What can I tell you about Barry-Roubaix? it was more than just another number on the wall of fame in my office. Much more fun than that.
Lets start with the promoter Rick Plite who did an amazing job putting it together. I couldnt believe how smoothly things went, but Im getting ahead of myself. it all started with me, Doug and the papist jumped into the car and headed north. We stopped at Brussels Brugge in Indy for belgian food and house brewed beer. Fatty turned us on to this place after the Brookside CX race this year. Fantastic stuff. Fortified we turned the car back north.
Destination Kalamazoo to meet up with Coleman(50mile Jon). There will be video coming soon as Doug was documentarizing the trip. Im a little scared. Coleman was also videographer of the weekend and should have some killer footage from the event.
Jump ahead to race day morning, and I awaken to the site of Coleman filming me sleeping. Its my best event so I cant blame him. Between he and Doug there should be lots of video to come. Hopefully more about the race than of the nocturnal goings on.
Lucky for us, Coleman has a badass race vehicle. a quad cab truck that fit all the gear and racers with plenty of room. Huge improvement over the camry.
We hooked up with Osgood and Tpow from TSB in the parkiing lot and traded strategy on tires and course management. The bullshit you do when youre obsessing about a race. They seemed amp'd and ready. I guess we all were.
We lined up in the freezing wind coming off the lake(i was literally shaking) and were grouped by category. All four of us waiting for the neutral roll out along with 700 or so others.
As we started the roll out Pope and I moved towards the front of our group as traffic slowed others. @ the 2.5 mile point the gun was sounded and we jumped and jumped hard onto the gravel double track. The center was soft and deep sand. I crossed it once and realized it wasnt the place to be.
The papist and I worked together on the hardpack sections and road sections trading pulls and moving up thru the pack. We were surrounded by the expert group and some faster sport racers. Then, clang! I dropped my chain. I pulled over to fix it and burned a major match catching back up. The first 7 miles were a constant climb pitching upwards consistently(remember that chart that I posted? came in handy knowing the elevation) I caught pope and we got back into our rotation of short pulls. I was having some trouble shifting the front der, and dropped the chain again!! this time I knew I wouldnt be likely to catch him again. I worked with some friendly racers, very few teams of more than a handful.
After a 3rd dropped chain I found myself in a fast group of three rolling thru gorgeous country side and trading turns at the front. Although we were out in the boonies, the were still people lining the course banging drums and clanging cowbells to cheer us up the steep dirt hills. I kept thinking that this must be what the tdf was like in the beginning.
Knowing the distance and elevation paid off because I knew that the climbing was about to end and we were going to be descending for the final 5 miles. We were now on pavement and really flying. As we turned into the park we all got out of the saddles to sprint and crossed the finish line with nothing left in the tank, 35 miles of killer gravel road race behind me and 2:12 on the clock. Pope was already at the line and cheered me in. He had a great finish @ 21st in his age group. I followed w 25th in the ahem older category. Interestingly if we had raced expert we'd have done okay there as well.
We spun for a moment and waited for Doug and Coleman to cross the finish. We met up with Osgood and spun our legs out while we heard his tales from the expert group.
He'd also dropped a chain a few times on the rough road and tried to fix it while rolling downhill. His chewed up glove and fingers were evidence enough for me.
The instant results from the timing chips were a treat. Finish the race and line up to see how you did!
We found Powers in the lot and drank a few celebratory Founders Double IPA's and got ready to head back to Kalamazoo. I'll follow up with the rest later, but I'll leave you with the papist's quote, stolen and adjusted for us from Ole Miss
"we may not win the race, but we never lose a party"
No. We. Didnt.
More to come after we clear it with the attorneys.
Suffice it to say that these endurance type events seem to be pretty awesome blend of hard core racing and party after. I like balance.
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4 comments:
Sorry to disappoint, but without the Hero race footage, (thanks for making me get up so early that my brain no worky), the rest of the footage is garbage.
What you see is what you get.
Curse my race day ocd rituals! All I remember from that morning is waking up to you standing over me w a video camera shouting something about"putting the lotion on or getting the hose" all buffalo bill style and then trying to be nice to the man in the lobby who insisted on telling us about his sons gymnastics meet. I bet that kid destroyed the field on the floor excercises tho. He had the eye of the tiger(like sigfied and roy used to have). Maybe DKR productions will have some oscar worthy footage. We'll soon see.
Ya-hoooooo! That there was some fun shit!!!! Can't wait for the USGP!!! Or maybe I wont have to???? Keep in touch boys. And great job out there!
Yeah John I'd bet there's more mischief before USGP although that's always our crowning moment. Rumours of endurance events on singlespeeds abound, but you never can tell.
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