Owasco SR — Cat 3

by Jonah Tower

After a solid week of training and feeling weel rested, I was looking forward to a good weekend of racing in Auburn, NY. We had a hotel in the middle of town and all three events were within 5 minutes of driving, so it was a very nice situation in a quiet corner of New York state. Friday evening we headed out to take a look at the 16-mile TT course, and then on the way back to the hotel registered for the weekend. Then, it was time for food and bed.

Saturday morning was a bit grey and a little on the cool side, but over all a fine day for the ITT. I drove Chris out to the staging area, so that he could warm-up and get going, and in the process discovered that they were going to have a 20-minute delay in start times. The course itself consisted of two long "false flat" sections going south along Owasco Lake, before turning to the east, going down hill for a bit and then flat until the turn-around at about 8 miles. I had a start time of about 10:30, and by the time I got to the start house the sun had broken through and with that there was a STRONG wind coming from the south. So, I had to plow through a tough head wind for the first several miles on the false flat sections, and then after making the turn, I really was working hard to keep the bike upright as the cross wind battered me from the right and then from the left, after I made the turn around. In the process I caught a few guys but was also caught by a guy from a minute back. On the stretch leading back to the finish line he and I traded back and forth while we had a tail wind (he was a bigger rider and probably was better built for TTing in the wind than I). And, for the final sections I was fully in 55-12 gearing and hauling @$$ to the finish line. The end result put me in 12th position, which I had mixed feelings about, because I was looking to be in the top 10 and the top rider had nearly 2 minutes on my time.

Once the TT was done and I had cooled down a while, we headed back to the hotel for lunch, self-massage, and a nap to get ready for the downtown crit that eveneing. The weather was really warming up and by mid afternoon it was certainly in the 70's, but as I was warming up, before the 18:15 start time that the Cat 3's had, the rain came and I was left under the gate of my Xterra thinking "this is going to be interesting." The crit itself was a "6-curve" course around the town center with two lanes of road just for us and a small finiahing hill… in general it was FAST! However, with the pouring rain that we now were suffering the officials decided not to have the intermediate sprints for time bonus (of which there were going to be 7 for 5, 3, and 1 second each) and, while I was a little disappointed about the lost oportunity to move up in GC, I think it was the right decision. In general the pace was pretty fast, but the course itself was not at all very decisive and without the sprints the field hung mostly together. However, not just once or twice, but three times a vehicle wandered on to the course, and we all had a few close calls trying to avoid on-coming traffic at 35 mph. In the end I finished with the field, when I got hemmed in on the inside of the final sprint, but two of the GC-guys ahead of me somehow lost time, and I eneded up in 10th.
Pasta, oatmeal, and a pear… then, to sleep.

After closer inspection of the GC situation I saw that the next guy was only 1 second up and less than 10 seconds in front of him was #8, so I was certainly looking to grab some time bonuses on the cheap if I could. Thinking that maybe with a 75-mile RR ahead of them and with two event already in their legs the field my let me go on a solo flyer for a little while, I warmed up really well and hit LT from the line trying to get to the first KOM (at 7 miles) alone. However, my gamble did not pay off with great visbility and the field caught me with about 500m to the top of the KOM, and I was hurtin' bad to get across it myself. From then on the plan was simply to keep a good eye on all the GC guys that were near me, while trying to recover from my initial effort. Two guys broke away, shortly after the first KOM and the field let them go a little while knowing we could easily catch them however, we missed our turn to the approach of the second KOM and ended up having to U-turn in the middle of the race to get back on course so the two riders took it uncontested. While I had nothing to really contest the 1.2-mile, 6.5% climb, I was able to make it across in relatively good shape. For the rest of the race I really couldn't do much but sit in, so I stayed near the front making sure that I didn't miss any splits that might occur, but the course had long sections of flat or down-hill, where one could see for miles literally, so the field stuck together for the most part only sheading a few riders here and there. I had worked out a deal with ECV to get a feed, but that got a little boched-up and one of their riders is now all upset with me for "being in the way." Then, in the final miles I became totally focused on the guy ahead of me and trying to position myself to take a second from him, if the oportunity should arise that I missed a small break that got away with only a few miles to go, but was able to hold 50 seconds on the field, because everyone was goofing around with GC placings in their mind. The finsh was super fast with a down hill approach to the last 200m, but again I eneded up just somewhere in the field. Because I didn't cover the break two guys snuck in ahead of me in GC and I eneded up back in 12th for the weekend.

Overall I am happy with how I felt and how I raced physically. I would have liked to have been at least in the top 10 places for GC, if not the top 5. But, the gambles I took did not pay off. Still, the weekend was great, and I even had enough energy to make the drive all the way home. Next year I hope that we can make this a big QuadCycles event, because it is really very fun and great preparation for other stage races during the year.