Feliciana Race Report and other Entanglements

After a couple of very busy weeks involving things like extension ladders, wedding cakes, and flight delays, I found myself driving up to the Feliciana Road Race early Sunday morning with Christian.  Considering that I had missed a lot of the more intense training that I clearly need this time of year, I figured my best shot for this race would be to ride very conservatively and hope for a pack sprint for the mostly uphill finish.  It didn't exactly work out that way.  Actually it didn't even remotely work out that way.

The Masters race had only 20 riders for the 66 mile road race through the rolling Feliciana hills near St. Francisville, although there were certainly a number of very strong ones in that number. With Mark racing Cat. 3 instead of Masters, where he would finish 4th, my only teammate was Fred.  Donald Davis was without teammates, but as usual that didn't matter one bit.  Acadiana had three, 4D Fitness had two, Midsouth had three, and Peake had two.  From the start I was expecting a number of attacks by Acadiana riders, and was not disappointed in that regard.  Considering the makeup of the field, I was trying to be very attentive near the front and had few options other than to chase anything that moved, hoping to perhaps get into a break. We were maybe five to seven miles into the race when a counter attack launched after I'd chased an earlier break.  Immediately two Acadiana riders and one 4th Dimension rider blockaded the front on the narrow road and I instinctively yelled "No!"  Behind me someone made a number of louder and more concise comments.  With those three soft-pedaling at the front, a 4-rider break that included Donald Davis, Jerry Simon (Midsouth), Kevin Landry (Acadiana) and Bennie Flores (4th Dimension) quickly formed up into team time trial mode. It was a while before I was able to squeeze past on the centerline, by which time our speed had dropped to around 20 mph despite the net downhill. The break was already a good fifteen or twenty seconds off the front and I ramped it up to 28 or so as quickly as I could. With practically every team represented I knew the window was about to slam shut.  As I started to fade, VJ came blasting past at 35 mph and I had to dig pretty deep just to catch his draft as he pushed the downhill up to 39 mph.  I looked up and could see that we'd made up a lot of ground on the break and for a moment at least entertained some hope that we might catch.  If a few more riders could come through, we might be able to close it.  Just then we had to make a left turn onto Highway 10, the pace dropped, and nobody came through.  There were really only three or four riders willing to do any work at all, along with three or four others who were doing their best to interfere with the chase, so the break quickly went up the road.  At that point I decided to make it a hard training ride and spent the next lap and a half (we were doing three laps) taking pulls, launching little attacks up the hills, and generally trying to keep the pace above the embarrassment level. I was getting some help from Chuck of S3 and the Midsouth riders, but for most of the rest of the race the same six riders were at the front either blocking or pushing the pace.  I think our average speed for the first lap was respectable at a bit over 24 mph.  The second lap was more like 23. The last lap was probably more like 21.

A couple of kilometers from the finish line were two significant hills, and as we approached the end of the second lap I was hoping for a big attack there that might split the group. The break by then was long gone. Jason attacked pretty hard on the second hill and as we came over the top the pack had split so we kept the pressure on.  For a few miles we actually had a little paceline going, but it wasn't fast enough to keep most of the group from coming back together.  At that point I pretty much threw in the towel.  This whole time I'd been thinking there were 5 or 6 in the break, so I wasn't really racing for anything.  For the last five or six miles Jorge, who along with Charles Kibbe had been very attentively monitoring the front for his teammate in the break, sat on the front and just towed everyone toward the finish at a modest 22 mph average pace.  I have to admit I'd completely lost all motivation by then and just sat in the paceline at about third wheel. 

THE CAT. 3/4 FINISH WAS PRETTY CLOSE.

The finish stretch of this race really starts about two miles from the finish with a pretty good climb, followed by a downhill, and then a final climb that starts about a kilometer before the finish and levels off with 300 meters left to go.  Someone attacked right at the bottom of the last climb and I went with that group pretty easily, but then the suddenly blew up and I got trapped with Chuck and some others as another group streamed past on the left.  By the time I got around it was pretty much over but Chuck was going pretty good so despite my general lack of motivation I latched onto his wheel until it leveled out and then took a shot at the 4th Dimension rider who was starting to blow up ahead of me.  I'd have passed him if I'd had another twenty feet of road, but I didn't and ended up 8th, which wasn't too surprising to me considering how much work I'd done earlier and my general mental attitude.  I was still feeling pretty frustrated about not having been in the breakaway as I drove home an hour later after post-race jambalaya, a lite beer and a coke. 

In the Cat. 1/2/3 race Ben Bradley and Ryan Barnes had gotten into an early break with Corey Ray and Adam Morris and ended up doing an 80-mile team time trial at an average speed of over 25 mph.  Ryan was kicking himself for letting a gap open because he thought Corey was pretending to be tired.  As it turned out, he was cramping, and when Ryan tried to force him to close the gap, Ben saw the opportunity and put the hammer down.  Ben and Adam sprinted it out for first and second, while Ryan had to TT the last couple of miles.

So on Memorial Day we had a nice city ride out to Chalmette battlefield and then to the WWII museum where one of the surviving veterans told the group stories about his experiences in Germany.  We finished up at the Morning Call in City Park with beignets and coffee.  My legs were still hurting from Sunday and after spending a couple of hours on an extension ladder painting one of the three window frames on the front of the house I decided to call it a day, and a week.

This morning I was feeling kind of achy all over and went out to meet the morning ride wondering if it was really such a good idea.  It turned out to be a pretty hard ride, and although my legs were not all there I felt OK.  I did, however, pass on the 30 mph sprint to the Huey P. Long bridge.