State Post Race

Well, both State Road Races are in the books and I have pretty mixed personal feelings. I was hoping for more out of the senior race. The course is good for me and our team. The climb is hard, but not decisive in my opinion. The real selection is the farm road near at the bottom of the descent. It usually has a nice cross wind, is windy and narrow and strings things out. It usually weeds things out.

We launched several attacks at the start, with Shawn Ongers going solo for about a lap and a half. Good on him. I tried to cover moves, as did Ethan and Mark but I realized after the 3rd time though that the wind was coming from dead ahead on the country road meaning that the field was riding easy while we killed ourselves at the front.

Steve Holland crashed at the start of the 4th time up, breaking his collarbone and some ribs (which given how it looked was better than I thought it would be). A good break went but we neutralized with 3 to go because they were still attending Steve. We restarted at the feedzone climb and about half the field was dropped. I can't help but wonder if we hadn't neutralized if we would have reduced the group to maybe 20, instead of 30-40.

With 2 to go the climb was ridden tempo, no attacks. Then we neutralized and stopepd for 10-15 minutes at the country road while medics attended to Ben Kaplan, who suffered a compound fracture in a crash. Apparently, he clipped out to avoid a crash and got hit from behind. Ouch. Anyway, that meant we got to start up again and race, 40 strong (I suspect some chasing riders caught up with us) in a 7 mile dash to the finish.

I tried to go with Mick and then chased Andrew in hopes that one of our riders was feeling better than me. Shawn went again but got caught at the feedzone and The Valley ramped it up. I ended up just coasting up to the finish.

All in all one of the wierdest races I've ever done. There were about 10 moves that just died that looked good to me. Not sure what happened other than the headwind.

State Masters went better. The field was about 26 riders, lap one was OK. Doug Davis attacked and we sent Erik up to him. Some attacks, drops and surges later and Doug was off with Andy Lund, Chris Torgeson and 2 or 3 other guys. Mark went after it. Michael and I sat at the front and decided to let Mark play his hand. Of course Kenny went right then. I took a strong pull and then let Michael go after him with Murdin. It looked good but Kenny dropped Murdin and Emde on the climb. Crap, I went balls out to get up to them with a few other guys. We caught Mark and ended up chasing balls out for 3 laps. Kenny dropped everyone in the original break to win by 5 days, while Mark took out the sprint for 2nd place. Awesome. I don't know how Michael did; I got dropped with 1 to go but we can both honestly say we buried ourselves for Mark. He's an awesome guy and I could tell he was strong and it was deserved payback for his unselfish work.

Next week State Omnium. The decision, Masters or Cat 1/2. Can I just stay home? There's a climb mommy!