Glenwood Road Race

This was my first real race since Leah was born, and my goal on the line was just to finish. On a wet and rainy day, with 80+ in the field, I figured I’d be stuck in the back with no hopes of moving up (I really need to work on my pack positioning skills). Fortunately, I was able to line up at the front of the race, and once we got rolling, I managed to stay in the front 15 for the first lap, covering some attacks and blocking for a few of ours that got a bit up the road. I was feeling generally good, even though it was raining, and started to feel comfortable at the front again. Of course, I got shuffled to the back for laps 2 thru 4, and had great deal of trouble moving up. I started to feel nervous racing again (lots of brake-fistfuls on some of the mini-descents), and was just hoping to make it through the race without touching wheels. Brian got shuffled to the back when he missed a turn (thanks corner marshals!), and started ranting excitedly about how we need to be at the front. Weirdly, this is what I needed to hear to make moving up through the field sound like something I actually wanted to do. I made it about 1/2 way up, when I got stuck again. Fortunately, Randy launched an attack and the field stretched out just enough for me to move all the way to the front.

Since there were only about 6 miles left to go, and Randy’s attack had come back, I went to the front to try to string it out for AJ in the finale. I pulled hard by myself on the front of the field for about 2 miles, and then we went around a left hand turn up a small riser (53x23), and I ended up pulling away from the field a bit. A Starbucks guy came with me, and I decided to just keep pulling for a bit to make some other teams chase. We only had about 5-10 seconds, then all of a sudden the elastic snapped, and we had about 400 yards. We were sharing pulls evenly, and I was doing my best not to get over-excited, since the finish suited me precisely (200m uphill drag). With 1K to go, I knew Recycled had it locked, and sure enough, on the finishing straight, I was able to knock it out by a comfortable margin. I was really thrilled to be in a break this way, in such a big race - Wes (from Starbucks) and I took pretty even pulls, and really cooperated all the way to the line. It was great to have such positive racing, and I think Wes and I were both thrilled that something stayed away.

It was great for the team to get our first USCF win in the Cat 3 field this year in an important race. It was great for my form to finally start coming around (along with my confidence racing/positioning, etc). I’ve felt reasonably strong all year, but I haven’t been able to put myself near the front of races where it would really make a difference. It worked out this time though, and all the Recycled guys really controlled the race for the first 5 laps. It’s great to ride with a fantastic team - we had lots of ways to win, and it felt like we were in the hunt all day.