An Early-Season Digest

April 8, 2009 in Race Reports

I obviously haven’t provided an update for a while. It’s spring break right now here in Davis, and I finally have some free time, so I figured that I’d brush the dust off the old blog.

The next race I did after the Early Bird Road Race was the Pine Flat Road Race, one of my favorite races of the year. Probably because there was a chance of rain, the field sizes were a little small; the 3s race I was in had only 19 starters. It was a fun race nevertheless. Right from the start a Roaring Mouse rider soloed off the front and another guy bridged up to him. Strangely, most, if not all, of the Tieni Duro guys in my race dropped out within the first 10 or so miles. The pace wasn’t very high nor was the terrain terribly difficult, so I don’t know what their excuses were. The remaining group had some trouble getting organized, and there were, of course, attacks. Once we got out of the gentle hills to the flat middle section, however, we got a paceline going. Before I knew it the break was in view. Without the shelter from the hills it got a little windy, and once we got within reaching distance of the break the organization faltered. But we still caught them at the base of the first final climb. Right about then Steve O’Mara of ZteaM got away seemingly effortlessly while I was starting to hurt. Before the descent between the two final climbs Andrew Demas of Third Pillar got away too. With not much left I stayed with the group down the descent. I made an effort with about 200 to go, a small gap opened up, and I clinched third place. I was very happy with the race, and to top it off I got a long-sleeve Velo Promo t-shirt, a first for me.

Here I am taking a pull near the beginning of the race.

The Snelling Road Race was the next weekend. The 17-18 field was surprisingly different because many of the usual suspects have realized that they’ve become too good for juniors races, but there are a lot of good new guys to take their places. Contrary to my usual style, I tried to be a little more offensive, so I attacked quite a bit during the first lap. We didn’t drop too many guys, but it felt good to be in control. Cody was looking good, but the saddle on his newly-built-up Look came loose which pretty much put him out of the running. As usual the race came down to a sprint, exactly how I wanted it to since I’ve never lost a sprint on that course. This year was no different.

Here’s a cool picture of my sprint.

The next race was the Berkeley Bike Club Team Time Trial. Because my dad had health issues relating to his crash from last year, I had to partner up with my brother in the juniors category this year. We did some time trial training leading up to the race, and on the day of I was feeling pretty good. Once the race was underway we quickly passed some other teams. Alex did a lot of work on the starting descent, and I did most of the work on the rollers leading up to the final climbs. But just then Alex threw his chain. It took him quite a while to get it back on, and as he did other teams were passing us. Once we finally got going we also lost a lot of time on the hills. We ended up fifth, but I’m confident that without the chain incident we would have easily gotten top three. No picture for this race, as it deserves no acknowledgement.

The last race that I need to catch my readers up on is the Bariani Road Race. As expected, it was very windy as it usually is. My brother and I just hung on the back, tried to get whatever draft we could, and hoped for the best. A rider stayed off the front on his own, and I weaseled my way up to the front in time to get third in the sprint, putting me in fourth overall.

Here my brother and I are, sitting at the back like losers.

That’s all I have for right now. I’m trying to get over a cold before Saturday’s Copperopolis. I’m looking forward to it because I get to do three whole laps. I’m not being sarcastic.