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[J Smith]

Hey everyone, some of you may know me...some may not. I used to ride for CPC when it was a baby. Dustin asked me to post a quick story about this past weekend's race down here in Texas. It was the first of the season and my first race back after taking a year off to finish school.


Date: 1/23
Race: Copperas Cove
Rider: Jerry
Category: 3
Mileage/Time: 53 miles, 2:09
Weather Conditions: Sunny and 70 

From the Rider’s Viewpoint:
It was a really fun race. 70 degrees out, so the weather was perfect.

There were over 100 riders in our field with the yellow line rule in place so needless to say, it was very crowded. I started out towards the middle and had to work pretty hard to get up front to watch any attacks. I was the protected rider for this race and had 3 teammates watching out for me up front. My good friend was focused on stringing out the group as much as possible - Jens Voigt style.

By the time I got up to the front of the pack, 2 riders had already gone off the front (around mile 5). We had 12 guys on our team in this race, so we should have been chasing but my teammates weren't too worried about the early breaks. So attacks came and went but nothing else stuck.

At mile 27 we turned on to "Harmon road" into a nasty crosswind. There is no yellow line and it's filled with potholes and is almost like some Belgian road... well there were about 3 attacks right away on Harmon and after the third, I countered pretty hard. The legs were in some serious pain at this point. To my surprise, this one actually stuck.

I look back and there is one guy trying to bridge so I slowed up and we rotated at 33 mph for about 3 miles. Eventually we caught one of the guys in the break and spit him out. Then we caught the other and he stuck with us. Before we knew it, the peloton was out of sight. The three of us rotated for about 25 miles and built up a 2:30 gap. The winner went with about 500m left and I was right on his wheel but couldn't come around...too much cramping. He is a strong rider and deserved the win. The third guy fell back quite a ways in the last kilometer.

[sobrien]

Man, that is some awesome riding, Jerry.  How often will you have races now?  Doesn't Texas hold mostly road races now then more crits a little later in the year?

This inspires me to head back down into the cold basement and churn out intervals.  Who am I kidding - nothing can inspire me to intervals.  I feel like Happy Gilmore at the batting cages, "Just 3 1/2 months to racing season...THUMP!"

[J Smith]

Thanks steve. The racing here is really fun. Everyone gets to know each other. From now through April, there is a road race every weekend but 1 or 2. Then the crits start in May when it starts to get really warm. There is a downtime in late June/July and then the road races start back up in August.

Man that trainer work is so boring but once you get outside it brings back all the motivation and it really pays off. It may be warmer down here, but I am still riding inside quite a bit because of cold.

Can't wait to make it back north and ride with you all again!