Mike's Bike Blog

This past Sunday saw me compete in the Fredericksburg Road Race for the first time. I'd heard good things about the course, that it was hilly and challenging. Oh and for the record it's not in Fredericksburg, but 23 miles outside of town in Doss. We had a full field in the 35+ 4/5 with 72 preregistered for the race. The course is billed as hilly with cattle guards and low water crossings and a rolling enclosure. So as long as you stayed between the follow car and the wheel truck you had the whole lane to race, which is good cause most of the roads were quite narrow.

I was looking forward to this race as it would be the first time to race with fellow Southwest Cycle Sport teammate Jeremy Humble. He's a very strong rider, last years State TT champion. The course was on a 22 mile loop and we were doing it 2 times so we'd get to enjoy the King of the Mountain (KOM) hill twice, but unfortunately in our race there was no KOM points like there was in the Pro 1/2 race. Our's was just for bragging rights I suppose. Of all the low water crossings there was 1 that had water and we got the warnings on it. As we got started we left at a mellow pace, even after the neutral roll out. Not sure what people were thinking, we might have had too many city boys up front because when we would come to a cattle guard we'd almost come to a stop. This was very nerve-racking as I heard someone say there were 31 cattle guards on the route. I didn't verify that number but I'd say that it is probably right.

As we hit the KOM I was still up near the front so I felt good at my positioning till I looked to see who was near me and noticed that I was boxed in by big guys. These were the guys that rushed up to the front in the hopes of not getting dropped by the time they slid off the back of the hill. I quickly shot through openings and got clear of them as not to slide down the KOM with them as they were shot out the back. The pace up the KOM wasn't bad at all. Near the top however, my back tire started to feel weighted down and spongey. At the top I asked the guy riding behind me if my tire was flat and he confirmed what I was afraid of, I was in the beginning stages of a flat.

Luckily there was neutral wheels as I didn't bring my backups as I don't have a usable cassette for them. I pulled to the side, sipped some water. Shifted to the 11 cog, looked back for the wheel truck. Took the rear wheel off, waited for what seemed like an eternity as the last of the clydesdales crested the KOM and the wheel truck finally got there. The tire change was real fast once they got there, but I was about 4 minutes down on the leaders as I found myself DFL.

I quickly caught the first group of clydesdales lumbering up the rollers as my goal now was to see if I could Time Trial my way back to the main group. I mean why let my good form go to waste. Which I should point out this was a B race for me, so I did do a mini taper for it, so I had high hopes on a good finish. I was flying in most cases hitting 28 or 29 mph and only the rollers would slow me down.  The nice thing about being solo was I didn't have to slow down for the cattle guards. On the first lap I passed a former Discovery Channel rider, but I blew by him and all I could make out was he was in a Team Discovery jersey. With 3 miles to go on the first lap was the big hazard on the course, the low water crossing with water. There was only about 2 inches of water in it, but we were warned it was fairly slick even though it had been scrubbed to get the algae off several times. As I flew down the hill leading up to it volunteers gave the universal sign to slow down by pushing their hands down. I could see one rider on the ground with officials around him. He wasn't getting up, I later heard that 1 rider was taken away by ambulance with a broken leg. There was quite a pileup when he went down. This wasn't my first water crossing so I knew what to expect as I went through it and more importantly how to pedal out when I had cleared the water.

On the 2nd time up the KOM  I caught and passed big George Hincapie in his full BMC kit. I wasn't attacking the KOM hill, I was going at a moderate pace, in fact I couldn't attack, it seemed whenever I'd stand to attack the cassette and chain would slip. Remember I'm not using my own wheel because of the wheel change so my chain and the cassette aren't use to each other. So all I could do was sit and spin my way up. I didn't seem to have any big issues when I was in the 53T and pushing the higher gears. That left only 1 other rider I needed to beat and that was either Chris Horner or Levi Leipheimer wearing their full Team Radio Shack kit. Low and behold off in the distance I could see 2 riders working together and one in a bright red kit. I suspected this was indeed the Radio Shack rider, one problem the 2 seemed to be working well together and I couldn't reel them in as quickly as I had hoped. It took awhile but I closed the gap and at the low water crossing I knew they were mine. Especially when the non Radio Shack rider got off his bike to walk through the water. And yet again there was a rider down in the water, well I suspect he went down, he might have just decided to take a break from the heat and humidity. I pass the Radio Shack rider on the hill coming out of the low water crossing, but I still can't stand and power up the hill. This lets him stay in contact with me on the final 3 miles.

When we make the left turn for the final approach to the finish, I now believe it was Levi as I think Chris is racing in Europe, so Levi passes me. I grab his wheel. He's pretty big and seems like he has a much better finishing sprint than I do. So my strategy is to get him to start his sprinter further out. With about 800 meters to go I act like I'm winding it up and pull to the outside and act like I'm going to go. He takes the bate and starts his sprint, I get back into his draft. With about 150 to go, I come out of his draft as he starts to slow and start my pounce. Only as I look up a truck pulling a horse trailer that has been stopped by the officials decides he's had enough and pulls around the cars stopped at the finish line and proceeds to take 1/2 of our lane! Since I was going on the outside this was directly in my path, not wanting to be a splatter on his bug guard I pulled up and moved over to the right. So I lost a spot to Levi Leipheimer, instead of 40th I got 41st out of 63 finishers.

My placing wasn't where I wanted it to be, but I had good legs and felt fine on my 41 mile solo effort. Next time I might have to try a solo effort again, but instead of going solo off the back I think I'll go solo off the front. The other great joy I had in the race was to see a steaming fresh cow patty in the middle of the road with bike tires through it. I saw a couple of these and especially the first one, really made my day as I pictured the peloton rolling through that. I wonder who got it worse the guy who rolled through it with his $2400 wheels or the rider directly behind him.