Georgia Southern Road Race

Curtis, Joe, and Barrett toed the line in Statesboro, Georgia for the first Road Race of the season today. The flier touted a 22 mile lap, which the Bs/Cs would each do twice.

However, things change in Collegiate Cycling. C's ended up doing one lap, the lap was 25 miles, and there was a long rollout to the actual course. C's did 27 miles, B's did 54. And about 15 miles in, there was about a mile long dirt road section, which had the consistency of wet sand in many places. the entrance to the dirt section was very loose, with the last 3/4 of it having a hard packed rut in which heavy speed was attainable for those who could survive the sketchy parts.

In the C's race, with only one lap to race, the pace was fairly quick. Joe slowly worked his way to the front and sat there. When the dirt road came up, he was in prime position at the front 5. And because of his extensive mountain biking experience, he enjoyed relative comfort riding in the dirt. Once the packed section hit, the C's picked up the pace. In the dirt section, however, Barrett took a nasty spill from which he was unable to recover. He was not injured, but his bike needed impromptu adjustments, and once he got moving, the pack was too far off. When Barrett hit the last turn, the finish was straight ahead, but the course marshall thought he was in the B's race and pointed him to go do the lap again...so he rode the 2nd lap solo. Meanwhile, Joe read the race like an old timer and found himself in prime position for the sprint. He got 4th place in the sprint!

In the B's race, they decided to start the A's and B's together. Translation: We raced like we didnt give a shit the first 15 miles. The pace was around about 17 miles per hour, and the A's just let a 2 man break get away. The A's would end up with an 82 mile race, and the 2 riders who broke away at the beginning STAYED AWAY THE WHOLE TIME. Epic ride by those guys. We even stopped for a group pee break while they were away. No one seemed to care they were far away. So after the whole pack stopped to pee, we hit the dirt road a few miles later. Again, it was SUPER sketchy, but like Joe, I was near the front and survived the constant fishtails. The A's got a slight gap on the majority of the field, and myself and Ben from Clemson (who epicly rode away from us in the crit last week) chased hard. When the dirt ended, and the pavement returned, we put in a hell of an effort to catch onto the A group, where a Florida B rider had managed to sneak in. 2 GSU B riders managed to bridge up a few miles later. All the time, Ben from Clemson tried to make a breakaway stick. And everytime I covered his attack. I knew he could make an attack stick, because the A's were not going to chase him. After several miles of attacks, he finally sat in. The A's made their move, and we let them go. Now there were only 5 of us B riders. I turned to them and rallied them together, and from then till the end of the race, we simply pacelined to stay away. When we hit the dirt road the second time, we slowed down and took it easy. I hit a loose patch a little bit in though and went down. I got back up fast, found a line and hammered back towards the 3 guys in front of us. It didnt take long, and once we hit the pavement again, all 5 were back together. With 2 miles to go, we were told that there were 2 miles to go by a SAG truck. With about a mile to go, Ben from Clemson again made a move to attack, and only me and a GSU rider managed to follow it. Ben tried very hard to lose us, but it essentially became a breakaway where we pulled for about 5 seconds each. With the finish line in sight, things got hectic, and I failed in my attempt to make a strong sprint. We were already moving too fast, I lost Ben's wheel, and the GSU rider made a pretty good move to take the win. I cruised in for 3rd, with the FLorida and other GSU rider rolling in about a minute later. The next B rider was about 10-15 minutes behind us. While there were only 12 B's at the start, we had such a gap, the size of the field did not matter.

We went to dinner with the Alabama team and found out that Sam (President of Alabama) went down on the dirt and took out a lot of the B guys. I toast my 3rd place finish to him!

Look for more updates from the Crit Tomorrow!