Sunday, May 10, 2009

Sterling Stories

I've gone back and forth with myself repeatedly about how much of a writeup to do on my race and I finally decided the short version was for the best all around. We had a strong squad of 6 in the race, but there was some apparent mis-communication with regard to some plans that had been discussed for the race. The end result was me completely burying myself on lap 3, trying to sit in and recover on lap 4, trying an attack approaching the end of lap 4 and completely exploding, and ultimately coming in about a minute back of the pack. I've managed to continue my poor history at Sterling and I have to say that road racing so far this year has been very un-fun. But enough of that...

I got back to the school and changed up right away. I was already booked to drive follow for the 3/4's at 1:whenever, but then a driver no-showed so I got asked to do the 4/5 <35 also. It was a short race and the official was my best friend who randomly decided to become an official this year so it was all good. Two interesting stories from this race: 1) There were guys who literally had their numbers written down as being dropped before we even got up the hill to the official start of the race. I think that qualifies as a bad day. 2) We had fallen behind a little while working our way around dropped riders and came upon a crash out on the back streets. There were only 2 guys down I think, but one of them was laying in the gutter with a pile of shredded carbon next to him. He somehow had snapped his frame at the head tube on the top tube and on the downtube just up from the bottom bracket. And this was on a slight uphill. I have no freaking clue how.

Then it's on to 3/4 follow duties and I found out that I'd be driving around the same official who had earlier had to speak to be about a bit of a yellow-line infraction. It was a marginal situation where I had carried too much momentum into the section of rte 12 where the dotted white line (virtual yellow) shows up and comes into play and I passed a couple guys before squeezing in. He pulled up and reminded me and I apologized like a good cooperative racer. We had a laugh later and he told me he just wanted everyone to know he was paying attention. So remember, be kind to the officials because you may spend 2 hours in the car with them some day (or that same day). Ok, where was I... Oh yah... so the Pro's go off first, then the 3/4's, then the pro ladies. So we cruise around for a while and then we hear some radio chatter about the Pro's catching the women... they apparently make the pass ok and then we hear an update that there's a couple women up the road, then a small chase group, then the rest of the women are everywhere. So we go a bit more and see that we're going to catch the women's chase group, but there's a problem. By now, the women's chase is about 1:30 down to the break. We also have a group of about 10 up the road by about 1:30. So neutralizing either field basically decides that race for them. So the finger crossing begins that everyone will meet up on route 12 where there's tons of room to make a pass. Of course it doesn't happen that way. Thinking back now, the details are a little fuzzy, but I believe we managed to pass the chase group rather cleanly on the hill, but now the women's lead is in play. Sure enough, we start to catch them before we get to 12. We have also switched to leading the break because the gap was still growing. I still don't know how exactly it happened, but coming up the last narrow hill before you go down to 12, we catch the SRAM car that had been trailing the women's lead and some random car that had gotten on the course AND THEY STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! So we've got a charging pack behind my truck and we have to come to a dead stop. You can imagine the chaos that ensued, but fortunately I don't think anyone went down. At the same time, as much as it was an out of control situation, the racers didn't exactly handle it well either because 1) as the official reminded me, you are NEVER supposed to pass your lead vehicle unless told to, and 2) there were all kinds of obscenities flying from behind us from people evidently forgetting that the official for their race was sitting in the car. So the pack goes around us and the other cars, we get on the radio to give a big WTF to everyone who can hear, and we proceed on our way. But wait... it gets better. So now we hit 12 and the group has caught the two lead women. We are not yet back ahead of the group and are trailing them. So they take it upon themselves to swarm around the two women and their lead car, but just as their about the complete the pass they basically sit up. Now, the women's lead car is having to honk at them and basically let the ladies draft off the car. We go to the front and basically tell the guys that they're going to have to drive the pace for a while to get the hell out of the way or we're going to have to just simply pull them over and wait. FINALLY, the whole thing managed to sort itself out going up the hills the next time, but we had basically a full lap of total chaos until it did. It's hard to say that much could have been done differently other than just recognizing earlier that we were going to catch the support car when we did and just neutralizing the men until we hit a more open area. The break was teetering right on the edge of being out of reach so it was a tough call and they wouldn't have been happy, but they weren't happy riding into the back of my truck either so it was a no win. Regardless, I still contend that every racer should try driving for a road race some day. You learn and see a lot that I think makes you appreciate both the official's job and the race as a whole more.

Despite the chaos, I hope all who were there enjoyed. Don't know when I'm racing again... my training the past 3 weeks has been suspect with all the school stuff I had so I should probably get that back on track. I also need to cutover to the dirt at some point to get ready for Pat's Peak, Great Glen, and CX. We'll see...

2 comments:

gewilli said...

yikes!

solobreak said...

The first paragraph sounds worthy of another scribbly graph post, maybe annotated?