit the climb, which wasn't all that bad, and I go up and over back in the middle of the pack. This was a mistake, of course. Up ahead a small group of maybe four riders opened a gap just past the top of the hill. It didn't look dangerous until I realized, too late, that there were teammates at the front of the pack blocking. By the time anybody could get past the break had already opened up a good thirty seconds. All I could say was, "crap!" They remained in sight for a long time, but the chasing was intermittent and mostly ineffective. I was already starting to get irritated, mostly with myself, I guess. I just hate to see a break get away like that. Well, except when I'm in it anyway. So the next lap we go up the same hill and another gap opens. This time I found my way to the front and basically closed it myself. Next time up the hill and I'm apparently on another planet sitting near the back when -- you guessed it -- another small group of maybe three goes clear. I look over at the guy next to me and mumble, "they're going to let another one roll away!" One guy tries to make the bridge, gets within five seconds of the break, and cracks.
So now I'm basically just pissed at myself and apparently decide that appropriate punishment is to go to the front and try to get some help to chase down that second group. Well, I did a lot of work along with a handful of other riders. At one point I get off the front with a couple of other guys, but one of them has a teammate in the break and, being a considerate masters type rider, is nice enough to inform us that he won't be taking any pulls. Anyway, that eventually fizzled. I found myself off the front alone a couple of times just because nobody else would stay with me when I'd take a pull.
I guess were were near the feed zone prior to the last lap when someone standing on the side of the road told us that the break (the second one, not the first one) was "almost a minute up." So at that point I basically threw in the towel and drifted to the back for some R&R. I wasn't sure how many were up the road, but I thought it must be more than the eight prize places. (It turned out we'd be sprinting for the last prize place -- I think we passed someone who had been dropped from one of the two breaks. Anyway, after a fairly uneventful last lap my legs were feeling OK but I was actually starting to get cold.
Finally, a couple of miles before the finish, the pace started to pick up and I couldn't resist getting in on the action even though I didn't think there were any prizes left. Half a kilometer from the finish line we were going flat out and here's where I made a bad decision. I was way over on the right side of the road overlapping the wheel in front of me when the sprint started. I heard Jaro say something behind me and immediately stood up to pass the guy in front of us. Just as I did, he moved over to the right and I nearly went cyclocrossing in the gravel. I had to back off and hit the brake for a moment and spent the rest of the sprint boxed in against the edge of the road. Jaro somehow extricated himself in time from all of that drama and launched his sprint, beating everyone else by at least a bike length. So I ended up 12th overall (5th in the pack sprint), which was respectable but rather frustrating under the circumstances. Definitely lost a couple of places there.
The rest of the New Orleans contingent had a pretty hard day too. Ed N. was sick as a dog on Sunday and didn't start, and Jaro was the only one of the Midsouth guys who finished with the pack in the Masters race. In the Cat. 4 race, which had a pretty big field of nearly 60, Ali had the best finish at 14th and Stephen Mire was 29th. Steve J was surprised that he'd finished as far back as 46th. In the morning's Pro/1/2 race, the Herring guys got Scott into 7th and Bain into 20th, which I though was pretty good considering the quality of the field. The courses were good and challenging for this race and they had a company from TN handling the timing and results, so all that went pretty smoothly. Definitely a race that was worth the trip.
Rolan grabbed my camera and shot some video of the Cat. 4 and Masters finishes.
1 comment:
t'town is a mother. def. shaping up to be one of the toughest race weekends in bama. hard to train for the hills in the big easy, eh? hell, i live in a town full of hills and still get dropped like a rock in tuscaloosa. strong work.
Post a Comment