Sunday, June 28, 2009

tandem road race smack down

Unfortunately we were on the receiving end of said smack down.
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Well...... the Shogrun's finally pulled the stars and stripes away from us with a a strong chase down and a well timed jump at just 200 meters to go on the uphill finish.
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The race actually ended up being very tactical and even slow for much of the time. With 3 bikes in with a shot at the win, there was a lot of attacking and covering, riding slow and attacking again. The Eppens seemed to be strongest on the short climbs, but were not keen to keep the pace high...and in fact worked to keep things together and slow. We put in many attacks only to be covered every time. We were frustrated at every attempt, but we knew if we let it come to a 3 or 4 bike sprint we were only getting 2nd or 3rd.....so we kept trying.
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Finally at the top of the steepest hill with just over a lap to go we tried again and got a small gap. It was ON and we put in 100% to try to stay clear. We held our slim advantage through most of the lap, but on the steep hill again the Shogruns were closing. Coming into the final climb they had just made contact and for us the only thing to do was to try and go fast enough that they couldn't come around.....apparently we couldn't. At 200 meters they came around with a strong move and we had nothing left to respond. They posted a well earned victory just a few seconds ahead of us.
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Our consolation prize was that they bought us a nice dinner :)
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Well played Betsy and Gunnar!
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a2

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