Today my age group (30-34) did a 75-mile road race. It was similar to the Utah District road race course we used years ago but in the reverse direction. I got a quick warmup on the rollers and then rolled up to the line. The weather was cool, about 65 at the start, but hardly any wind.

The race was semi-active from the start with a couple riders escaping before the descent by Jordanelle Reservoir. The pack was content with letting them go, but up the first real climb, another guy escaped in pursuit of the 2-person break. Once we got to Kamas, then the pace started picking up and there was a flurry of attacks. I was feeling good so I was active at the front to make sure I didn’t miss a major break. Then as we got closer to the feed zone, I got with a group of a few riders and started rotating. I knew that the feed zone would be hectic since it was on a completely flat section of the course, so I wanted to be up front and avoid any chaos. I was able to get a bottle from Heather and then a guy attacked. Since I was in front I decided to latch on his wheel. There was still a single rider up ahead and I didn’t think a two or three-person break would hold for very long so I didn’t pull through.

He asked if I was going to work and I told him that it was too early, but I’d take some ‘tempo’ pulls. Once we made a left-hand turn I looked back and noticed the field was really strung out. For some reason, I thought everything would be clumped together. As we came upon the lone breakaway rider, I looked back and noticed that there were breaks in the field. So in order to “break the elastic”, I attacked, hoping peole would come with me. No one got on my wheel at first, but after a few seconds they were on me and we started rotating.

Then we made another left-hand turn on the road that goes to Oakley, which was smooth and slightly downhill, and we just started motoring. When I looked down we were doing 32-33MPH. We worked well all the way to the corner of Browns Canyon Rd and by then we had over a minute on the field. Cool! From that point on we just tempo’d the hills and continued to paceline the flats. There were 12 people in the break.

The last time up Browns Canyon is when our group of twelve broke up. Unfortunately, I was in the group of 7-9th place and in the spirit of my philosophy of never giving up because you never know what’s going to happen to the riders ahead of you, I worked a lot. But it was in vain as we never did catch the riders in front of us and by the time the sprint came my legs were toast. The altitude didn’t help either as on that last climb my legs felt fine I just couldn’t get enough oxygen in.

So I ended up 9th. Not bad for a national championship!