Up in Tuscaloosa

With the Tour de Tuscaloosa criteriums not starting until afternoon, we had the relative luxury of a 10:30 am departure for the 4.5 hour drive up Interstate 59. The drive went smoothly, although with three bikes on the roof and strong gusty winds the whole way, I was already thinking it would be a hard race. The nice thing was that the weather, aside from the wind, was really nice. As the masters race start time of 4:30 approached I found myself riding up and down a short stretch of road trying unsuccessfully to get warmed up. Finally the prior race finished and they opened the course for us. Half a lap later, everybody stopped at the start line, but as soon as the Ref said we had time to do a lap I took off. It was a longish course with a fast downhill, nice sweeping turn, a crosswind stretch, and then a steep little uphill.

So the race started fairly fast but very jittery. Everyone was crowding the front and when we hit the crosswind stretch they were all crammed up against the downwind edge of the road hitting the brakes and screaming at each other. I quickly figured out that it was better stay to the right, even if it meant being in the wind for a little while. This race seemed to be mostly about the hill, and not too much seemed to happen elsewhere. I started off feeling pretty bad, probably due to an inadequate warmup. After the first ten minutes I was starting to feel a lot better. Nobody ever got off the front for very long today, and with three laps to go I started trying to get a good position for the finish. I was looking pretty good until halfway through the last lap when some of the riders up ahead of me inexplicably eased up and we started to get swarmed by riders from behind. That happened a couple of times on the last lap, but somehow I came around the last corner in the front ten and sitting on Jaro's wheel. Unfortunately the finish line was just one block from the last turn, so the best I could do was 7th.

The Cat. 4s were up next and so I rushed over to the start line to get some pictures. I found all three of them way too far back in the start group. As soon as they started I headed for the far end of the course where the hill was, however, when the group came around I was surprised to see so may riders off the back. Also, I couldn't find the NOBC riders. Well, there had been a crash on the first lap just before the climb and all three of them had gone down. Steve and Rolan got free laps, but Steve M. didn't. Then Rolan came off right away. Anyway, only Steve finished with the front group.

The Cat. 1/2 race wasn't until 8 pm, so we headed out to get something to eat. I called Tim after the race and he said he spent the whole time fighting a stiff link in his chain. Frank crashed, Woody was feeling bad and dropped out. Basically, things didn't go well for the Herring guys, so they're hoping for better luck tomorrow at the road race.