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Ride Notes

Many members of the club have been traveling to races nearly every weekend, with some pretty good results. The Central Region Empire State Games team will be stacked with FLCC’s Tuesday-night riders (the games are July 22–26).

 Bloomsburg, PA, and Buffalo, NY, races saw several FLCC riders each, and the stage race at Fitchburg, MA, had FLCC riders in several categories. I participated in a road race in West Virginia on my way to the National Championships in Tallahassee, and in the West Virginia State Championships on my way back (see related story, p. 3). A week after the Empire State Games, in Rochester, I board a plane for the World Masters Games in Portland, OR. The following week is the Mad River Road Race in Vermont for those riders who like races that finish with "sick climbs." Then I’m off to Killington, Vermont, for more hills, and pretty much the end of the season.

I was fortunate to win the Masters race at Fitchburg without winning a single stage. I rode pretty well in the TT, but was beaten by six seconds. In the circuit race I thought I had the field sprint in hand, but I lost momentum and slowed a few yards before the line and got nipped by two faster sprinter types. A mechanical mishap by the race leader allowed me to inherit the lead in general classification after stage 2.

 In the third stage, a very hilly road race with a ski-area, mountain-top finish, I thought I was being smart, letting the best climber get away early, thinking that he would tire himself out and we would catch him at the end, making him vulnerable in the final climb.

 It didn’t work out that way, and in the end I was forced to savage myself for the final 15–20 miles trying to cut the time gap to hang on to the overall lead. This left me quite vulnerable to others who were quite close behind me in the GC, and who enjoyed a restful free ride to the final climb. They attacked me at the end, but didn’t get enough time to matter, and by then I had cut the time gap to the stage leaders to a small enough margin that I would keep the leader’s jersey for the final day.

 The criterium was fast, and the 2nd-place rider’s team threw a lot of attacks at me, but there was enough wind in our faces in the long, uphill homestretch that nobody could hope to get away for long. I covered all the attacks until two laps to go, when I let the former race leader sneak away for a well-deserved stage win, but by then there wasn’t any chance for anyone to get enough time to threaten my race lead.

 When you have the leader’s jersey, you sometimes have to ride a less exciting type of race, being defensive, rather than slash-and-burn attacking. On the other hand, there is a real onus on the one who wears the jersey. You have to be able to read what is happening in the race at any time and be ready to shoulder the load and work to keep a situation from getting out of hand. At the same time, you have to be able to stay prepared for the next attack that is certainly being planned by somebody else for the moment that you get this one
 under control...

— Glenn Swan, 277-0495

 FLCC VP, Mountain Biking