Finally, a real stage race. I was starting to get sick of all these omniums with their "points".
Consisting of a road race, an ITT and a crit, the Nocatee stage race (old Jacksonville Classic) was a good chance to race and get a lot of precious upgrade points. Heading over for the festivities were James Rowan, Kyle McElhaney and I in the three's and Shawn Gravois and Alex Gil in the pro/1/2.
Juan Uruena, Mike Bachman, James Rowan and I decided that we absolutely had to do this race. 6000 feet of climbing over 40 miles (including one 4-5 mile climb plus a mountain top finish) was simply irresistable. We wouldn't be able to make it for the Friday afternoon time trial, but all I wanted to do was the road race, so that worked out fine for me. A nine hour trip got us to Asheville, NC around 10 o'clock. We all had bikes to assemble, and perhaps more importantly, really big climbing gears to put on. I actually had to assemble most of my bike since it had finally arrived from Chicago that morning (bad decision no.1). Thankfully we also had the company of Shawn Gravois; he was able to supply me with some mechanic's expertise plus a very critical bolt for the seat post clamp.
So Ken Sallot told James Rowan about these races on the weekend of July 11-12. Not having anything else to do, we signed up immediately. The races were a road race on Saturday and a crit on Sunday. The TT was 1.5 miles and we decided we should just save our money. An imitation of the real Olympics, the Georgia Games award gold, silver and bronze to 1st, 2nd and 3rd. It was also both James and I's first cat 3 road race. At just over 71 miles, we were both pretty excited and nervous. This was turned into pure nervousness when we found we had been combined with the pro/1/2 field that morning.
First pro/1/2/3 race. Reasonably nervous although foolishly confident going into it. The course is in the parking lot of Soldier Field Stadium in Chicaco. I thought the course might be crap, but except for one sharp corner lined with porta-potties, it was very open and FAST. Huge sweeping corners and a few very wide 180s, it was actually very nice.
Nat Bricker and I spent the entire day traveling from Gainesville, FL to Memphis, TN in order to race this omnium en route to Chicago. My first race as a Cat 3, so I was really nervous. Nat tells me that it is not so bad, but no more “negative racing” i.e. breaks will stick; people will actually organize to chase them down, etc. Not sure I like that. I wasn’t too sure what the Mexican food situation would be in Tennessee (seems to be an unofficial tradition to meet as much Mexican as we can) but we ended up pretty good at a place not too far from the race hotel. This would turn into a mistake come the next morning. Bad things come in threes, so that was bad thing number one. We woke at 5:30 am to start getting ready.
This weekend was the Lake County Stage Race. Great race if you were in the pro, 1, 2 or a 3. Their race featured an 80 mile road race on Sunday that consisted of one loop. Apparently there has not been a true road race like this in Florida for over 15 years now. From the whining the cops were doing, I guess it was a logistical nightmare for the sheriffs since the race covered more than one county.
The Ocala Stage Race was this past weekend. Consisting of a two road races and a shortish time trial, this is a pretty popular race in Florida. This was my first race in over a month, so I was pretty nervous entering. The day before I found out that over 60 riders had preregistered for the first stage, so it was also going to be one of the biggest fields I have ever raced against. Joining me in the cat 4s were James Rowan and Mike Bachman.
