TGIF - 7/26/13

This past weekend I decided to skip Lost River and collect myself after Coppi. I haven't raced Coppi since ... maybe 2008? And I remembered why about halfway through the race. The course doesn't seem overly hard but it's a doozy.

I was there early to hang out in the feedzone with the likes of Katy and Kat - both of whom are formidable road racers so I knew it was going to be a long day. As I watched the guys finish up, I wasn't feeling any better about it; most of them looked like death. The clouds were parting and temps were rising - definitely a long day ahead.

As I'm pulling myself together I realize that I forgot my race wheels. The boy had laid the bag against my bike so I'd have to see them - and I did, as I moved them out of the way to carry my bike out to the car. Thankfully, he was finished with his race wheels so we quickly made the change and I was on my way. The 1-2-3s were racing with the 4s but scored separately, so it made for a decent size field, given the time of year and the difficulty of the race.

We got underway after a neutral-ish roll out and commenced with small accelerations but nothing super hard. ABRT had the most riders in the field, as usual, and we all knew it was a waiting game to see who went first (and who countered). The attacks started and the field shrank but Kelley and I both held on and made it through to the rather civilized climb to finish the first lap. As soon as we made the first right turn, it was on for reals. One after another, attack, counter attack. It's a simple and effective strategy if you've got the bullets to spend. I followed one, got brought back, recovered, followed another ...(repeat a couple times) until we hit the dreaded stair-stepper, where ABRT attacked again and I just couldn't follow. I was summarily dropped and considered soft pedaling in. But no, I could still see the pack ahead of me and Kelley was up there so I went into "rabbit/greyhound" mode - chase what's moving in front of me. I made it up to one group of riders and we slowly clawed our way up to what was left of the pack after it split. Kelley was in that pack and I was happy to see a friendly face. I had recovered a bit by then and I started pushing the pace. A cat4 kept jumping, trying to break free, and I kept jumping with her as the 2 ABRTs in the group would bring us back. I didn't understand - the main pack was in view, we could do this!

I proceeded to question WHY - why won't they let us go? It's a Cat4 and me. Let us dangle out there, let us drag you up. The 2 ABRTs with us had been given the direction that they were to ride slow and keep anyone from rejoining. Really? If I went, killed myself to get up to the pack and brought them up to their teammates, wouldn't that make more strategic sense for them (not necessarily for me!) I tried to explain this to them in vain. They did wind up letting a Cat 4 slip off the front but refused to let me race. By this time we had whittled down to 4 - two cat 1/2/3 and two cat 4s. One ABRT in each category. Why the Cat4 ABRT let another Cat 4 off, I'll never understand.

So, I sat on. I surfed wheels, let ABRT pull me around and refused to pull through. Coming through to the bell lap, it was something close to a cookie ride. I looked around and realized we had dropped one of the ABRT riders so we were down to 3- ABRT, NCVC and me. I still let the ABRT drag us around and we picked up a Kenda rider - she was obviously suffering but rallied to catch the train as we came through.

We kept a decent pace through the rest of the lap. I couldn't do anything but wait for the finish. Quote of the day was something to the effect of "Oh God, there it is" ... as the finishing hill came into view. We all giggled in commiseration. I practiced a sprint up the hill - I was actually trying but it had to have looked ridiculious. One of these days, I'll figure out how to be graceful on the bike. Maybe.

I need someone to explain to me why the strongest team in the race (and in the district right now) with the most riders in the peloton (most races) would need to instruct their racers to ride negatively. We could have made it a race and had some fun doing it. In my opinion, they would have done better to get back up to the pack to help their riders do something else. The apparent global thought is that if you have a teammate up the road, your race is over. That's nonsensical - the teammate up the road was alone with several other riders of different teams. Bringing 2 of their team and one of another team (lets face it, I'm not setting the roads on fire right now) would have helped the numbers, if anything. 

Someone explain the logic because I'm clearly missing something here.