A fun time making a horror movie: Winters Road Race Report

Winters Road Race (8/27/11)
30+ Open field (anyone 30+ can enter)
about 70 or so miles and three laps
Christian, John W., Dave P., Devon (written by Andrew A.)

Five of us scheduled to go to Winters, four are present at our meeting time. Missing rider? Devon. He messed up his timing and now we are on our way to pick him up. 6am we start our journey. Drive time is supposed to be two hours and race start is 8:20. Ah, but it is a Velo Promo event. No stress, they start late. We arrive with time to spare. All is well. About 45 guys in our field, including about seven from Third Pillar, six from Wells Fargo and seven from Taleo. We have five (Dave Puglia, Christian, Devon, John Wilde and myself).

Neutral roll out is mellow and we talk with the riders around us. I ask the lone Morgan Stanley rider why he is doing the 30+ cat as it usually is a bunch of teams that want to race together and have riders in different age categories or different race cats. He says, 35+ 1/2/3 field is full so got pushed into ours. Three others in the same situation. Race is mellow the first lap. We hit the hill and pace picks up. Not brutal, but gets us all breathing hard.

Second lap starts and a Taleo rider attacks. Devon jumps on his wheel and I jump on Devon's. We have two that joined us from Third Pillar. Ok, this is a pretty good mix. We start working together, though the Taleo rider is not pulling hard at all and missing a few turns. Three more catch us and we have a good size gap on the field. We are working ok, but about three riders are not taking turns. 25 minutes later, we get caught. Then the hill hits. Not sure what happened, but the wheels start to fall off for me (figuratively). I am struggling to stay on. I am riding second wheel up the first half the climb and then we hit the short steep section. I am like a rock plumping backward through the group. I can barley breath and am within a hair of getting dropped. Christian and Devon go by me and offer words of encouragement. Crap, this sucks.

I barley make it over the top as the last guy of the people left in the group. Probably about 25 of us. Christian paces me back up to the group (thanks!). This mentally shook me. I am now dreading the third lap with another climb. I am running a low budget horror movie in my mind and it does not end well for me. I decide to sit in till the hill and do all I can to recover and then just see how it goes.

Another break goes and Devon and Christian close it down. I am useless in the pack. Finally, I start feeling normal again. Hill approaches and funny enough, I feel darn good. I am second wheel over the top and feel fine. The third climb felt easy to me. I pass the leader on the descent and am out in front. I get a gap and give a bit of a dig. I am off the front but the group is coming. We are down to 14 riders. I am feeling great now and a little giddy that I am back to normal. I sit in the top three and attack once with a Taleo rider, he does not work and we are brought back and once with a Third Pillar rider. Again we are brought back. Still feeling great and have all kinds of happy movies playing through my head. Maybe this is a movie with a good ending after all.

Christian asks me if I want to attack with him when we hit the 1k mark. He says he will burry himself as a lead-out. I figure our sprinter, Devon has the field sprint taken care of so I agree. I am pumped and getting ready. We hit 1500 meters to go and I stand to jump on a Taleo rider that attacked. Uh oh, funny feelings coming from my bike. It can't be. This is a horror movie after all! 69.8 miles of the 70 are complete and I am feeling great. This can not happen now! Well shit…I have a flat rear tire. 3.5 hours of racing, 10 minutes of suffering like a dog on the hill and now I have a flat. I stay with the group as my tire is holding about 20psi. I can feel the rim touching the ground, but the 12 or so left are not moving that fast. I ride with them till about 700 meters to go and then they take off. I ride the last 700 meters alone. What a lonely, crappy 700 meters that was.

On a bright note, turns out Devon claimed third place (that Morgan Stanley rider got the win) and Christian claimed a top ten with a seventh place. Both those guys are riding amazing! John dropped his chain and then jammed it in between his frame and could not get it out. His race ended just after the first lap. Dave did great but the hill got him. He rode with a group of riders in. The race was a lot of fun and riding with the boys was a great time, so in all, there was a happy ending. Of course, I still have a pit about the missed opportunity…arrggg!

Good riding boys!

Andrew