The hour plus wait for registration negated what remaining pressure I’d brought on myself that morning – all I worried about as I heard them calling us to stage was pinning my numbers on straight. Even then, our group was still starting over an hour late.
What ever else I had to worry about was killed off by seeing Katy drive by in the Zipcar with my parents. It didn’t even dawn on me that they were nearly 45 minutes late themselves until I yelled, “Hello!” from the 50 meters line – behind the Elite 4s – and was answered with a middle finger left behind by squealing tires like an empty bag of fast food. I just stared, jaw hanging open, at the car turning into the grass field. Somebody uttered, “Oh no, she didn’t…” while Newt handed me a shot block as if it were a piece of consoling candy. Bob gently rubbed my shoulder and said, “focus, man…just focus.”
They weren’t my directions. I was the victim, here. Rolling.
8 laps on a 3.2 mile course, and we started at quite an easy pace for a road race that was essentially a long crit. It was a triangle with two 90 degree turns and then of course a sharp, obtuse angle at turn three right before a home stretch just under a mile…with a monster tail wind. I started to the middle of the back through turn 3 and then, and on every lap it was a crazed scrambled to be the first again through turn one.
Newt was the XXX anchor at the front, never back more than five wheels at any time. A swarm would predictably come before and after each turn, and compounded by the fact that the last climb was right before turn three. Not much else to say, it was pretty much just eight laps of that. Greg and Kyle went off on hard flyers to try and get something, anything going, but nobody was chasing, and neither stayed off for long.
I just sat in, keyed off of Newt, and waited until the end – trying to stay up front, ahead of the cursing and yelling.
With one to go I held fast to the top five, but at the back on Spring Road, a few riders jumped the yellow line, inviting indignant shouts, and then a hard charging pack up the second climb pushed me out of the top twenty. I stayed calm, riding safe and smart, knowing I still had around a mile and a long ramp-up awaiting me.
We came out of turn three and I watched the front riders already jockeying around for position as the accordion effect brought us back together. My indecision nearly kept me behind them as I could see the wall forming before I realized there was huge gap remaining on the right hand side of the two lane home stretch. Nobody at the front wanted to leave a wheel, even three or four deep. Anybody who was in the thick it seemed to miss the opening to the right.
I then woke up with a start and began screaming at Nathan, in front and to the right, to move his ass…he wasn’t exactly going too slow, but with the entire pack now stretching the width of the road and about 300 meters to go, things were about to get awfully tight. It was all he needed to hear. Before I could grab his wheel for a leadout though, I had to loudly alert the rightward sliding Flatlandia rider to my presence, and then stood up to shift and give it my last…and realized I was out of gears.
I spun out to the line, hitting 40mph while never getting out of the saddle, and getting pipped at the last moment by a 40+ rider from Tower, the host team.
It took some sorting out, combining the camera, the time chips, and good old fashioned “detective work”, but about 20 minutes later, I was standing on the podium for the second time this year with a 3rd place finish in the Master’s 3- + Cat 4/5 (say that 3 times, fast) – 6th overall.
I felt happy and, yes, lucky. It was not a Hollywood ending to 2008 by any stretch of imagination. I had certainly not been in the best position in most races out of turn 3, but today it was actually as ideal as it could get. Being keyed up at the front, and reticent to go off with 20 twitchy riders right behind you would of course blind any racer to the particular situation. It was only the riders coming up from the back that could steadily ramp up their speed with conviction and determination who had the advantage yesterday. And sure enough, other than the overall winner who did attack from the last turn, at least 7 of the top ten did indeed come up from the back right.
Luck and patience – and just maybe a bit of tactics – finally came up in my favor.