Last weekend was the 4th annual Pensacola Cycling Classic. Although the road season was already beginning to wind down, I just couldn't help but register once again for this race. Like last year, they had a separate 50+/60+ class, and since it was the end of the season I went ahead and registered in my age-appropriate group despite the fact that the prizelist there was meager and my chances of winning back any significant portion of my travel expenses slim. To trim the cost down a bit I took Donald Davis up on his offer to bunk at his house in Pensacola, and to make the drive less boring I picked up Graeme on Friday afternoon en route to Interstate 10 East.
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| Mark had a very good race in the 40+ group |
We arrived with plenty of time to pick up packets down in Pensacola Beach and then backtrack a bit to Donald's house where there was pasta and sauce waiting. Donald's daughter arrived shortly thereafter, straight from the hospital after having a new baby. That's around when Donald mentioned that they weren't awarding any bonus points for the stage race. I hadn't read the entire race bible yet, but that kind of surprised me. It certainly handed the good time trialists a big advantage while kind of slapping the sprinters in the face. There were, at least, stage prizes, but for my antique age group they were pretty small, so I went into the 50-mile road race with its long flat drag race to the finish line with even less optimism than usual. The 2-lap race had some low rolling hills and one particularly long one, but did not present enough difficulty to split things up unless the racing got very aggressive, which it didn't. The first lap featured a rather embarrassing amount of wheel-sucking aside from a handful of riders, myself included, who tried to keep the pace up. At one point I had rolled off the front when I heard a rider yelling "Go, go, go!" behind me. He had obviously just attacked the field and was hoping to take me along. Without looking around I jumped to my feet and caught his wheel nicely as he came past. We worked together for a while at what I thought was a pretty good pace but somebody back there eventually put the hammer down and towed the whole field up to us.
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| Graeme went solo for a few laps |
It wasn't until halfway through the second lap before it started to feel like a race, and by then I was feeling the effects of all my time at the front. A totally expected attack on the long climb almost put me out of the race as a gap opened toward the top and I struggled to get going on the long false flat that followed. Fortunately a couple of other riders came by and we worked together for about a mile, finally catching the rest of the field that had inexplicably eased up. By then I was starting to feel a couple of leg muscles starting to cramp. With three or four miles to go one of the stronger riders planted himself on the front and basically towed the whole field nonstop. I was sitting right on his wheel expecting an attack that never really came, but with a couple of kilometers to go I dropped back because I was fully expecting my leg to cramp up if I tried to sprint. It was probably a mistake. Anyway, the sprint started really early and everything got strung out, with me still afraid to stand up and sprint. Then I found Stanley's wheel and tucked in behind him as he just motored along, passing a bunch of rider who had blown up because of the early sprint. I think I was around 6th. Apparently I was also the 2nd 60+ rider.
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| Robert in the Cat. 1/2/3 race |
The 3-mile TT on the beach was scheduled for 3:30, which was probably less than an hour after the last of the women's road races would have finished about thirty miles away, so I was fully expecting a very late start list, if any. It was after 3:00 when a couple of officials showed up, one of which had a clipboard with the start list. He never posted it. He just stood there near the start and every rider had to come up to him and ask when his start time was. I got in a little warmup and, as luck would have it, the rider ahead of me didn't show, so I would have even less motivation than usual, which isn't much. The wind turned out to be mostly crosswind and didn't seem to matter much, so I rolled up to 25-26 mph and thought to myself, "This is good enough," and just cruised along at a pretty steady speed with a little kick at the end. Very, very late that night some badly formatted results straight from some chip-timing software were posted and I saw that while it was good enough for 1st in the 60+ age group, it was nearly a minute slower than the best 50+ time. Situation normal. We were using disposable chips stuck to our helmets this year and they were having problems with the system, so there was a fair amount of confusion with missed riders and questionable times. We never saw any posting of GC standings, and still haven't (it's Tuesday afternoon as I write this). The chip timing company they used had never done a stage race and the officials seemed to be unable or unwilling to put together meaningful results postings.
