Saturday April 7th
So being that I’m trying to watch Paris Roubaix while writing this race summary, I’m going to try and be as brief as possible and still give a good report of the weekends racing.
Friday I traveled down to Fairhope, AL to spend the weekend with Katie and Joseph from Pro Cycle and Tri and race in the Sunny South Raceway Crit. This was my first time down to their shop since they opened last spring and it was much overdue. Pro Cycle and Tri is located at 510 Fairhope Ave, Fairhope, AL 36532 and is owned and run by Joseph and Katie Bolton. You can find their website here.
Saturday we traveled 45 minutes north to Mobile where I raced. The race length was set for 45 minutes. The field was around 20 deep and the course was a quarter mile raceway that exited the racetrack onto the parking lot to make a swooping teardrop turn and then back into the racetrack. Race laps were around 1 minute in length and wind was negligible. The raceway was a quarter mile track and had banked turns. It reminded me of what a velodrome would look like without the lines.
I lined up and off we went. I was able to get a great start, clipping in immediately as soon as I made contact with the pedal and the gearing I had chosen was right on for the first turn. I mashed hard and pushed taking first through the first turn. I went hard and noticed I had a gap and one rider had come with me, so I said to him, “Let’s go.” We both pushed and attacked hard for about 8 laps~ 8 minutes, and had almost a half lap open up on the chase group but weren’t able to hold them off. Once I got caught the pack reformed and sat up for a lap or two, several riders had already been pulled and most were still hurting from the first 10 minutes, including me. Then one rider started to open a gap and another followed. I was on the front and didn’t have the legs to chase so I let them go thinking we would pull them back. The two riders, one from Desire and Dustin from Fairhope Cycling, got 50 yards then began to hammer, and that’s went another rider from Desire went to bridge to them. Once they had 3 they opened up the gap and began trying to lap the field. At this point I had started to chase but no one wanted to pull through and it became a game of cat and mouse. Then as I pulled off my teammate Reuban attacks and no one goes with him. Reuban chased the break solo for the rest of the day and finished off with a 4th place. I sat up on the front and chased down any attacks that tried to pull Reuban back only to find out after the race that the 3 guys I was chasing down the whole time were the 3 leaders who had already lapped the field, usually when you lap the field you don’t do work but these guys were possessed and riding hard!
I managed to just suck wheels and draft the rest of the race, not letting anyone go off and chase my teammate so I ended up taking home 5th place on the day. Overall I really enjoyed the race course and the thrill of racing in a speedway with banked turns, definitely a different experience than racing around city blocks.
Photo courtesy of Meg Williamson
Photo courtesy of Meg Williamson
Me working to hold the initial break. Photo courtesy of Meg Williamson
Photo courtesy of Meg Williamson
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