Sanpete Road Race 2009

I started off by riding up to the ride with Higgins and Brent which is much more entertaining than driving it alone. We got a little frustrated with how slow the packet pick up line was moving. They finally just started handing out the numbers to everyone which was super nice. I was a little worried because I was still carrying 4 extra pounds from my vacation and had been sick during the week and I could still feel some junk in my lungs and was coughing every once in a while.

The race got off to a bang, literally! They shot off a canon, which sent the heart rate of John Ward up by 40 beats per minute. The pace was fast from the start. At about mile 9 or 10 we started climbing a little and Dwayne decided it would be nice to split the peloton, so he hit the climb hard. We lost John, Higgins, and Travis and about 20 other cat. 5's as they were spit out the back. I slipped to the back of the remaining peloton and was on the verge of becoming a casualty myself. I even saw Adam slide back a lot which surprised me.

The remaining peloton regrouped and we started trying to implement our team tactics. On a few occasions we grouped up front and tried to let Adam go. The peloton kept chasing him down. Liam, Brent, and I also tried but the peloton wouldn't let us go. It felt great to go to the front as a team and then block for another team mate and draft off of the chasers. Mentally I felt like we belonged at the front. I didn't feel like a small fish in a big pond anymore, I felt like a team of sharks in a small pond. At mile 40 we caught the cat. 4's who had started 5 minutes ahead of us. That really felt great.

We hit the water stop with the cat. 4 group and it was kind of a mess. I knew it was going to be a mess so I sprinted up the road to be get my water bottle first. I then slowed down to wait for my group. Alot of cat 4's came flying by with one cat 5 in their group. We regrouped with all the cat 4's in front of us now and the cat 5's behind. We knew that 1 cat 5 was in the cat 4 group and he rode the rest of the way with them and won the cat 5's.

Shortly after the water stop when we were regrouping I heard the sound of a flat tire and looked over and it was Liam. He was bummed. He only needed a couple of points to take over 1 place in the cat. 5 points standing. The thought crossed my mind that if he had the same pedals I could just trade bikes with him. It never crossed my mind until after the race when he brought up that we could have traded wheels with him. Sorry Liam!

Shortly after some other guy went off the front and the leaders in the peloton said to let him go alone. Another guy chased him down and that put two guys out front. After they got a small lead, another guy tried to bridge the gap and Brent got on his wheel along with two other guys which made a chase group of 4 or 5. They chased for a couple of miles and finally absorbed them. They now had 5 or 6 guys working together and had a good lead on the peloton of about 200 yards or so. They lead for about 5 miles. They had a reasonable chance of going all the way because of the mix in the break away many of the fast guys in the peloton weren't going to chase them down. Unfortunately they hit a bad section of road which made it impossible to rotate and they were caught by the peloton.

At about mile 60 I was hanging out at the back of the peloton and feeling pretty tired. I tried to stand up at one point and I felt a twinge of a cramp go through my leg. I quickly sat back down. I knew that I was in trouble at that point. Every time I tried to pedal hard I could feel twinges of cramps. With 3 miles to go at mile 64 we went up a little grade and I couldn't put enough pressure on the pedals to stay with the peloton and was dropped. I was easily with in reach of them if I could put any real pressure on the pedals. For the next two miles I dangled off the back by 50 to 100 yards with the fear that I was going to have an all out cramp attack.

Then I could see the peloton slow down because the cat. 4 peloton was only 30 seconds in front of them. I rejoined the peloton with 1k to go and then the sprint started. I knew that if I stood up that I would immediately cramp, so I just paced myself in easy with Dwayne, who wasn't even trying at this point.

We finished 67 miles in 2 hours and 45 minutes. That is 24.35 miles an hour. Wow! We beat the cat. 4's best time by about 5 minutes and the peloton slowed up for them on a few occasions.

Liam came across about 10 minutes later, which is amazing considering he had to fix a flat and probably didn't have many riders to draft off of. John, Higgins, and Travis came in about 10 minutes behind Liam. They averaged about 22 miles an hour which is also very good.