Up in Brookhaven

Drove up to Brookhaven Friday evening to drop off the LAMBA race clock, flags, and other race equipment, and to watch the first stage of the Cat 1/2/3 Mississippi Gran Prix. I was surprised to see Keith D. up there. He had decided to ride just the criterium since he was tied up for the weekend and wouldn't be able to ride any of the stages for the masters who only race on Saturday and Sunday. I helped out with the wheel pit as the 50-strong pack zipped around the course, largely in the dark. It looked like it was a pretty fast race. Kenny had two strips of flashing blue LEDs on his front fork, so at least it was easy to pick him out of the pack once it got dark. I tried my best to get some pictures, but none were keepers. There were a lot of riders getting dropped and lapped, and so the officials started pulling riders. Keith was one of the last to get pulled. I was feeling a bit better, so I'd brought the bike and planned to make a decision on race day. I figured that if it was raining Saturday morning, I wouldn't race.

Saturday started out wet and cloudy, but it wasn't actually raining and the radar didn't look too bad, so I went ahead and registered. I was already resigned to riding this race very cautiously and just playing it by ear. With no teammates in the masters race, at least I wouldn't feel guilty about sucking wheels at the back. The masters race had a good sized field of 40 or so. My plan was to sit on the back and enjoy the ride. I was officially packfill today. A couple of guys got away early and were never to be seen again, eventually finishing over four minutes up on the group. Ed N. dropped his chain on the first lap as we rode through the community college (part of Sunday's criterium course), and I saw Charlie drop back to help him. He said he chased for a long time and got tantalizingly close to rejoining the pack at one point, but they were never able to make contact. There was another break that got away, but I think it was eventually reeled back in, so as we approached the end of the 50+ mile race we were racing for 3rd. At the time, I thought we were racing for maybe 5th at best. Since I'd been sitting in for the entire race, my legs felt relatively good, with five or six miles to go I started moving up nearer the front. For the last couple of miles I was behind Jim Brock, which was great since I knew he had a really good sprint. Somehow, Jim got stuck in front with over 500 meters to go. He pretty much had to go for it at that point, and so I got a really nice leadout from him. When he eased up at 200 meters, a few people went streaming past on the left. I hesitated a moment too long, but think I ended up around 7th. Under the circumstances, I was pretty happy with that. After turning around I learned there had been a crash about 300 meters before the finish, so it was lucky that I'd decided to go for the sprint and not just ride in with the back of the pack.

In the Cat. 4 race there was a big crash out on the course and five or six of our guys hit the asphalt or otherwise got tangled up. Stephen Mire got the worst of it, ending up with a big strawberry on his hip and a pretty deep gash on his elbow, along with the usual other stuff. The crash essentially took all of our guys out of the GC competition with two of the guys taking a ride in the wheel truck. The rest of them finished, though, so they'll be racing on Sunday. In the women's race, Mignon had a pretty good race, finishing with the lead group and placing 9th. Judith lost contact somewhere before the finish.

The evening time trial didn't go well for me. I had already been dreading this TT because I knew it would be hard on my lungs. Often, after doing one of these short, intense time trials, my lungs will be kind of trashed for a few hours. I was still occasionally coughing up nasty stuff when making hard efforts, so I was kind of expecting to have problems. Well, after going hard up the very first little climb I knew it wasn't going to work for me today and so I just eased up and rode a really slow TT. I was feeling kind of frustrated about it, but I'm pretty sure that if I'd pushed it like I normally do, my lungs would have been completely trashed. I seem to be recovering from the cold pretty quickly, so it was probably the right decision. I have to admit, though, it was shocking to have my 30-second man pass me like I was standing still (which was pretty close to the case) only two miles into a time trial. I didn't even think to get my time at the finish. So I'm hoping we have dry streets for the criteriums Sunday morning. There are pretty nice stage prizes up for grabs in addition to the GC prizes (which are completely out of reach for me now), so if I'm feeling good maybe I can race with reckless abandon.