Snapple Tri Team

Having been too slow to pull the registration trigger for the Giro di Coppi, but itching to race, Zack and I decided to race the Oxford Road Race in sunny southern PA (it was 900 degrees at the race start).  The race had limited entrants, so the race director decided to combine all categories into a single field.  The course was 6 10K laps with a roughly 2K lollipop stick for the start and finish.  There were two decent-sized climbs per lap, but more significantly, there was a 2 mile stretch where the PA Department of Transportation had ripped up and milled the road surface.  Hands loose, teeth rattling, body shaking worse than it did in the area’s recent earthquake, I imagined I was pounding the cobbles in Belgium as we attacked the milled roads.

My legs had been slow to recover from the three races last week during the Lord of the Flies races, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Zack and I had time for a brief warmup before the race, and I was glad my legs seemed to be responding.

As always seems to happen, I found myself losing a lot of ground in the pack during the supposedly neutral rollout (neutral rollouts, I’ve decided, are really just racing while you’re pretending to not be racing).  On narrow roads, I had little choice but to hold my position and move up incrementally through the first few flat to downhill miles of the course.  When the race first hit the unpaved road, the group collectively seemed alarmed by the severity of the road surface.  The diversion caused a split that divided the field into nearly equal halves.  I found myself in the back.

I sat in hoping the back group would organize.  Several miles later–with the gap only seeming to grow–I decided to bridge.  I jumped across.  One rider followed.  The rest of the back pack fell off the pace and never recovered.

I more or less sat in this group until the fourth lap when I decided to test the field with a few attacks.  I attacked solo and got dragged back a few times.  Finally I got away and had a strong break partner with me.  We rolled hard into a climb.  A quick effort over it and I was confident our break would stick.  Then I looked down and my chain was wrapped around my bottom bracket.  I screamed obscenities.  My break partner rode away.  A chase group road away.  What was left of the peloton rode away.  I screamed more obscenities.  Finally, I got things sorted out.  Took a push from neutral support, and started turning myself inside out to chase.

(Incidentally, I hope I corrected this problem for good.  The Bicycle Pro Shop in Georgetown set my bike up with a chain catcher that will hopefully keep the chain wrapped around the gears where it belongs).

I chased for several miles before finally catching back on to the main field.  Once there, I sat in and recovered a little, but my former breakaway partner was still up the road.  As we moved through the 5th lap, I worried he might stay away and started to get annoyed that no one would chase.  Finally, I came around.  I tried to bridge, but didn’t have the legs to get away and wound up pulling the group back together.

Once back together, I was pretty fried, but a little inspired by the fact that no one chased the other guy at all.  So I decided to attack again.  This time a strong looking riding came forward and pulled me back.  When he caught me, I was like “What the f*#k?  you didn’t help at all when the other guy was up the road.”

“That guys my buddy,” he said.  The two riders weren’t on the same team–subtle politics of local bike racing.

The rider who bridged stayed on the front as we came through the unpaved stretch.  He set a hard tempo up the unpaved climb and was keeping it rolling through the flatish stretch on top.  I was sitting comfortably behind him–honestly pretty glad at the work he was doing because he was shredding what was left of the field.

Then he found some paved road and instantly opened a gap.  It was impossible to cover the move on the shredded pavement, so the 5 riders left in the main group just rode for damage control until we turned back onto a paved road.

One rider tried to bridge.  I followed and we wound up with a 3 man chase group.  I tried to get people to work to pull him back, but no one would.  I thought I could get him, but if I was the only one who worked to do it, I knew the result would be me finishing 4th in a four man final sprint.

Instead, our 3 man chase more or less soft pedaled as we jockeyed for position.  The least patient man in any group, I of course wound up in front.

Soon after, the race director handed me an envelope full of cash.  I won’t be retiring any time soon, but it covered gas and lunch for my teammates (Zack riding, Mindy cheering and snapping pics).