NY Capital Region Road Race

(What a cool bike you have Mr. T!)

Saturday, August 12, 2006 - NY Capital Region Road Race

72 miles; 3 laps around a 23 mile circuit with a 3.5 mile rolling neutral start, and 1400' of elevation gain per lap! Nice! The 10AM start was a buzz kill since it was a 3 hour drive to the start in absolutely lovely Ravena, NY (near Albany), but given our California "Oh-dark-thirty" wake-up calls of our past, it wasn't too bad. And the prize was Upstate NY. Even nicer than New Hampshire for road riding!

After dropping Mike off at the start, I headed to feedzone to find some shade to park in (for the Scrapper), and then suited up to ride the route and get back in time to hand Mike a bottle by his second lap. The Pro 1/2 field was stacked fairly well (they had more folks than planned at registration given the perfect weather), including Healthnet's Mike Jones and Jelly Belly's, Jeremy Powers, plus a full contingent of the local powerhouse "red" team, Fiordi Fruitti.

Heaven. Upstate NY is certainly on the God's Country list. I had no idea. Smooth pavement and climbing and colors and wild-flowers with solar powered homes and log cabins, with small little communities. Wow! Nothings plowed up but there were many small little organic farms. And little to no traffic.

It took an hour before the Pro 1/2 field caught and passed me. Probably due to the incredible 15% grade twisty (actual switchback) section, (complete with writing on the road "Go Healthnet!", " Venga Venga" and "Allez"!). I rode up to cheers of the local farmers who were not expecting a small little rider to be so far "off the front!" Ha! Let them wonder! The cool thing, is right when they passed me, was the exact time that the decisive move of the race took place.

I saw Jeremy Powers, Josh (from Fiordi Fruitti) and one other guy hammer off the front and were never to be seen again by the chasing pack. Team Tactics would have played a big part if the field wanted to catch the break and the biggest team there was Fiordi Fruitti...with a guy in the break, they were off the hook. Sigh.

This is the first time I didn't get passed by all the fields before I finished the course...I rode in with the Masters and was already changed by the time the girl's Pro field came through. (I had a head start though---but usually they pass me anyway!) It was a hard race...complete with some awful crashes. There was a pretty technical section where you had high speed downhill followed by a 120 degree right hander that immediately turned toward the sky with the 15% grade section. An Anthem rider ended up doing a face slide for about 100 meters...and left in the ambulance pretty badly hurt. Sigh.

Mike did better this week---and finished with the rest of the field in the uphill finish. But Josh (Fiordi Fruitti) took the honors today with Jeremy Powers about 9 seconds behind him. Next week we're heading somewhere in the Berkshires for another sufferfest on our bikes.