Saturday--Henleyville Road Race
photo by Rodney Cox
I remember thinking, “Look at these sneaky dudes rolling off the front,” shortly after the whistle blew. Who would have guessed that the very first move (we weren’t even at the point of attacking yet) of the day would stick to the very end of a seventy mile race? Not me. I was still yawning and talking about the car ride up with fellow racers. After a four hour nap and a three hour car ride up to the race that morning, I was in no way ready to get serious. What did get me serious was seeing a crazed fawn shoot across the road in an attempt to dive through a hole in a barbwire fence that wasn't there. That carnage woke me up, but it was too late, the break was gone. Racers kept trying to get away to join them. I, like everyone else, was marking the lone pro, Taylor Bertrand-Barrett of Wonderful Pistachios, and didn’t want to do anything he wasn’t doing. After forty miles or so I figured that Taylor wasn’t going to shed himself from the peloton and I attacked alone and stayed off the front of the tiny peloton but behind a group of two chasing the leaders. Taylor, however, did get away and soon joined me and later we joined the two ahead which included Will Brickler of Bicycle Planet. We had two minutes on the peloton and three to the leaders, said the moto. In twenty something miles we brought that gap down to twenty seven seconds, we could see the leaders, I was certain we’d catch them! We were really going for it, working together smooth. Until we had a meltdown. We stopped working together, one of the three of us refusing to work, and we never made it. The leaders again went out of sight. I outsprinted Will and Taylor for fifth place, my best result in a road race this year!
Sunday--Oakland Grand Prix
photos by ATN
The following day was the Oakland Grand Prix, day two of my “stage race”. This race is awesome: small hill, lots of corners, in town, and a hairpin. This was the District Championship, and dudes were flying, I think this is one of the fastest races I’ve ever done. Highlights include fighting Eric Wohlberg of Form Fitness for a prime, joining Eric and Kirk Carlsen of Garmin Development in a small break, racing with lots of pros in The Town, finishing seventh, besting my finish last year by one spot, and seeing friends and family in the crowd.
