Saturday, May 3, 2008

Go right. NO, YOUR OTHER RIGHT!

Well, it was time for the annual trip to Poolesville, MD. It's as close to a Paris-Roubaix event we have in this region. I've done well here over the years, but haven't had a team to be able to deal with the race properly. 74 fun miles were on tap for the day. It's a fairly easy course until you get to the graveled road section. It's a fight to be one of the first few in and if you are unlucky to be in the middle or back of the pack, you have to deal with all of the bumps and rocks that you cant see, the choking dust (if it's dry as it was this year), and the wrecks. My race lasted about 5 miles. I knew every year I've come down here that the extreme right side of the road is the best. There are fewer holes to dodge and less of a chance of dropping down into the poison ivy and other crap that is there. I was on the right. Wait, your other right, Jay. Dammit, I've done the race around 5 times and never had the misfortune of flatting. Right after the cycling gods were having a good laugh about my launching water bottle, all of a sudden, POW. It was one of those rifle shot type POWs. The kind where you know that not only has your day ended, but that sewup, so lovingly glued and centered on the wheel is totally screwed. Then, I guess the wheel van doesn't stop for everyone. Maybe you had to throw a water bottle at them to get them to stop, but I only had 1 to spare. Well, I'd paid my money, so I road back to the car on the flat, got the spare, popped it on the bike and was just getting out to the final turn of the course to start a new lap and I saw the field cruising through the corner and they were open for business. This was just getting worse. I didn't even have enough time to catch the follow vehicles and try to draft up thru to the pack. I dumped it into the 12 tucked down in and ratcheted the pace up. For the next 4 miles, I kept the bike meter pegged at around 50kph. Looking up, I made up no ground. This was starting to hurt. The philosopher inside the head started talking. Have I mentioned that it gets crowded in here sometimes? It was time to make it a good training ride. I continued a decent pace, though I did back it down a couple of notches on the ouch meter. I road through the womens field that was breaking apart. I came up on one rider from the cyclocross fields who was looking like she was hurting. I coaxed her along and was very resolute about saying, 'NO QUITING ALLOWED'. She wound up sticking it out. After the race, she said she was almost crying, but she rode it in. Good girl. As for me, I popped onto the back of what I thought was the 123 field after about 20 miles of solo effort. I later found out it was the 3-4 field. I stayed on the back and even though there were a few big accelerations, I was pretty much sitting at the back scratching my butt. A couple riders who didn't have anyone handing them off bottles went dry and I tossed them one. It's always good to make friends. The second time thru the gravel section with them was a bit of an adventure. The line went right down the middle (see above). I stayed on the right. There seemed to be only 1 or 2 other riders who saw what I knew. The right was the easy side. Without really pushing too hard, I rode past half the field and was feeling pretty good when all of a sudden, the rider about 5 yards in front of me did a nifty pirouette and a sideways endo. Luckily, he was just stunned and had a bit of a fold on his top tube. The bike was shot, but he was ok. I made sure he was ok on the ride since I wasn't really racing anymore. Then, to add insult to injury, he got a flat in the same way I did earlier. I'm just sure the cycling gods were laughing their asses off by now. At the end of the day, I found the strength is there. The positioning is there. The ability to react to acclerations is there. The only thing missing was luck. Tomorrow, I'll go ride the opening road race of the WV series I'd won last year. There are several new races this year and I think I'd like to defend the 40+ series rather than be too ambitious in the 123s. Besides, we've got two riders on our team who'll kick my butt into next week. Why not have the team go for both series?

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