So the old guys' criterium in downtown Pensacola started at 7 am. Yes, 7 am. I needed a nightlight in the portable toilet, but at least it was still fairly cool when we started. There were still no GC results, and with no bonus points on the line and small stage prizes (I still don't know if we were all racing for the same stage prizes or if they were just giving those to the 50+ riders) the only strategy would be a break. However, a 30-minute criterium doesn't offer much opportunity for that. On the second lap there was a strong attack that took us up to 30 mph, and a few laps later I found myself off the front with a couple of other riders. I figured I may as well work with it and see what happened since we had a pretty good gap. Eventually the US Military rider went to the front of the pack and towed everyone up to us, but the pace remained fairly fast with a few extremely fast laps here and there. I was surprised we didn't drop more riders. The US Military rider launched a hard attack with maybe five laps to go, but there were still too many fresh legs for him to stay away and it came back together. Then the same rider who had stayed at the front at the end of the road race went to the front of the criterium where he stayed. Nobody would come around him and, once again, I found myself on his wheel for the final laps. Just after the bell he jumped hard and I thought to myself, "This is perfect!" It was essentially a final lap leadout with me second wheel. What could go wrong? That last lap averaged 29.5 mph. Well, between the second-to-last corner and the last corner he suddenly eased up and looked back! Yikes. He looked back! Immediately three riders jumped, two on the right and one on the left. By the time I could get around him we were at the last turn and I was 4th, which is where I stayed to the finish. Respectable, but a little disappointing under the circumstances. Anyway, I won the 60+, which felt almost embarrassing. It was the first time I have raced in such an ancient age group. I would love to know where I placed overall in the combined 50+/60+ race, and eventually, assuming I finally get the actual results in the correct format, I will have to filter out the 50-54 riders and re-score the GC for the LAMBRA LCCS rankings. That will no doubt drop me down to 2nd place for the year since Scott McManus would have had a better GC time than I thanks to my abysmal TT time, which is OK since he has been racing really well this year.
So the old guys' criterium in downtown Pensacola started at 7 am. Yes, 7 am. I needed a nightlight in the portable toilet, but at least it was still fairly cool when we started. There were still no GC results, and with no bonus points on the line and small stage prizes (I still don't know if we were all racing for the same stage prizes or if they were just giving those to the 50+ riders) the only strategy would be a break. However, a 30-minute criterium doesn't offer much opportunity for that. On the second lap there was a strong attack that took us up to 30 mph, and a few laps later I found myself off the front with a couple of other riders. I figured I may as well work with it and see what happened since we had a pretty good gap. Eventually the US Military rider went to the front of the pack and towed everyone up to us, but the pace remained fairly fast with a few extremely fast laps here and there. I was surprised we didn't drop more riders. The US Military rider launched a hard attack with maybe five laps to go, but there were still too many fresh legs for him to stay away and it came back together. Then the same rider who had stayed at the front at the end of the road race went to the front of the criterium where he stayed. Nobody would come around him and, once again, I found myself on his wheel for the final laps. Just after the bell he jumped hard and I thought to myself, "This is perfect!" It was essentially a final lap leadout with me second wheel. What could go wrong? That last lap averaged 29.5 mph. Well, between the second-to-last corner and the last corner he suddenly eased up and looked back! Yikes. He looked back! Immediately three riders jumped, two on the right and one on the left. By the time I could get around him we were at the last turn and I was 4th, which is where I stayed to the finish. Respectable, but a little disappointing under the circumstances. Anyway, I won the 60+, which felt almost embarrassing. It was the first time I have raced in such an ancient age group. I would love to know where I placed overall in the combined 50+/60+ race, and eventually, assuming I finally get the actual results in the correct format, I will have to filter out the 50-54 riders and re-score the GC for the LAMBRA LCCS rankings. That will no doubt drop me down to 2nd place for the year since Scott McManus would have had a better GC time than I thanks to my abysmal TT time, which is OK since he has been racing really well this year.
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