Race Report: Tour de Millersburg

Overall:

The Tour of Millersburg is a first-class event. The town essentially comes together as an entire community to put this on. And, what I mean is, it's not just one club putting it on, it's the entire freaking town. The businesses, the residents, everything. Amazing. Though I stayed in a hotel, next year I'll probably stay with a host family to fully experience the hospitality. Rusty and Chris were definitely lucky. Nicholas, Andrew, and I stayed at the 5-star Red Carpet Inn in Duncannon PA, right across the river from Millersburg (meaning we had to travel south to get to the bridge then back north again to the town.) Never again. Anyway...

Our goal was simple: get Pete Warner the win. As you might imagine, this strategy relies quite a bit on Pete himself (especially for the TT) but, as the team proved, it can be solidified by selfless participation. As usual, none are more selfless than WWVC Racing. We acted as a team, we won as a team. The result was a win for WWVC Racing as well as the necessary upgrade points for Pete to head to cat 2. On a personal note, the pride I feel as team President is enough to make me scream from rooftops.

Time Trial:

My goal was to go slow. I was SUPPOSED to conserve for the crit. I screwed that up huge. My original plan was to give the TT a go so, a while ago, I started planning for that to include "borrowing" a TT bike and decking it and myself out. Kevin from Blue hooked me up with a T16 and I bought some Wheelbuilder covers for my rear 404. I trained on the T16 for the past month and already noticed an improvement. The course was to be just under 10 miles of dead flat which definitely suits my body style (trying not to say fat.) But, once we got up there and talked, it made more sense to conserve to support Pete in the crit. Alas, since I had the gear, I decided to use the TT as an "opener" for the crit instead of just tootle along. The inital 300 meters is a sharp downhill which really gets you going. Upon flattening out, I looked down and was doing 32mph. It. Felt. Awesome. I couldn't stop. My position felt so comfortable that I just kept going. My HR was soon at my LTHR (no power data) and I felt good. I backed it off half a notch to come just under LTHR because I knew I had to conserve something. I caught my 30-second man at the turn-around. This got me pumping even more. Doing a TT was so out of my element and I was having so much fun that I was ignoring my purpose. Turns out it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway as you'll see in my crit report. Anyhow, shortly thereafter, I caught my one minute man who was either conserving for the crit, or just having a really bad TT. At that point, I backed off another notch to be sure I was in high tempo, not LT. At the finish, I got out of the saddle to climb the little rise and rolled through at 22:23. That's about a 25.8mph average which was good enough for 31st out of 97 dudes. This was good and bad. Good because I'm now psyched to add TTing to my game and have load of room for improvement. Bad because 1) to be effective for this race, I should've gone much slower to save energy for Pete and 2) if I was going to go fast, I should've just gone for it to see how high I could get. Oh well.

Crit:

The course looked like it was going to be pretty epic. They toned down the hill from last year by running the course clockwise. But, that still meant there'd be a fairly long hill each lap. The finish was a screaming downhill. Faaaaast. With almost 100 guys lining up, everyone knew it'd be a nail biter for the first 15 minutes. Yup. We all got really good warmups. Some in the tent (which was beautifully setup right on the crit course near the start/finish) and some on the road. Everyone staged really early because we all knew a good position was paramount to success. They had call-ups for the top ten dudes then everyone filled in the gaps behind them. Most of use were 2nd and 3rd row. At the start, it was gangbusters. But once we made the second turn and started up the hill, it seemed rather manageable. By the third lap, I realized that, while it didn't look like we were flying and people were working, we really were and my legs were on fire. Little by little I was sliding back on the climb, each time making up my ground on the downhill where most were conserving. I used it (and my weight) to regain position. Problem was, I wouldn't make up all of my ground and the math eventually caught up with me. By 15 minutes into the 45 or so of the race, I came off the back and was too far to make it up on the downhill. Horrible feeling. But, OK, I know my role, so rather than TT it, I shut it down and recovered so I'd be effective for the RR. Since self-selection would mean I couldn't do the road race, I simple rode around waiting to get pulled by the official. I had one or two guys in view most of that time. A lap later, an entire second peleton caught me. Somewhere in the first two laps, a third of the field had been dropped and it took an entire lap of me spinning in the little ring for them to catch where I was! Damn. So, instinctively, I fed back in and sat in with them. It only took half a lap for me to realize that that was a mistake. So, I pulled off again. Good decision. A lap later, I got yanked. Two laps later, that group did. Then more. Then even more. 30 or so finished. I had the best front-row seat to watch Nicholas absolutely bury himself on the front coming through the bell with Pete on his wheel. It was teamwork at its best. One dude had broken away and had a huge lead but Nicholas ensured Pete would take the field sprint for 2nd. Pete was now well in the GC lead and wearing the yellow jersey.

