Eric Stubbs Wins!

Apparently hairy legs improves climbing and sprinting - at least it seemed that way for our Fuzzy Logic teammate Eric Stubbs (henceforth known as "Il Flaco.") at this years cat 3 Dahlonega mountain omnium. He was simply best at everything all weekend long. And to paraphrase Big Carlos (Smith), "the dude doesn't even eat meat!"

Uphill "TT"
The victorious vegan began his winning streak at the Saturday a.m. 7 mile "TT" up the west side of Wolfpen Gap. The "TT" was actually a by-category, mass start, point to point, 7 mile (actually 8.5 mile) road race. The climb itself was about 1.5 miles preceded by 7 miles of rolling hills.

The 43-rider strong peleton surged along (containing a handfull of 30+ masters) until a small break formed by some aggressive bad etiquette blocking and powered by Daniel the cat 1 super master. Eventuality Daniel rolled the hapless posers off his wheel about 1/2 k from the start of the 1.5 mile 8%+ climb to the summit. At this point Il Flaco flew across 500 meter gap and latched onto Daniel's wheel just as the climb started. The Dogg winced and whined at the lunacy of this dubious maneuver but Il Flaco apparently needs only seconds to recover and managed to clamp down hard on Daniels wheel all the way to the top where two polka dot jerseys were waiting patiently.

The Dogg opened his doggy-bag of courage and when the pack exploded half way up, managed to fend off all but two 23 year-olds and take 4th for the 3s - about 20 seconds and tantalizingly close to the winners, sight-wise.

Circuit Race
Three hours and one 30 mile transfer later we all lined up for a 30 mile-3 lap extremely hilly circuit race.

The pace was fast and furious as the jilted power riders and large teams fired off their best motors in an attempt to reclaim lost points from the earlier race. Il Flaco, Dogg and Big Carlos mostly chilled and surfed the back until we moved up 3 miles from the end in anticipation of the 1k 3% grade sprint finish. (Big Carlos was off the back about 2 miles opting to do solo hill drills instead.) The Dogg fought his way to the front at the last corner looking to lead Il Flaco into the headwind but noticed he was being towed around the corner a good 50 feet ahead of us all.

Giving the field the Lance look, he roared away from his faded companion and soloed up a headwind hill long enough to startle spectators with strange and primitive bellows (which he refused to recreate for us) in the final brutal seconds when he was inched out by just one chaser.

The Dogg was in 7th position when the sprint start but had to sette for 12th of 15 point places due to two fading riders who, side by side, simply stopped pedaling at the 200 meter mark and forced many of us to slam on the brakes, zigg-zagg twice and restart our sprint. Ok, yeah. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.


Road Race
The next morning was Il Flaco's 24th birthday, what a present eh? The final epic 40-mile road race started with Il Flaco firmly in the lead - truly a marked man. So where did Cycle Logic position itself in the peleton? At the front? Nope! Gators can climb but we descend like plucked chickens with vertigo. The first 4 miles of the race descended super fast switchbacks that kept us huddled in abject terror at the very back - and sometimes behind that shameful spot.

Several times we wasted valuable energy chasing back on when we should have been coasting happily. Eventually, near the halfway mark, (with Big Carlos doing more OTB hill drills) after a god-awful "The Wall" section, a much thinned peleton wound it's way down a safer feeling but huge-hilled road and we felt "all better now". We felt good enough to go to the front and help chase down a dangerous-looking escape group.

At that point we didn't realize that Super-master Daniel was 1.5 minutes off the front with a zero points Team Florida racer named John Moore. We never saw those two again. Daniel said he towed John the whole way but I'll give him credit for getting in the good break. John also did a spectacular but doomed 10 mile solo breakaway in the circuit race the day before.

Eventually the 30-something pack emerged onto a 3 mile climb up the North side of Neil's gap immediately followed by a 3.5 leg breaking final climb up the East side of Wolfpen Gap. At the start of the climb the two teamates rode side by side grinning at the "epicness" of this stage. One mile later they were locked into a grim, painfully slow dance of death with less than a dozen climbers. Near the top Il Flaco threw down a 2mph "surge" which shattered the pack and allowed him to solo away to stage field and omnium victory.

At the 1 k to go flag, the Dogg decided he could amp up the pain, especially to humiliate rude little snot-nosed junior, and managed to claw around enough of the twenty-something escapees to claim 6th in the stage and 6th overall in the omnium.

Not too shabby for a couple of flatland Crackers who's two man team bested all of the 5-7 man teams.

Kerry Duggan