Lynchburg cat 1/2/3 and 3 combined: 2nd combined, 1st cat 3

(Photos by Jeffrey Jaukucyk, (c) 2008)

Nick, Chip, Alex, Brett and I dared the crummy weather report to race at Lynchburg today, where luckily for us the predicted rain stayed away. Because of the cold, turnout was down, and the organizers combined the 1/2/3s and the 3s together and also bunched the 4s and 5s. So Alex and Brett got to race with total newbies and we 3s got to race with Texas Roadhouse and Huntington. Yay.

I've never seen a race go down quite like this one. There's not much to tell: we rolled out for three miles, then the first break went ... and stuck until the end. No back and forth of attacks and chases, no stretching rubber bands. 3 miles and it was down to 7 riders, 3 from the 1/2/3 race and 4 from the 3. Fortunately for me, I was the next-to-last rider to make it in, just before Kirk Albers came up like a bullet, went straight to the front and made sure we had open road behind us.

That makes it sound easy, but the pace was pretty high when the break went. And once we were in it, we were hell bent for leather for quite a while, especially when Kirk was on the front. He'd blow apart our rotation and string us out for a good half mile. The only time I feared getting dropped was when I got caught out in the crosswind as he was winding up. The wind was pretty strong and there was no place I could get a real draft. I drifted back to the rear of the line, but the lane was too narrow to fit 7 riders echeloned out, so I still had no shelter from the crosswind. The gap was 5 meters from me to the last rider and I just ... couldn't ... close it. Thirty more seconds and I would have been gone, but right then Kirk pulled off, everybody slowed to get their breath back, and I made it back into shelter.

The race within the break started with about a half lap to go. I think everyone believed we had a pretty good gap after 4 laps of concerted effort, so we weren't afraid to get slow. Which we did. At one point, I was glued to Blair from Echelon's wheel as he zigzagged across the road at 18mph. Ryan Vingris from Anthem razzed me and I had to agree it was pretty silly, so the three of us rode to the final stretch side by side.

Once we took the right hand turn onto the final 1km stretch, the fourth cat 3 in the bunch, a Raisin Rack rider I didn't know, offered us a leadout. My three thoughts for the sprint were: cover Blair, who I figured was the strongest sprinter; don't go early, as there's a strong wind which will slow me down; and go on the downwind side, so's not to let anyone slingshot through my draft. In the end, I only accomplished the first. Blair went way to early, about 250m out, but I jumped a few seconds later with 200m still remaining. I got up to speed, looked up and thought, uh oh, those people at the finish are still a long way off. Looked under my arm and saw a wheel anchored to mine. Crap. Nothing to do now though, I'm committed. Sure enough, with 100m to go, the rider came around me -- slingshoting through my draft on the downwind side, just what I meant to avoid. But it turned out that it wasn't the whole break blowing by me, just Kirk Albers. I held him to a little less than a bike length but had no chance of closing.

So that's it. It was fun, I'm tired and more than a little brain dead. Apologies again for the long report. Nick and Chip did some great work in the pack helping us stay away. I heard from Nick that he was feeling strong coming into the bell lap until a junior rider put a skewer into his front wheel and broke his spoke. Chip held in there for a good long time given it was his first race of the year -- nice work, brother. And Brett and Alex were their usual sprint monsters in the 4/5 heat. They'll have to fill you in with the details.