Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Greater Augusta Cyclismo Stage Race
Augusta, GA, in the latter throws of August. This is going to be a warm penultimate installation of the 2007 series.
So, as alluded to previously, we started our weekend with a 9am start for the 3.7km prologue. We left at 5:30 from Atlanta and after a teensy bit of panicky chamois cream application were able to briefly pre-ride the course, warm up and get under way.
Matt started first, followed at 1 minute by Charles, a few minutes later Nick went off and of course, Tyler was given a preferred start given his overall 5th place ranking in the GA cup.
Unfortunately, the course was quite technical, thus braking and soft pedaling were required, which meant that precious seconds could have been gained with some simple course knowledge and practice riding... which we didn't have. It's always rough to finish a TT feeling like you want to spit up a lung but it's an even worse feeling to want to start right back up and do it over because you didn't go hard enough. Pretty much all of us felt that we went too easy considering the forced rest and braking through turns.
Nonetheless, we all finished right around 4:45 with Tyler up front in 5th, Matt in 9th, Nick in 10th, and Charles and Ben around 25th. A pretty solid 29mph effort.
Going into the crit we picked up another workhorse with Darren joining us and it was clear that with 3 guys in the top 10, we needed one of us in every major move. Pretty early on Tyler got in a move of 3 guys and was away for about 10 laps and manged to pick up a few seconds in bonus time, but that move was brought back about halfway in the race. As can be expected from any P/1/2 crit, s__t hit the fan with about 20min to go and we were not well positioned, it was single file, spiddle running down the cheeks, cross-eyed fast for a few laps and Matt was the only one from our team in the top 15 guys, a break of 3 guys managed to get away and everything slowed down again, luckily for us as the team had a brief opportunity to regroup. However, we still needed to chase for the GC.
This put Matt at the front trying to reel it back in, unfortunately, to no avail on that one, it was just Matt and Phil Gaimon () trying to bring it back and the gap was locked at 30 seconds for the next 10 laps of chasing at the front. We ended up calling off the dogs so Tyler could make a move with 2 to go. Matt and Darren got on the front to try and control it, but ended up getting swamped in the sprint. Nonetheless, everyone ended up finishing in the bunch with the same time.
Sunday's RR was supposed to be a lot like the circuit race at Dahlonega last week, rolling hills with not a lot of flat ground. Yes and no; yes to the rolling hills and no flat ground but nothing like Dahlonega's circuit race, way harder! The hills were all just long enough so you couldn't roll through them without a serious effort but too short to get any sort of break on the descent. It was a 15 mile circuit that we were supposed to do 6 times but due to the heat was reduced to 5 laps. The officials will be getting a care package from Pacesetter Steel later this week on that one!
We were also to be joined by Chris for the RR to make the contingent a solid 7. Our plan was basically the same as the crit to make sure we got a GC contender in every major move of the day and let the others "rest" in the pack. Word on the street was that this was a race of attrition that would be determined by a small group at the finish so an early break would be rough.
Sure enough, it was fast from the start. Matt covered the first move from a rider and was bridged to by Phil Gaimon and 3 others. The gap to the break hovered at about 1:30 for a lap and a half till it moved out to almost 3 minutes with 3 laps covered. We were in a pretty good position with Matt on GC in the break and no obligation to do any work in the group for the rest of the team. But the break was not meant to be when Thad Dulin from Jittery Joe's dropped the hammer through the start finish to start the 4th lap and the gap quickly dropped to under a minute under a myriad of attacks. After 55 miles on the front of the race, Matt's break was brought back and the attacks started anew.
Tyler and Nick were in the mix on everything and managed to make the front split group, still behind the new break of the day but trailed by another major group containing most of the major players, Matt, Darren, Charles, Chris and Ben. However, that group didn't manage much longer when the big guns didn't feel like being in the chase group any longer and after a long day in the heat Tyler and Nick were the only ones left in contention.
Going into the finish, Tyler went for an early move to get a lead into the finishing climb but got swarmed and lost a little time by the line to lose the precious seconds that made up the final GC. Nick however, held on to a top 10 GC spot and a 15th place finish on the day!
In the end we all did our jobs and did what we set out to do but sometimes it just doesn't work out. It certainly wasn't for a lack of trying.
In the crit on Saturday night we were out of position at the wrong time and on Sunday we just didn't have the firepower in the heat to blow the race apart like we would have liked. So it was the wise team captain and the new young buck who held down the team's efforts in the end.
We would have obviously liked to do better considering our 3 riders in the top 10 to start the day but there are more races and when we get some more of our big guns healthy we'll be hard to control!
We certainly can't complain.
Thanks for reading!
Christian Leask
9:11 AM |
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