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What Garry saw:
Category: 3
Result: Flat on the start line...
Those who went south were Garry, Brian J, Santiago and Mike Mui.
I entered the Senior 3, Brian was in the 5,s and Santiago and Mike rode the S4.
Brian picked me up at 05:30 and our trip there was fast. We arrived at 07:40, Brian averaging 80 mph on the freeway.
My race was very short, I flatted at the start line, and having no spare had to miss the race. The judge offered me the chance of jumping in on the second 17 mile lap, which I did. I did one lap then pulled out to do the feed for Santiago, Mike and Brian on their last lap.
The course is basically 3 roads. A 8 mile trudge north in to a 20-25 gusting wind along the canal road followed by a 2 mile crosswind road followed by a 7 mile tailwind speedfest to complete the lap, The finish is at the end of this tailwind section on a dead straight road, an ideal sprint to be set up by teams and very fast. There are no hills, the only slope being a tailwind climb over the I5 freeway 1 mile from the finish. The turn from the tailwind road onto the canal road is a 180 degree bend, abot 50-70 yrads in distance. There is gravel on this bend which caused 2 crashes at least. There is a slight rise onto the levee and this is the only place to hand up water. It is a difficult feed zone, very congested and the riders are going quite fast.
Brian's race was cut short by severe cramps in both legs. Upto 1 1/2 laps he was having a great ride, but then the body shut down. No permanent damage but a study of drinking habits was discussed. The day was 88 degrees with a cooling wind, a dangerous combination. (last year it was 105 degrees).
At the end of lap 2 I saw Mike and Santiago. SB was in the front group of a splitting pack. MM was about 15 seconds back as the 4's swung into the brutal headwind on the Canal Road. The S4 pack split up completely and SB's last lap saw him go hard over the freeway but he was unable to get away and thus the group sprinted in together. SB got 7th or 8th, which gives him enough top 10 placings to upgrade to a 3. MM finished about 10 minutes down.
I mentioned to Brian about how strange it is that flats seem to come in groups of 3. Twenty minutes ago I checked my bike and I have 2 flat tires, 3 for the day. I guess it just was not meant to be.
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What Santiago saw:
Category: 4
Result: Top ten
It was a nice Saturday morning until I got out of the car and felt the wind..... it was blowing really hard.... back flashings from Snelling came right into my mind.. but it wasn't raining or cold, so it was not going to be that bad...
I met with Brian, Garry and Mike before the race, which was pretty good, since I thought nobody from FFBC was actually going to the race. Mike and I registered for the Senior 4, Brian Sr. 5 (why????) and Garry Sr. 3.
Garry's group lined-up right in front of us at the start line, and there they went, but Garry is pulling over already... oh no.. a flat before the race even started... that is BAD luck.
Anyway, right after we started with a field of around 50 or so, not sure. It all started pretty slow into the wind, nobody wanted to go hard with that headwind, it was blowing pretty good. We had 4 laps of 17mi to go, first lap nothing really happen, the usual acceleration when getting to the cross and tail wind, going from around 15 mph to over 30 mph.
On the second lap things started to warm up a little bit, a guy took off by himself into the head wind a got a gap, no point on chasing. When we got to the tail wind section there was another jump of around 6 guys, I new that this had a chance of staying away if it got bigger due to the riders that were on it, so I decided to jump and bridge the gap, so I did and towed a few guys with me, the break was now on with around 16 riders on it, and we started working together right away, got a nice pace line going.
We started increasing our lead from the main field and never saw them again. We caught the solo break and he stayed with us. Everybody kept working together for almost a whole lap, so the gap got huge. At the end of the third lap we had the Sr. 3 on site and got really close to them. When they realized that we were closing really fast on them, they made a big acceleration splitting their field in two, we caught and passed the second group, and kept going.
There was another big acceleration on the tail wind section and we lost a few riders, now we were down to 12. With around 1 mile to go I decided to jump and try to drop a couple of rider, since my goal was to make it to the top 10, and it happened, all but three followed me, so we were down to 9, I kept the pace up to stay away and ended up leading this guys to the finish line getting 7th place on the final sprint.
Mike didn't make it to the break, so I don't know how he finished.
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