I was planning on just training Sunday, but felt so good yesterday I decided to do the local Perry Road race. If we ride out to the course, race and ride home, it’s an easy 80 miles. It wasn’t so warm, only in the 40’s, but the wind was light. The course has a km climb up to the finish every 5 miles, so it is challenging. The 1-2 riders were grouped with the 3’s, so there was a OK sized field riding around.
My team had 5 guys there. Bill Stolte had won the race last week, so was leading. I thought it was best just to race and not try to stack the results. It sometimes gets a little stupid around here when we do that. Anyway, my brother, Kris, took off from the gun with the new junior on our team, Joe Schmaltz. They quickly disappeared up the rode. Towards the end of the first lap, I flatted. There was no wheel van of course. I thought I’d just go to the finish line and wait a lap and ride the rest for training. Trudi was there with her bike and I took her 9 speed rear wheel. I was a couple minutes back. I decided to chase. Thought I felt so good that it wouldn’t be that big a deal to catch back on. Little did I know. Little did I know the rest my team, Bill, Shad, and Adam were up the road in a 5 rider group rotating. I went pretty good for about 1/2 a lap. OK for another 1/2 lap and rode badly the last chase lap. Thankfully, Bill looked back when I was about 20 seconds back and just about done. It took a little over 10 miles to get back to the front.
It amazing how much different I felt Sunday most of the race. It took me nearly a lap (5 miles) to recover from the effort. It was actually depressing somewhat. So much for not stacking the results. The final group was the 5 of us (HRRC/Trek Stores) and my brother Kris. 3 of us hadn’t done last weeks race, so we weren’t in the overall points. So, junior, Joe Schmaltz won his first race riding on our team. Bill was 2nd. So on. It was good training. Physically. Mentally it was a bit annoying.
HRRC TTT. I look pretty happy, huh?
