Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Master's Road Nationals - Day's One and Two - The Ticket Puncher Strikes

Somebody finally convinced Rob Anderson that a little rest now and then is a good thing and ever since he's been on a tear.

Yesterday was the Time Trial in Taylorsville, Kentucky. It is a tough course that is about 23.5km long with three pretty tough hills in it and a few more rollers to make sure that if you didn't pace well you would pay for it dearly. Based on past experience and how we are riding we all felt that we had a pretty good chance of winning if things went well. Chris, Craig and myself didn't pace as well as we could have and paid accordingly. Chris was 2nd in the 40-44, Craig was 4th in the 45-49 and I was 2nd. But the big story of the day was that Rob has found his TT legs again and won the 55-59 title by 6 seconds!



BTW, it was hot at the TT, probably around 90 degrees and humid when we raced.



Today was Rob's road race. Today was also supposed to be the hottest day of the week. When his 9 lap (~45 miles) race started the heat index was 115 degrees. On the second lap Rob started a move that included former team mate Wayne Stetina, Dave Leduc, Bill Kellagher and one other. As the laps ticked off Rob popped them off one by one. Stetina went about 4 laps in, Kellagher went with three to go and finally Rob dropped Leduc with one lap to go. We were very worried about Leduc because he is quite a finisher. In the final lap Rob put 2 minutes into Leduc and after the finish Leduc collapsed from the heat. It was brutal just standing in the feed zone and watching let alone racing! Even though we are a bit biased, Craig, Chris and I thought that Rob rode an unbelievably strong race. It bodes well for the World Master's Championships later this month in Austria.

Late in the race, announcer Dave Towle gave Rob a new nickname, "Ticket Puncher" because that's what he was doing all race long, punching tickets!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Howdy,

I was hoping you had a photo of the Men's 55-59 Podium from the Road Race. If so, please post or email hardingr at cunap dot com. I'm looking for it for a bit on our team website (Bill K, Natural Grocers, 3rd place) and would be happy to credit/link the source.

Thanks.