Vacaville - a perfect race

photo by Alex Chiu Photography
Kevin is on fire! With his house remodel running over budget, he backed off his goal to go to Road World's in Italy to target Masters Road Nationals, which starts next Wednesday with the time trial.

For the 26 years that our team has been around Nationals and World's have, and always will be the goal. Local races like the Vacaville Grand Prix serve to hone race fitness, criterium skills and team tactics. Put another way - Vacaville is a Velopromo event, so we know the prize list is a joke, but it's also a classic downtown course, with loads of botts dots, a hairpin turn, a haybale in the middle of the road, a 15 second climb, a descent towards a pot hole and a big two kilometer course for tactics to be played out over each lap.

We met at Greg's house - just four blocks away from the start - to change, prep and talk. Kevin won Winters on Saturday and was the first to speak up "I want to win solo". Greg is coming back from injury, I'm riding inconsistently and not confident, and Jeromy had raced (and placed 4th) in the Tempus Fugus TT Sunday morning. We liked Kevin's plan and made no other.

Kevin will be the first to tell you that he is not a "sprinter" so how will he win from a field of 50 (or so) starters? Smarts and experience, that's how! We had planned to get into a break with Kevin plus one off us, drive it until he flies solo. Simple, eh? Here's how Kevin won, from my perspective - Jeromy is active in the first four laps (of 16), I start the break and Kevin is with me, plus five others so he and I do more than 2/7th work to make this stick. There's a prime lap in there that helps to split us up. We have a gap, we work together for just three laps when the gaps start opening because two guys have decided not to work. Kevin is on the sunny side of the breakaway with Dean LaBerge (Primetime) and Chris Baker (Folsom). I didn't want to leave Kevin that early and going away with two sprinters is not ideal but Patrick Briggs has Dean up the road so he and I take the other three back to the pack and the gap grows.

Fast forward to one and half laps to go. Exactly how does a non-sprinter get rid of two sprinters? Reputation played a big role. Dean has a well known reputation to outsprint most anyone, and Chris has a few sprint wins as well this year, but when a non-sprinter attacks, he forces the sprinters to choose who will spend the energy to chase. When the sprinters get to the point that they thinking "I'd rather Kevin win than helping you win" the gap grows. Smarts, experience and really good form in the days leading up to Nationals.

Dean was 2nd, Chris Baker 3rd. The chase behind the breakaway trio was hot, with Larry following wheels to 5th place. Patrick Briggs was 4th.

Thanks for reading, Larry Nolan, Team Specialized Masters