Hats off to the Summit Freewheelers/Allied Decals for running a great race. I pulled in this morning to a parking lot full of people, vendors, trailers and photographers. You would have thought I was there to race the Amstel Gold race or something. I was looking for the helicopters following the race but they must have been busy somewhere else, we'll see if they're there next week.
Today we increased our numbers in the Cat 4 field. Joining me today was Tim House, Mike Schiltz, Jim Flesher, Matt Turi, Carl Peshoff and Stuart Hamilton. I was looking forward to racing with these guys and excited to see that Carl had received his upgrade as he is a great asset to the squad. My goal for the day was to work on positioning in the field and trying to keep myself more aero in the field. I did well with that concept for the first half of the race, until I found myself conveniently going off the front of the field on the top of the climb. I had no ambitions to try anything but an Allied Decal rider had a small gap and I bridged up to him, he slowed down and I kept rolling. I was thinking at that point to keep the pace high and when I roll near the start/finish line, increase the pace a little more and see what happens. Turned out that gave me a little bit of a gap but by the time I was approaching the climb again, I noticed I didn't have much more of a gap or anyone to work with so I sat up to begin the recovery process. Fortunately for me the pace didn't pick up anymore at that point so I was able to sit in and catch my breath. I had burned a few matches on that effort, but I wasn't too concerned because there wasn't a whole lot of race left and I knew I'd finish.
A few laps later and my goal of positioning somehow not as important to me (note, it should have been and I will be better next week), a small group of 7 or 8 riders got up the road. I was too far back to go with it and seeing a teammate up there, I wasn't too concerned. That's when it happened, going into the first 90 degree corner and my teammate in the breakaway, Stuart Hamilton went down. Oh no! My first thoughts were I hope he is ok, my second thought then was that Stark Velo wasn't represented in the breakaway. At this point I was up near the front of the field so I made an all out effort to catch the break. Those matches I burnt earlier would come back to haunt me because I couldn't dig deep enough to catch those guys and I would have to sit up to wait for the field and hope that together, we could bring them back. Swinging by the corner of the accident, Stuart was down and our race went neutral. We would remain that way for over 30 minutes according to my power data. When we went neutral, there was 5 laps remaining, when they started up back up, they reduced that down to two laps. Two laps would not be enough as everyone knew it would be a sprint for those two laps. Matt Turi was an animal as he single handedly pulled the breakaway that they let go off a few seconds early back. I only wished that I felt decent enough to do something other than sit in. I could see some of my teammates up front but the pace was too high for me to get up there to do anything. In the end, I ended up sprinting for possibly a top 20 finish for the day.
As an FYI, I spoke with Tim this evening and he's informed me that Stuart has a broken collarbone and a broken rib. Hope you're not in too much discomfort Stuart and I look to seeing you back out on the bike in a few months.
brian
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