It's on like donkey kong here. I've come back to the place where the home fires burned to get in a series of races before Jeff Cup. It looks like between then and now I'll probably race 8 times including a pair training races. The adventure began with the Spring Fling, which is a four-corner crit with a short downhill and a short uphill on the finishing stretch.
Terrain is not biggest obstacle in Kansas racing, the 20 mph wind and the gutter however do cause some troubles. I'm a rogue rider here but my kits stars and bars are easy to see in a field and led to me being marked. The race started quick but I started in the front and after learning my lessons at Valley of the Sun, I didn't relinquish that spot.
There were 3 strong teams in the field and they kept taking shots off the front. I kept leaping to the breaks and the field kept coming with me. I found myself in a break of two which was working but my cohort let me drag him around in the tailwind section and then jumped me in the head wind. This of course drew an expletive from me and I sat up and let the field catch me. A solo rider is not going to survive in this wind.
Somehow a 3-man break got up the road about 5 to go. It was one of a bazillion breaks but this one somehow stuck. So the field was sprinting for 4th and I was determined to fire it up in the sprint ala NCVC days of old.
The finishing stretch was in a head wind and down a slight hill for 300 meters and then up for 100 meters. I hit the final corner in the field in about 5th wheel and drafted down about 250 meters. The guy two in front of me jumped and we rolled with him. I put my sprint down and jumped. I ended up passing someone right at the line and finishing 3rd in the field sprint and 6th overall.
Day two of the weekend featured the Perry Dam Race. Nothing like warming up for your race by riding for an hour and twenty minutes into a 30 mph head wind. The race is only about 15 miles from Lawrence and we always ride out to it because the route is bone flat and along the Kansas River. Today the wind was blowing right into our faces and I was in a group of 3 going 300 watts and holding 14 mph.
The race itself takes the shape of a golf club and goes along an Army Corps of Engineers dam. You head along the top of the dam and then take a sharp right hand corner down a quick hill to a parallel road right underneath the dam. That road then heads left and then right into the club part of the course and into the kicker...a short steep stair stepper.
It was a 4 lap circuit that in total took us about an hour to do. The field was a combine 1/2/3 field and there were a couple boys from Mercy Cycling team. That didn't bother me because one of them was Coach Adam. Lap one was uneventful but saw a third of our field get shattered on the stair stepper.
Lap two was were I put myself in harms way. I had been riding behind Coach Adam, who was a well marked man, and I was content to wait until the hill again to shatter some more of the field Under his breath, or at least I think so, as we are heading down the road under the dam I hear him say "go now, go now." I jumped and got clear of the field. One of the local 3s jumped across to me and we were gone.
We crested the hill and then down onto the dam with the tailwind. We spent the entire lap 3 off the front and just at the crest of the hill Mercy boys joined us and plunged us down across the dam again. From stories afterwards I found out that one of the local squads put together a lap long coordinated effort to catch us in the break. After the catch, they were never seen again.
The lead Mercy rider was holding 450 watts across the dam and we were gutter riding anyone that could stay on, the outside of my foot was literally scrapping the guard rail that separated us from the abyss and I was the 5th rider. The pace let up as it was clear that the field was back together.
Coach Adam then started unleashing repeated attacks and was dragged back each time. One, two, three, four attacks came and it was clear no one was letting him go. The field let up after it caught him a little over 2 miles to the finish. I jumped the field right into the head wind. They let me go. I got up a head of steam and they just let me go. I turned back to look and I was clear.
I couldn't believe it, my stupidity of just throwing myself off again and again. was working. I began the climb and I was spinning and spinning up. I reached the false flat in the middle of the stair stepper and I was still alone. 300 meters to go and I had it in hand. Then from the back right I hear the most unpleasant sound in the world . . . shifting gears.
The field swallowed me hard and spat me out. I wanted to accelerate and jump up the last of the climb. I wanted to launch an assault that would end all assaults, but I didn't have it. My legs were fried my body was dumped. I was 300 meters from winning in a solo break. 3 out of 5 times I would have won.
I spent the better part of half the race off the front either in a two-man break or by myself. If the finish had been flat it would have been over. If I had jumped into a cross wind rather than a 25 mph head wind it would have been over. There were 3 times in the race that I thought I had broken the will of the field. Damn bike racing, when will I learn.
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