Poor start

     I know I promised blogs after my races but my laptop, my main blogging machine, decided to crap out on me and I haven't had time to bury myself in the old home office to write at all. Let's start with The 19th Annual Carl Dolan Classic in Columbia,MD.
     This was my first race as a Cat 4 and I had hoped to be racing side by side with my team mate Bryan, but the registration for the 4/5 race filled in about a minute and thirty seconds, and my typing (like my riding ) is painfully slow. After about a week of deliberation I decided to sign up for the 3/4 race instead. Needless to say, I was pretty nervous about it at first but I calmed myself down and decided that it would be a great opportunity to learn from more experienced riders and to get some decent racing in, I've also heard that the 3/4 races are a little less accident prone so what the hell. Granted we had a pretty mild winter but when it came time for this race it was HOT for April. My race was in the early afternoon, so temps were in the mid to upper 80's and I was not acclimated to the heat at all. I was going to take two water bottles with me but my team convinced me otherwise. after a decent warm up on the trainer, I headed over to the starting line and awaited my first race as a Cat 4.
     We received our instructions and the whistle blew to send us on our way. This race was supposed to be 25.2 miles or 12 laps on a 2.1 mile loop. The course was pretty "easy" with a tough little climb that came after the only sharp turn, a right, and ended 100 meters from the finish and some breaks in the pavement that were just wide enough for a bike tire to get wedged into and could be hazardous if not treated as such. We did a couple of laps and I was very comfortable with hanging in the pack but it also became apparent that it was going to be damn near impossible to move up in this field. This race was capped at 125 riders, and we were racing on a two lane road with riders stretched from the left curb to the right curb, from stem to stern. To give you idea of what I'm trying to describe, the Giro de Italia has 190 or so riders in it, and they get wide open roads to try and avoid too many problems.
      The peleton circled five times with no issues, it would spread apart at the turn and come back together on the climb, but we also had no breakaways and so the pack stayed pretty tight together. On the sixth lap, just before the turn, some riders got tangled up on my right and a crash ensued. I considered myself lucky and kept on trucking around the turn and back up the climb. Just as the pack was coming back together on the climb, BAM, another accident, me and about four other riders narrowly escaped getting caught up in it by deviating off the course to the left and into opposing traffic. We worked our way back onto the course and chased to make contact with the field again. Not only is that hard but it was hot and my water bottle was empty, and I was in desperate need for more! When we looped back to sight of the second accident the officials had neutralized our race because one the riders had a pretty bad concussion. As we waited for the injured rider to get the medical attention he needed they let us retrieve more fluids and get out of the sun! I have to be honest, I considered dropping out of the race and calling it a day, the heat was getting to me but I didn't want to appear weak to my team mates or our junior squad, that had raced earlier. After about 15 minutes they called us back to the starting line, they informed us due to the delay they were cutting our race short, at the restart we only have 3 laps remaining, off we went for round two.
     The pace on the first lap was moderate, on the second it was FAST and after we exited the turn and hit the climb it was unreasonable. I'm a big guy and any kind of sustained climb really takes its toll on me to keep up with smaller guys, so when the pack hit the climb they we flying and I put a big effort in to stay with them and didn't make contact until just before the the finish line which turned out to be just moments before another crash to happen right in front of me! It was about 30 yards past the finish line and I was able to lock up my brakes, stay upright, and find a small hole to my right and then it was off to the races trying to catch the field AGAIN! But it was not to be, I fell in line behind a couple of Cat # guys and let them do the lions share of the pulling until we came back around to the climb when I came around them for the finish. I finished 51st overall and was able to avoid getting taken out by any of the crashes.
     I was correct on one thing the heat did takes its toll on me I had become so dehydrated and suffered from hyperthermia. I ended up staying home from work the following day because I felt so bad. I don't think any of the wrecks hurt my standing overall, I actually believe it helped me because it eliminated a lot of competition.  This is the only race I managed to be "involved" in so far this year all the others have been colossal failures, after Months of training and anticipating some good racing this year, I have yet to post a result better than this one. There is nothing quite like a bruised ego to bring you down. I didn't expect to come out and crush the competition, but not even being able to stay with the main field, or help my team mates is devastating to me, with any luck maybe I can salvage the rest of the season. Till next time!