February 25 - First Race of the Season

Its been a few years since I tried to race in February. The weather was suppose to be relatively nice so I decided to do a flat road race in Hartford, Ohio. Jon met me at my house at 10:00 to carpool the 1 1/2 hours to the race. I was close to 50 degrees when we left. By the time we got to Hartford the temps had dropped to the mid 40s with 25 mph wind. The course was a 10 mile flat loop around open farmland. The cat 3's had 25 rider and started 2 1/2 minutes before the cat 1-2's. The idea was to give the 1-2's someone to chase and the 3's a reason to ride. My teammate, Jeff A (Pizza-man) and I took turns at the front from the start of the race. We didn't have a plan, we just wanted a good hard ride. I did not want to just roll around easy for 50 miles and then just sprint at the end. Four miles in, Pizza-man and I rolled off the front of the field with one other rider. We soon had a fairly sizable gap. I didn't want this to be an easy race but I really didn't intend to try to stay away for 45 miles. The three of us were soon joined at the front by a fourth rider, Bamford, who immediately put the pressure on. After another 4 miles, it was just Bamford and me at the front. We kept working and by the time we finished the first lap, a group of 15 or 20 cat 1-2-3's had caught us. The wind made it critical to stay in good position as riders were dropping out of the group as soon as they lost the wheel in front. Finally, the group split in the cross-wind and I found myself in the second group. I tried a couple of times to bridge to the front group but I could not quite close the gap. We kept dropping riders from our group until there were only six of us left to chase the 8 riders in front. As we came around for the last lap Pizza-Man and another rider rolled off the front. The official decided to stop our group with one to go and not allow use to do the last lap. He said we were not going to catch the guys in front anyway. Pizza-man finish 6th. I ended up with a 10th place in the cat 3 race. Jon was 2nd in the cat 1-2 race.