I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little stiff and sore after crashing out of the Sanford crit on Saturday. Racing would hurt today, but I felt that if I was able to get a good 90 minute warm-up I'd be able to loosen up my hip enough that I should be able to play.
I arrived at the course right before the Juniors race and I got the opportunity to watch Justin Pfaff barnstorm the group and rack up his second W for the weekend. He really dug deep and threw it all on the line for the sprint finish, nearly puking his guts out in the process. For being all of 11, that kid's both strong willed and a talented rider. Scotty, drop your son now every chance you get because you won't be able to in another three years.. ;)
After the Juniors I relaxed in a lawn chair and watched the P/1/2 race. The combination of beautiful weather and a wide open course meant that the pros were ripping the roads up while barnstorming down the way. When there was about twenty minutes left in that race a break of six riders, including Ryan Saylor, got away that had the potential to stick.
With Herbalife blocking at the front of the main peloton, there was no reason the break couldn't stick, but unfortunately for Ryan they got reeled in with just a few laps to go.
The schedule called for the Womens 1/2/3 race followed by the Womens 4 and then Cat3. Since I knew I wanted a long warm-up immediately after the P/1/2 race I went to my car and started getting everything setup. After 40 minutes of trainer time my hip was feeling better and my legs were feeling loose; it was time to go get off the trainer and finish my
warm-up in the street.
I hooked up with Ben Page and Eric Stubbs during the warm-up and we chatted for awhile. Ben's been making a name for himself by cleaning up in the cat4's over the past few weeks. He's a heck of a strong sprinter and he's in it to win it every time -- he should be a cat3 next weekend.
We had a good warm-up and lined up on the sideline when the cat3s had 3 laps to go, trying to get our chance at the hole shot. There were 52 people in the field, all of us fighting for a spot on the starting line, and a lot of them were Orlando locals and young pups -- the race was going to be interesting.
The whistle blew and wouldn't you know it, I completely missed my clip-in. Oh well, it was not a big deal because over the past few weeks I've worked on my ability to ride the tail-gunner spot on a crit without
expending any energy, and for what I had planned I was going to need every ounce of strength at the end of the race.
I quickly settled in to the last third of the field to watch what was going on and see who else was there to play. Penrod and I were the only guys sporting the Orange and Gray in the cat4 race on Sunday, and we had no real team game plan except to go play and have fun. As usual, after about fifteen minutes the pace settled down after the rabbits burned
themselves out. I also watched one guy play human pinball by bouncing off of riders left and right while showing everyone that he couldn't keep a line to save his life and that he didn't care about crashing out the entire field behind him. He was quickly marked as "that guy" and a bunch of us started making comments to each other about him.
A few more minutes into the race, I decided to have some fun with everyone and tried to get four or five other people around me to join in a rousing rendition of Queen's Bicycle Race. In hindsight, I guess most people don't know how to sing when running at 180bpm because our singing was off key and we couldn't get our lyrics straight. Maybe next time we can just do row your boat, or something everyone else has burned deep into the limbic portion of their brain.
Meanwhile, I continued to pack surf figuring out the perfect spot for an attack while watching the clock tick down. When we got to seven minutes + five laps I knew my time was coming and moved up from the back of the pack to sixth, then sat in until the next lap. At five plus five I launched off the front with the idea of breaking the rubber band and time trialing the last ten minutes to the W.
Two laps into my solo flier I started to settle down and ease up to let my HR drop down into the 192-194 range (my max is 204), with the idea of just riding it out. But, much to my chagrin, Henry called for a prime in an effort to get the peloton to chase me down and I knew I'd have to bust my ass for at least one more lap. So I picked it back up to 198 and hoped not to blow-up in the process.
I won the prime on my third lap off the front, but the door was quickly shutting down on me and I was picked up 1/2 lap later. I decided to sit in a lap, grab a quick drink, and then try again. With 3.5 laps to go I attacked and got away again, but this time ORC realized what I was up to and shut me down pretty quickly -- I swear one kid even did a sprint
throw at the line finishing the third lap.
After being shut down a second time I was debating a third assault, but as we came into the 2nd to the last lap the squirrels came out and the field started acting sketchy. Considering I was already going home with some road rash and a prime, I decided to just settle in for a pack finish.
