Saturday, September 27, 2008

12 Hours of Dauset - short version

Last weekend I did my first solo 12 hour mountain bike race on the Dauset trails south of Atlanta, GA......and I won! It was a great experience and I learned a ton. I will post more details later.
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check out cara's post on the race here: www.caraapplegate.blogspot.com
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a2

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Bookends - Univest GP 08

Last weekend was most likely the final big road race of my road campaign that has lasted 10 years. I can't say I did very well, or that I was even prepared for Univest this year, but it was a fitting end as exactly 10 years ago at the very first edition of the Univest GP in 1998 I competed in my first elite level road race.
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Previously I had been doing a handful of big road races every season (like Fitchburg, Altoona and the Iron Horse Classic) as a cat 3 while focusing on MTB racing. By end of the 98 season I had some good road results in big events and was just coming off a 2nd place on GC at the Killington stage race. I upgraded to a cat 2 and was asked to ride for a regional all star team for the inaugural Univest race. That team was sponsored by a bakery called "Yum Yum Doughnuts".
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In that race I was in WAY over my head....I had no idea what I was getting into. For this race, the promoter had invited several European development teams and all the best US amateur teams to compete (no US PRO teams). I thought as an amateur event, how bad could it be?? It was incredible....I remember vividly being amazed at how fast we went out for that 100 mile race. I suffered in the crosswinds, riders were being shelled all over the place in the first 10 miles. I made it exactly an hour in before being dropped on an uphill crosswind grade. At that point there was less than half the 120+ rider field left in the race. I limped back from the big loop and watched the finale play out (the race is a 60+ mile loop followed by 11 laps of a 3-4 mile in-town circuit). Watching those riders suffer at the end of the race was a life changing experience. In particular I remember watching a young Jon Hamblen battle it out with 2 French riders in the 3 man break at the end. I was transfixed. I was hooked. I knew that I had to start racing on the road full time to see what I could do with it.
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Shortly after that I signed on with a regional elite road team Ideal Tile. In 1999 we went to Univest again. This time my goal was to finish...and I had great fitness going in. I rode well and made it back to the circuits with the lead group...perfect...I felt great and I was going to finish and do well. Then I was taken down by an inattentive rider in a turn. I was up quickly and back on the bike before any of the service vehicles arrived. Riding in the caravan, I was not going to have any trouble getting back to the field. Then my front tire went flat. I stopped and looked back to see all the support cars (including my team car) stopped at the crash 200 meters behind me. By the time I got a new wheel mounted, I was way back. I rode 2 laps of the circuit, then was pulled from the race, extremely disappointed. If memory serves, this is the year that an up and coming guy named Tom Boonen won the race....which I got to see from the sidelines once again.
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In 2000 I returned yet again to Univest with the Ideal Tile team....and again since this was one of my season goal races I had great fitness. Again I made it back to the circuits and was feeling ok. This time however, I had done a poor job with fueling while out on the course and started suffering for it with 25 or 30 miles to go. I was not too far away when the winning move went and had I been smart with fueling and hydration may have made the split. As it was, I suffered and hung in with a large 2nd group to finish somewhere around 60th place. But I finished on the 3rd try! Once again my goal was to come back and get a real result in this special race.
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In 2001 I had moved to NC and had hands down my best season ever. I won my age group road race at the national championships in Spokane and myself and my new Cane Creek teammates had won a huge amount of races in the southeast. Again I had absolutely the form of my life coming into Univest week and things looked great. On top of that Cara and I were married on Sept 10th and were going to head up to visit my parents in NJ before heading over to the race Saturday. Then came 9-11. We were driving TO the NY area when we heard the news. The race was cancelled...and rightly so IMHO. A couple years later I did the race in a tropical storm where the course was shortened to just the 4 mile in town circuit,,,,it was miserable and I didn't finish. There was also a sunday crit added this year ..which I did finish.
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It was a couple of years before I was on a team invited to (the now PROs included) Univest again. I had a couple of miserable experiences where I got dropped early ...even though my form was good. This year (2008) when I was put on the squad going I can't say I had much confidence for a result. My modest goal was to survive and make it back to the circuits in town with the field.... Again the weather forecast called to tropical storm remnants to hit the area on race day.
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We rolled in Friday and stayed with some great host families near Souderton PA. A light rain was falling as we lined up on Saturday morning. The start was again blazing fast. We were doing 38-40mph for the fist 10-12 miles on the flat part of the course. This was fun, but a little sketchy on the wet roads. I was quite worried about what would happen when we hit the hilly part of the course where there are numerous tight turns. I was suffering, but doing ok riding up in the front half of the field. Then, the legs came apart. I lost power on a long uphill and could not keep the power up. I watched helplessly as nearly 100 riders went by. I was done. I tried to recover and rode hard staying in the caravan for a few miles...then I started coming up on crashes, slowing me down. On one downhill off camber turn there was a crash and I was riding up next to the broom wagon....as I moved left to go around so did the car and I was run off the road entirely. Kind of funny, but the time I lost killed me. The rain and wind was picking up and I joined up with one other rider to get through the 65 mile big loop to get back to town. At some points it was raining so hard I thought I would drown....but in some ways it was kind of fun also. We rode quite hard and caught up to a large group just before we got back to the circuit. As expected we were not allowed to enter the circuit and our race was over.
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That was it, an inauspicious finale to my big road race experiences. That is not to say I am quitting though! I will focus on some different kinds of racing in the upcoming season, and while you won't see me lining up at any more uci, or probably even nrc road races, I will still do some road events.
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So 10 years of Univest. It is kind of fitting that I started and ended on the same big event....bookends.
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a2