Cyclonauts Road Race (4/5): Someone call a Doctor, QuadCycles is putting on a clinic!

by Ian Sutton

When you roll up to the line in a Cat 4 event with 8 guys on your team it makes all the other teams wonder what the hell is going on. This Saturday, QuadCycles put on a display for the people and we launched attack after attack after attack and simply wore the field down.

We rode the first 10k at a pretty casual warm up pace and everyone was chatting and hanging out enjoying the early morning cool as the low clouds burned off with the ascending sun. Eventually someone decided to try their luck with an attack and it forced the whole field to stretch their legs a bit. With the whole Quad team riding the front 3rd of the peloton, any of these initial moves were brought back within a few minutes and were typically followed by a counter attack on our behalf which would prove to frustrate the entire peloton over the next two hours.

At about kilometer 50 we happened upon one of two level crossings that were mentioned at the race start, but what we did not plan on was actually having to stop for a train. From about 300 meters out, we could see the "ding dings" come on and unfortunately we all had to stop to let the train pass; the slow moving, half mile long freight train. For a minute, the train's engineer looked at the peloton as we barreled towards the crossing and you could tell that just for a minute, he thought "are they going to try and beat me across the tracks?". Unfortunately, one lone, lucky attacker had beat the train to the crossing by about 45 seconds and he would ultimately take the victory. How Paris-Roubaix circa 2006. While we waited for the train to pass, several people used the time to take a natural break. About five minutes later, the racing - now ultimately for 2nd place resumed. A few chases to catch the lone leader tried to formulate, but some nervous riders were simply trying to ramp up the speed sprint style and really just created a disorganized cluster off the front for about 15 seconds at a time.

The race settled back into a nice, fast rhythm for the next 15 or 20km and then we hit the climb. I made sure to be right up at the front at the start of this climb as its length would surely force a selection by the summit and it was so. The whole peloton came to the climb together, but only about 20 or 30 of us were left by the time we hit the summit. The selection was made and this group settled in for the remainder of the race.

The tempo was pretty tame after the climb, save a few easy rollers everyone had plenty of time to top off their fluids and to eat a bit. I believe 5 Quad riders including myself made the selection and again, we started attacking, testing everyone's legs as they tried to flush out the pools of lactic acid that filled up during the climb.

Quad attacked right up to the final climb, which we had ascended earlier to create the initial selection, only this time we were (thankfully) only going about halfway to the top. I did my best to keep tempo on the climb but really had to dig deep into the proverbial "suitcase of courage" to get up the hill without being dropped. As of this writing, the official results have not been posted on bikereg.com but I'm fairly certain that all of us who made the split, finished within the top 20 with our best placing being Glenn F with a fantastic 6th place.

While a podium finish certainly would have been better, QuadCycles went out to this race to kick ass and take names and that we did. As a team we were very active and very aggressive in the race and made it hard for any other teams to follow us. From the gun every Quad rider had a smile on his face and really made it an enjoyable morning for the whole team. We were the buzz of the peloton and there were even some inquiries into joining the team. Bike racing really is a team sport and today we made it oh so apparent.

The course was great, it had a little bit of everything, the weather was perfect, there were no crashes to speak of and everyone raced with class.

Results on BikeReg.com