Riding in the Strawberry Patch (Elite district RR)

Even as we age, the dreams of glory will not fade. 20 years ago, in 1987 I won * this race and here I was again wondering if lightning could strike again after all these years. The short answer was, NO!. For the long answer read on...

Racing with the Pro/1/2 guys is much different than racing with masters. With the races being so much longer you must be VERY patient. I told myself that I would do nothing but sit in for the first half (5 laps) of the race. After that I would look for "the break away". "The break away" tends to go not much after half way at this race, so generally it's not like you and sit in until 10 miles to go. Generally... This can make the race somewhat boring, but you must be VERY careful that you don't get lulled into not paying attention. Master's racing on the other hand tends to be more ballistic early on since the races are so short. But the suffering at the end of a long pro/1/2 road race more than makes up for the early "easy" part!

Anyway, an early break went and there was a Giant Strawberry (Salvador Borrego Crum) and a BPC rider in it. The The BPC and GS riders (and there were many of them) sat up and left it to everybody else. Spine chased for a while, but mostly it was status quo. Then not much after half way Jared from Metro Mint and fellow Geezer Nathan Parks of EMC went up the road. They quickly joined the break and after a lap or so dropped the other guys. This put a wrench into the GS plans and on about the 8th lap they started a team chase. I liked that. Steady, hard is something I can do. And steady hard meant that nobody would go ballistic on the Hennekens Ranch climb. So far it hadn't been any trouble, but I was waiting for one of the GS guys (like Mattis, 3rd at elite nationals or Max Jenkins, looking cool in his U-23 national champion jersey) to cause a great deal of suffering on that climb. But instead if was "steady hard" for the last couple of laps. (Steady hard still meant 400+ Watts for 3 minutes on Hennekens though, but at least it wasn't 500 for 2:30!) Life was good.

The pressure of the GS chase sent a lot of riders out the back until at the bell there were 20 or less of us in the main pack with two guys up the road. Going through the feed zone Ted Huang of Webcor attacked. I was in okay position, but probably not as close as I should have been. But I knew that was "the move" so I went after him. Mattis and Andres Gill (Delta Velo) went also. Unfortunately my acceleration was not strong enough and they went by and linked up while I dangled oh so close. I could not close the gap. For this I have much regret... I dangled for a while in no mans land, but I wasn't closing and ended up back in the pack. Thank you, have a nice day, but the race has left the station with out you.

On the last half lap a couple of guys went off alone and stayed away. At the end Mattis and Huang caught and dropped Jared and Nathan on Hennekens Ranch with Mattis nipping Ted in the sprint. We went hard and I had to dig pretty deep on the last climb but made it over and we were sprinting for 8th I think. I had good position and when the time came, I stood up to start sprinting. At that point my legs said "What the HELL do you think you are doing?!?! SIT YOUR ASS BACK DOWN OR WE'RE GOING ON STRIKE!" So I hobbled across the line for 14th place.

Vital stats.
110 miles in 4:58:00
9,100' of climbing according to my Garmin.
4400 Kilo Joules burned so it was a festive day of eating afterwards!


* Okay, I actually got 2nd but the winner got DQ'd for an illegal feed. Oh yeah, and he was my team mate!