Silver, Espresso, Dan the kid, and I were there flying the Silver Cycling colors, while HWood, Matt Stein, Brian Welsh, and several others were in the HWood kits. Mark Skarpool and Joe Hamlin were there as well.
I'm guessing about 75+ were there to race (or ride in some cases). With a south wind at about 10 mph, the start was fast. We didn't go below 29 mph until we neared the first turn. With the crosswind, the group bunched up a bit and true to form, there was a touch of wheels with one guy going down right in front of me. He slide to my left and gave me an out on his right side, but he didn't give the guy from Rochester to my left any place to go. And the two got tangled together as I went around. Not a pleasant sound...
The race continued in Lansing, then north again where the tempo picked back up to the high 20s. Brian Welsh and Joe Hamlin broke away from the group around this time.
The guys from Rochester were keeping the pace high and I took a turn at the front as we neared the turn east. I stayed out front a bit more and then let someone else have some fun. We moved along nicely in the crosswinds, but never really managed to pick up any distance on the two breakway guys.
As we turned south into the wind, I noticed our group was down to a dozen or so. So we had managed to drop a good chunk of the group in the crosswinds.
About halfway through this section, there was another touch of wheels and Mark Skarpool and one other guy went down. I managed to safely steer through the bikes, bodies, bottles, and other parts strewn across the road. Espresso and Silver wanted the group to wait to see if Mark would catch back on, but the rest of the group didn't slow much. So we pedaled on into a much stiffer wind (15+ mph) now.
The pace slowed a bit with the headwinds and the Rochester guys were trying some "one-two punch" moves to either get away from our group or tire us out. The breakaway kept getting further away and we never did catch them.
As we turned toward the Nature Center, the "cat and mouse" stuff started and the tempo went from 20+ to 16, then back to 20+ several times.
Finally the sprint was on, and I managed to hang on the end of the group to the line.
HWood grabbed the group sprint, with Matt Stein, then Espresso, Dan the Kid, then Silver, and then me (in 10th). I finished in 1 hour and 2 minutes, with an average of 23.4 mph (with my cool down riding).
Brian Welsh nipped Joe for the Overall First Place.
So, all four Silver Cycling in the top 10. Great team work and great results.
Dan the Kid (1st in the 19 to 29 age)
Silver (1st in the 60 to 69 age)
Espresso (2nd in the 50 to 59 age)
Fun times (always) and no skin left on the road...
Some pictures courtesy of Austin Daily Herald guys...
The start (Lew, Silver, and HWood):
HWood's big finish:
My "not so big" finish (9th Scott, 10th me):
No comments:
Post a Comment