USPro RR

Welcome to the big time I guess. My first Pro nationals. I was racing by myself and had no idea of how the race was going to play out. I did manage to get together a follow vehicle for myself, Andrew Talansky from Amore & Vita, and three Land Rover riders. Thanks to Andrew for finding the driver. So at least I wasn't behind the 8-ball before the start even took place. And what a start it was. It was completely nutty, groups of 30 kept going off the front and we were doing like 45 km/hour on a really technical circuit. I panicked a few times and jumped across to a few of these groups, inevitably right before the peleton caught them. Eventually the race settled down and we let Zabriskie fry out there on his own. After the climb the first time another break of about 13 went but no one too prominent was there and Kelly and BMC both missed it so I wasn't worried. Lewis from Columbia then set a wicked tempo up the climb the second time up and probably shredded a bunch of guys. I was still feeling pretty comfortable though and had to problems. The pace did bring back the 13 riders and Dave Z though.

Again right after the descent a break of 4 went, with Chris Jones of Type 1, Howes of Garmin, Stewart of BMC, and Ben King from Livestrong. They were given a bit of leeway but again we went hard up the climb. This time Lewis took it half way and then Hincapie attacked himself. This really destroyed the group and we came over the top in a group of about 18 with me hurting but not in danger of getting dropped. However, we messed around on the descent and another group of about 25 came back again. Then there were the usual attacks on the flats after the climb with everyone taking a go, Hincapie and myself included.

Nothing stuck though and eventually teams got organized to do a legitimate lead-out to the bottom of the final time up the hill. Again Lewis took the first kilometer on the front and then Hincapie put in a massive attack. I started the climb too far back and didn't move up quickly enough at the bottom so I got stuck behind a wall of Garmin riders moving backwards. Once I got around them the gap up to the front group of 7 was too big for me to close on my own. I strongly believe that if I had been on the right side of the split, that I wouldn't have gotten dropped and made that front group. Next time.

So over the top there were 10 of us. Two riders from Garmin, two from Kelly, two from Type 1, Burke from BISSELL, McCarthy from Saxo Bank, White from OUCH, and me. The Kelly guys weren't working since they had Bowman and Bajadali in the front group. Type 1 had Jones who managed to not get caught until right after the climb so could hang on to the front group, but they weren't too happy with it so they were helping us chase. Garmin missed the front group completely so they were pretty motivated. Personally I helped a lot for the first 10 km, but then I got some wicked cramping in all of the muscles in both of my legs.

I'm cramping badly here, but at least its hard to tell... trying to develop my Scott Moninger look

It meant that I couldn't pull that much on the three 7km long flat finishing circuits. We got to within 10 seconds of the front group, but we couldn't close that extra distance. Maybe if I hadn't gotten those cramps we could have, one more guy taking strong pulls may have been enough.

Either way we rode fast hoping that they would start messing around in the front but they never did. Then there were a lot of attacks in the final to 2km, that really made it a drawn out sprint. I came in the middle of the group for 14th place. I am pretty satisfied with it, but I am left wondering what might have been if I hadn't started the last climb too far back, or if I hadn't started cramping in the finishing circuits.