Rocky Mount Race Report

A big black snake about seven feet long slithered across the road in front of me as I warmed up for the road race stage of the Rocky Mount Stage Race on Saturday. The guy next to me looked over and remarked, "Does that mean bad luck?" I was already feeling the effects of sleep deprivation, and it took me a minute to process the reference to the "black cat crossing your path" superstition. Circumstances being what there were, Sam and I had hit the road at 12:45 am to make the 6-hour drive up to Shreveport in time for Sam's Cat. 1/2/3 race. My own Master-45+ race wasn't scheduled to start until around 11 am, so once the first wave to started, I got in an hour's nap in the car after spraying myself liberally with insect repellent. The Cat. 1/2/3 and Cat. 4 races had pretty good-sized fields.

Since this event has separate races for 35+, 45+ and 55+ masters, the field sizes tend to be fairly small, and for my 45+ race we had only 19 on the line for the road race. I like this particular road race course. It has a couple of significant climbs on it, not the least of which is a long 1 km uphill to the finish line. This year the race seemed fairly defensive for some reason. Most of the attacks were chased down pretty quickly. There was a hot spot bonus at the top of one of the climbs shortly after the start of the second of three laps, and since I figured I'd lose a bunch of time in the afternoon Time Trial as usual, I definitely wanted to take a shot at it. Well, I guess sleep deprivation must agree with my legs, because I won the hot spot with its ten second bonus. The second lap was relatively active and at one point I got into a little break that I thought might have a chance, but once again it was chased down. I'm sure if there had been a larger field, there would have been a good counter-attack after that one, but I guess there just wasn't enough reserve horsepower in the group this year. Sometimes after a little break would get caught, the pace would slow down to an embarrassingly slow speed. As we came to the final four miles I started to focus on keeping a good position near the front but out of the wind. At the start of the hill, with nearly a kilometer to go, someone jumped. That's what usually happens, and it really presents a bit of a dilemma because although it will typically break up the group, it's way too early for most people, including me, to start the sprint on this course. I was lucky to be able to stick on a wheel within the front five all the way to the top of the climb. At that point there are another 200 meters to the line and it's really hard to make yourself stand up and sprint. Luckily, I was comfortably on the wheel of Dona Grant who was picking off the riders ahead of us one by one. When he finally stood up to sprint, I went too but the finish line was coming up pretty fast. Right at the line I threw the bike across the line, just pipping Dona, who didn't realize I was even there, by a tire's width. Lucky win! Sam and I retired to our hotel room for a few hours to bolt on aero bars. For some reason I wasn't feeling sleepy, although I had essentially been awake for maybe 30 hours. Go figure. In the 35+ race, Jason got into a nice break but there was someone in there who wasn't willing to work, so the attacks started and when Jason countered one of them he got away, eventually finishing over four minutes up on 2nd place.

The afternoon time trial started at a boat launch in Shreveport where the swollen river had flooded the launch itself and some of the nearby facilities. There was a brutal wind blowing and the sky was cloudy ahead of an approaching cold front, and I was expecting the worst. I had borrowed a pair of aero wheels from Steve for this TT, but nonetheless I was expecting the first two miles into the wind to be bad enough to limit my speed to the low 20s. As it turned out, the headwind wasn't as bad as I'd expected (and the tailwind wasn't as good). I was still programmed for a cautious upwind leg, though, and was holding a bit in reserve as a result. It was probably a mistake. After the turnaround I was back up into the 27-29 mph range for most of the way, finally dumping it down a cog or two for the last half mile where I gutted it out at 30-31. After cooling down I concluded that I probably should have pushed it a bit harder on the way out, and thought I might have done a bit better if I'd ridden the whole thing one cog higher.

Ricky sent me the results after 10:30 pm that night, but by then my need for sleep had caught up with me. I woke up around 3:30 am, checked my email, and spent half an hour posting the interim results to the LAMBRA website. I was surprised to find that I'd posted the 4th fastest time in my race, so I was still hanging onto 1 place on GC by a slim 2 second margin. Jut to put my TT into perspective, though, I should note that my time of 10:54 wasn't even in the same time zone as the winner of the Cat. 1/2/3 race, Matt Davis (that's he in the photo from the crit. in front of one of the new LAMBRA banners), who posted a 9:24. I wouldn't even have made the top 20 in that race.

So Sunday morning we awoke to a cold rain. Not exactly ideal criterium weather. I looked at the radar and could see that there was some hope, but it all depended on when the cold front actually moved through. We arrived at the L-shaped criterium course in a light rain and just sat there in the car for a long time. The rain got heavier and I felt sorry for the women who were racing in the midst of it. By the time I got my bike put together my feet were wet and I was freezing cold. I searched my bag, but I didn't even have a pair of arm-warmers in there, so I put on two jerseys, slipped an old Tyvec race number between them to protect my chest, and as soon as the women's race finished I went out onto the course to try and warm up. At the start line it was obvious that a lot of our field had bailed out because of the rain and cold. I stood there waiting for the start, looking down at my blue knees, trying to control the shivering. The rain had finally stopped, but the road was soaking wet, so the first half of the race was cold and wet with constant wheel spray throwing water and grit into my face.

My only viable strategy for this race was to stay off the front, conserve my energy, and go 100% for the hot spot and finish bonuses. As usually happens when I'm cold, my legs felt like lead. The race itself was mostly pretty tame, thanks I'm sure to the sketchy wet U-turns and small field. I barely got the 2nd place hot spot bonus, and at the finish was lucky to get 3rd. It's strange how the day before, sprinting felt great, but on Sunday it felt terrible. I think it has something to do with my being cold, though. Somehow, once all the numbers were added up I ended up keeping my 1st place on GC and taking home enough to cover my entry fee and a stop at Wendy's on the way home. Sam, riding his first road race and stage race in years, survived the road race quite well, finishing with the main pack but well behind the leaders. The Cat. 1/2/3 criterium was pretty hard, and since he was only able to hang in near the back he was having a pretty hard time. With two U-turns on this course, it was like doing non-stop sprint intervals. He finally got popped off the back and called it a day. By then the front had come through and the weather was beautiful with a clear blue sky, strong wind, and dry road. I posted some photos on the NOBC site, and there are some other photos on Ryan's blog (Ryan rolled a tire near the end of the crit and it took a few stitches to put him back together. That's he signing some paperwork for the paramedic), and Alan put a bunch up on his KodakGallery site. All-in-all, it was a fun race even though the field was a bit thinner than last year.