Road Race:

We woke up to see it raining out. I had hoped it would stop. It really didn't. With us being tired, and the rain, and taking longer than expected to suit up, I essentially rolled straight to the line without a pedal stroke of warmup (with the exception of the four blocks between the car and line.) I've never done that before but, with the efforts the previous day, I hoped it would be OK. It was. The 1/2/3s rolled away and we waited forever for our start. Again, they did the call-ups. The team had memorized (or written on our arms) the bib numbers to watch. And watch we would. Ha, I still remember 131, 162, 179, 116, and 111. 162 was the crit winner and had an easily identifiable jersey, so I took it upon myself to keep an eye on him. Finally, off we went. The course is a rolling 18-mile loop. The first five to seven miles is mostly uphill with a very manageable gradient. Then it flattens out for a bit along some fantastic scenery, turns on to some chip-and-seal with more rollers, then on to a highway where the yellow line was enforced and it's mostly downhill back to the town. Fun. For much of the race, it poured rain but that helped me manage body temp very well.

The first lap amounted to not much more than a parade lap as far as I'm concerned. I think there were a few attacks but they were fruitless. Most everyone was getting the feel of the course and the rain. There was a bit of squirreliess but largely manageable. All five of we Pete-supporters were very present near the front and had our minds on the contenders. As a side note, riding a race where your job is to manage others vs. riding for yourself is a completely different experience and makes it so much fun. I felt such a sense of pride and team that it definitely helped me push through more painful moments. Coming back into town and through the feed zone, the speed rocketed up. The course started in the same place as the TT so that downhill helped add to the stretching of the rubberband. Lap 2 was more dynamic and a bit faster (it seemed). I decided to pick a number (the crit winner) and lock onto him the whole lap. I figured it would be easier while I was in pain to simplify life. I found him toward the back and got on his wheel and didn't come off. A few times, he'd slide to the outside and move toward the front. It sure looked like he was positioning for an attack but he never would. He'd eventually slide back. No matter, I had him. As we made our way toward town and the bell, I felt pretty good. I started to think about how I was going to play out the final miles and determined that, as a bigger guy with a decent FTP, I would try and keep the speed high coming down the highway and let one of the other guys lead Pete out through town toward the line. Once again, through town, the rubberband stretched....then snapped. There was a clear gap between us and the front group. I dug deep down the hill then up the shallow climb at the start of lap 3 to catch back on. Rusty and Chris passed me and I watched them reattach. Took me a minute more but I managed it too. Whew. Now it was a hard downpour. Not 2 minutes later, on a rather sharp bend in the road, 30 of my closest friends invited me to join them on the pavement. I knew it was coming. The crash spanned the road. It started on the right side, where a HUGE pile formed, and made its way to the left where I was one of the final guys to depart from my vertical orientation. I got lucky. Very lucky. I landed right on some dude and harmlessly rolled onto the pavement. I came way with a bump on the knee and what looks like a hicky on my hip (wait, maybe that is.....nevermind.) I was really nervous about my bike but after a brief inspection, I didn't see even a scratch. Later I would find tiny scratches on the derailleur, skewer, and handlebar cap and my front wheel is about 1mm out of true in one spot. That's it. My biggest disappointment - even above my not finishing - was seeing Nicholas at the bottom of the big pile clearly in a bit of pain. Oh F***. He said his knee hurt and his bike was in the middle of the biggest jigsaw puzzle of mangled bikes I had ever seen. At this point, there were tons of bleeding, cursing, angry, groaning dudes all over the place. Support was plentiful and immediate. Cops, EMT, race support. All of it. All in a downpour. Bike racing, how do you not love it? After a long while of assessing Nicholas and his bike, he resolved himself to having to take the van back so I joined another guy and we rode backwards on the course back to the line. A very disappointing finish.