April 22, 2012
Well after a good night sleep and being one attack short
on yesterday’s crit, I was eager to get out and race the road race today. The weather was chilly, not getting much
above low 60’s and winds upward of 10-15mph with gust in the 20’s. John, David, and myself raced in the 4/5’s
today with Alan, Mick, and Lynne doing the Cheaha Challenge at 102 miles.
We got a good warm-up in and lined up to go. The first several miles were smooth with a
nice roll out then we hit the first climb at almost 2 miles and uphill the
whole way, hitting 10%+ grade at spots.
This first test took the field from 57 down to 30 something really fast,
shedding a lot of the field within the first 15 minutes of the race. Once we got a gap we began to hit it and
finally organized to work a rotating paceline around 12 miles in. At 30+ riders this was long and inefficient
at times, but it allowed for a safer race and gave me some time to recover the
legs from the hard start.
A group of 2 got away from the group and got a 2 minute
gap on us and ended up holding on to the gap all day, which in the wind we had
was very impressive to say the least. We
climbed through the rolling hills up toward Cheaha State Park with minimal
attacks and relatively smooth riding for a race. Once we hit the turn around~ 30 miles, the
first attacks started coming and didn’t really let up, shedding more riders, at
one point I was on the verge of puking and almost got shed, only to attack enough
to make it back on the pack and stay. Our
speeds stayed in the mid 20’s most of the day with an overall average speed of
over 22mph and 3.5k of climbing for 57 miles.
As we made our way through the rollers, riders slowly
kept dropping off and by the last big climb back over 8 miles out from the
finish we were getting close to 20 or so left in our pack. My pre-race goal was to be in the main group
at the top of this last climb because it was a fast long decent onto a flat 3
miles, into a head wind it turned out, and put myself in a position to contest
the sprint finish. Well after all day
staying on the pack and riding strong, 200m from the top of the last climb I
began to fade, before I knew it there was a gap and about 12 guys were beginning
to crest the summit. I stood and gave
chase but as they crested they opened up 200m on me, I had a gap on the rest of
the few who were shed up the climb so I was stuck in no-man’s land, with close
to a mile decent I leaned over the bars and got aero and tried to chase them
down but with 10+ pacelining it down the hill I just watched the gap go from
50m to 400m. Even though I was hitting
speeds close to 40+mph, 1 just can’t catch 12.
By the time I hit the bottom of the hill, they were a good 1minute ahead
of me and I began seeing a chase of 3 coming up behind me. I sat up to wait for them then jumped on to
try and bridge. 2 of the riders were useless
and didn’t pull at all so we dropped them and moved on to start catching riders
getting dropped from the front group of 12.
The head wind at this point only allowed us to go about 15mph and was
just demoralizing after 55 miles in the saddle.
We picked off one rider who sat on for several minutes then attack the
last 200 to take 13th, I let up and gave 14th to the
rider who I was working with the last 3 miles because he was taking longer
pulls and was the stronger rider and it was just the gentlemanly thing to
do.
Overall I ended up 15th on the day and 1:30
off the front pack. I can’t really
complain about my finish because I accomplished my pre-race goal of staying
with the pack until the last climb but once again I just didn’t have the legs
to make it the last little bit.
I’m looking forward to resting the next couple weeks and
doing some mtb races. The next road race
is the state crit championships in Huntsville in 3 weeks and I look forward to going
after another state champion’s medal.
Here is my strava from the race.
