On Saturday I headed out to the road race of the new MN Memorial Classic Omnium race. I was feeling pretty good and had a lot of confidence coming off of last week’s win at the Birchwood Road Race. The day was to be a hot and windy one. The course of the race was 2 laps of a 23 mile loop. The terrain was flat with no hills or even sizeable rollers to speak of. I was racing the 3/4 category and had 4 teammates with me, Bryan, Shane, Brady, and Jeff. I knew that Ben of Silver and Garret of RVCC were going to be the key competition as both are very strong and this course was perfect for Ben.
The first lap was not too hard. The crosswind sections on the course were tame by comparison to other days of racing. Making it hard to force a selection of any kind. When we came through the start/finish line on the first lap, it gave me a good sense of what it would be like coming into the finish. With a strong tailwind and a slightly downhill approach, the finish was going to be very fast.
The start of the second lap I thought I had a mechanical on my hands as my bike was making this awful clinking sound everytime I pedaled. At first I thought maybe I had a broken spoke, but the noise only happened when I put pressure on the cranks as I pedalled. It was annoying, but are you going to do.
I hovered around the front of the race letting others put their noses in the wind, including Brady and Jeff, who were really covering the front of the race and protecting me from the wind. I knew Bryan would be lurking back in the pack ready to pounce as we neared the finish. Coming into the final cross wind section, I jumped early to make the turn on my own. I set a moderate tempo pace, knowing that would force others to work behind me with the hope a few would bridge up and we could work together. Garret showed up with two others and we started rotating. Garret I took equal pulls, but our other two breakaway partners were not quiet pulling their weight. We were caught about a mile later. A few other attempts were made to force a break before we hit the final stretch of road, but nothing really came of it. We did fracture the main pack and about a dozen of us were rolling towards the finish line.
With about 2K to go, Brady and Jeff hit the front of the race with me sitting third wheel. Brady was working it really hard on the front to keep the pace high as we neared the finish line. When he pulled off, we hesitated a bit and lost the front of the race. Now I was concerned on getting boxed in. With about 500m to go, Garret jumped on the left side pulling Bryan out and Ben jumped chasing the two of them. I had to squeeze by on the right side shoulder and tried to catch onto the back of Bryan’s wheel.
It was a long sprint and I simply did not have the legs to get around anyone. Ben came up on my left and Garret got me for third just on the line putting me in fourth. I was really excited for Bryan for taking the win for the team and bummed that I just did not have good position in the last kilometer of the race. We came through the finish line at 40mph, which has to be one of the fastest sprints I have ever done. For the first time ever, my hamstrings cramped really bad after the sprint was over. I contribute that to the heat of the day. It was a fun race and I continued my streak of top 10 finishes for the year with the last 4 races being top 5 finishes.
1 203 Bryan Loecken
2 221 Benjamin Schinke
3 204 Garrett Ping
4 226 Marc Kermisch
5 217 Michael Moriarity
Post a Comment